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> the companies have to prove beyond doubt the harmlessness. There must be a reasonable balance struck somewhere. One cannot prove a negative, after all, and i
by gottorf 3y ago
> the companies have to prove beyond doubt the harmlessness.
There must be a reasonable balance struck somewhere. One cannot prove a negative, after all, and if anything new must be proven beyond doubt that it has no short, medium, or long-term effects on human health, you are not going to have anything new, period.
Acetaminophen, for example, has been in use for a century and a half, yet we still don't know how it really works[0]. If we don't know how it works, how are we to know that it won't harm us in some insidious way?
[0]: https://medicine.tufts.edu/news-events/news/how-does-acetaminophen-work https://medicine.tufts.edu/news-events/news/how-does-acetami...
- anonyfox 3y agoThe counter point is that the vast majority of produced stuff is absolute useless garbage no one actually needs, or a gazillion of ripoffs from each other. Consumerism is a plague not only for people but also for the environment. I think we can see a „dry-run“ of some product launch, point out dangerous flaws, and repeat until something actually useful is proposed that is not some profit-extraction tradeoff that makes something else worse. This is rather extreme by intention, the truth probably is somewhere between, but I think most people can’t see how a more regulated system can actually thrive much better than putting people into poverty death loops and destroying the planet in the process.
- callalex 3y agoIt sounds to me like the reasonable balance has already been struck in the EU, as Acetaminophen is not banned in the EU.