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I am always flabbergasted when people question incredibly effective public health initiatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre#History https://en.wikipedi
by tekla 3y ago
I am always flabbergasted when people question incredibly effective public health initiatives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodized_salt#In_public_health_initiatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodized_salt#In_public_health_...
> Worldwide, iodine deficiency affects two billion people and is the leading preventable cause of intellectual and developmental disabilities.[1][2] According to public health experts, iodisation of salt may be the world's simplest and most cost-effective measure available to improve health, only costing US$0.05 per person per year
- evanjrowley 3y agoIt may not be a question of the initiative itself, rather, what conditions in Switzerland at the time led to an uptick in iodine deficiencies.
- suchire 3y agoMaybe they should just RTFA
- masklinn 3y agoThere was no uptick, CIDS was endemic to the alps as far back as roman times. Its consequences literally slipped into linguistic vernaculars (e.g. french as the insult "crétin des alpes", lit. "cretin from the alps", and "cretin" was the original term for CIDS-induced mental impairment).
- raverbashing 3y agoTiktok mind and some angry people can't comprehend how hard it was to actually get to the cause and solution to a lot of diseases
- k__ 3y agoCan I get some benefits of doubt please? :D I don't question the initiative. The article just read like it was some strange illness that affected Switzers around a certain time.
- hef19898 3y agoThe article mentions comments from the 19th century about the same subject. I think, that Switzerland, and especially those remote mountain regions, stayed more isolated than similar regions in France or Austria well into the early 20th century, making the issue stand out more in comparison.
- rurban 3y agoFrench alps had the very same problem. Austria I don't know. Many Austrian had the reverse problem with too much iodin and basedov eyes.
- bbu 3y agoThe country: Switzerland The people: Swiss The word Switzer isn’t in use since a very long time :)
- k__ 3y agoSorry, I was lazy and just translated Schweizer without checking :D
- concordDance 3y ago> I am always flabbergasted when people question incredibly effective public health initiatives. I think it comes from a generalised distrust of governments/big institutions. Which comes from hearing (often heavily distorted) stories about things like Tuskegee Syphilis, MKULTRA, CIA vaccinators in Afghanistan and Thalidomide.
- RobKohr 3y agoThis was pre-internet and in remote areas where there is a distrust of central authority. And there are loads of examples through history up till current day that show that blindly trusting authorities is naive. Heck, even in the article, some doctors were poisoning their patients with iodine. It is not far fetched that some people in these areas were informed of these problems. So a tiny amount kills us... and so you are saying any even tinier amount will save us. I'd be pretty skeptical too. It seems that when presented well and with personally verifiable evidence, people were willing to accept. I am really flabbergasted when people blindly accept in mass what authorities tell us.