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Yet a drug—that people willingly and optionally take as opposed to this—must be proven NOT to create harm before it is allowed in the wild. Your argument sounds

by akaru 2y ago

Yet a drug—that people willingly and optionally take as opposed to this—must be proven NOT to create harm before it is allowed in the wild. Your argument sounds like it is in bad faith.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> must be proven NOT to create harm before it is allowed in the wild This isn’t how we regulate chemicals in America. Perhaps it should be.
- hyperdimension 2y ago
  I think that that was the implication. We should elevate the standard for new chemicals that might enter our body through the environment to a similar standard we already have for drugs (chemicals we deliberately put into our body.)
- rayiner 2y ago
  To my knowledge, that’s not how we regulate industrial chemicals anywhere. I agree it probably should be. Those chemists are witch doctors.
- lazide 2y ago
  I’m not sure how that is even possible, frankly. What sort of test suite would THAT look like?
mattmaroon 2y ago
You are conflating very different things. Go into any Whole Foods and there is an entire aisle of pills that are not proven to not create harm, in fact, some of them most certainly do. Pharmaceuticals play by a different set of rules than other chemicals because humans are particularly gullible when it comes to health claims. "Snake oil salesman" is a common term for a reason. We don't let big pharma make certain claims without ample test data for a whole host of obvious reasons. In this context we were talking about punishing people for "harming" without having proven that they've really harmed at all. This would be more like locking up all the Chinese restaurant owners for using MSG. Your argument sounds like it is in bad logic.
- zug_zug 2y ago
  That really feels like a bad-faith and misinformed comparison. Can you please at least do a very basic amount of research before you take sides on this? Perhaps watch a documentary (e.g. the devil we know) or read at least 1 wikipedia article -- it was clear from the outset that workers at these factories were giving birth to children with birth-defects for example. [1] These companies had engineers who were actively concerned about its health effects, circulating internal memos to that effect [1], but just because there wasn't a finalized published study are able to claim "well.... it's not proooooven technically for 100% sure to be bad for you in small doses..." Of course small doses of anything can take a decade to be proven harmful to newborn children. These are now being linked to ADHD, that's something that takes years of very intentional research to find (because how old does a kid have to be to get that diagnosis). https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/05/425451/makers-pfas-forever-chemicals-covered-dangers https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/05/425451/makers-pfas-forever...
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    Documentaries are not research. I have read countless actual papers on this. You can find them online. I am not taking the side you think I am, you simply are reading things into what I said that aren’t there. I am sure 3M did awful things. I am sure high levels of the stuff are dangerous, certain occupations were exposed to it at dangerous levels, the company willingly ignored that. I’m sure they deserve this fine. Fines of this magnitude hit corporations where they live in the way that jailing a COO cannot. I just think “mass harm” is not proven. Perhaps some simply define that differently than I do, I don’t consider the relatively tiny amounts of factory workers impacted to be mass harm. Awful, sure. But the hysteria about this, and what I think most people are talking about when they use that term, is the level all of us are exposed to via drinking water, food packaging, etc. There’s simply no proof (or even solid evidence) of mass harm by that definition, just hysteria. Proof may arrive one day, I do not know. As you point out, it may take years or even decades. (Though it has been around nearly a century, and in large quantities for some time.) The word “linked” is always common in bunk science. When you see that frequently on any topic, you can be sure there’s hysteria. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every chemical manufactured (they all can end up in water systems) to be clinically tested. Those chemicals are too important to modern life to yank them all. There are too many.
rayiner 2y ago
Every single western society takes a different approach to drugs that people directly ingest and industrial chemicals that might build up in peoples’ bodies. The calculus seems to be that people would rather have better non-stick pans and are okay with a few more people dying from them. You might disagree with that, but OP is just stating what’s apparently common sense. That’s the exact opposite of “bad faith.”
- lazide 2y ago
  Well, people buy non stick pans despite there being evidence people may die from it, so I’d say the evidence is strongly in your favor.
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    My girlfriend is simultaneously outraged that there are PFAs in the water supply and has entire sets of pans that are disintegrating Teflon that she even puts in the dishwasher. When I point out the irony she shrugs.
    - lazide 2y ago
      A good description of the current state of society if I’ve ever heard one.
lazide 2y ago
That is definitely not the bar for drugs, or most drugs would not be allowed to be sold. The FDA requires that drugs provably and consistently have an effect, and that side effects are generally well known and not excessively bad so as to outweigh the benefits. Drugs without known side effects are the worst in the eyes of the FDA (except those with no redeeming properties whatsoever anyway), because it doesn’t allow for manageable prescribing. If they were proven to be safe, they wouldn’t require a prescription and would be sold over the counter. Though even that bar isn’t really required, or St. John’s Wort, Tylenol, etc. wouldn’t be allowed to be sold.

by akaru 2y ago

Yet a drug—that people willingly and optionally take as opposed to this—must be proven NOT to create harm before it is allowed in the wild. Your argument sounds like it is in bad faith.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> must be proven NOT to create harm before it is allowed in the wild This isn’t how we regulate chemicals in America. Perhaps it should be.

hyperdimension 2y ago
I think that that was the implication. We should elevate the standard for new chemicals that might enter our body through the environment to a similar standard we already have for drugs (chemicals we deliberately put into our body.)
rayiner 2y ago
To my knowledge, that’s not how we regulate industrial chemicals anywhere. I agree it probably should be. Those chemists are witch doctors.
lazide 2y ago
I’m not sure how that is even possible, frankly. What sort of test suite would THAT look like?

mattmaroon 2y ago

You are conflating very different things. Go into any Whole Foods and there is an entire aisle of pills that are not proven to not create harm, in fact, some of them most certainly do. Pharmaceuticals play by a different set of rules than other chemicals because humans are particularly gullible when it comes to health claims. "Snake oil salesman" is a common term for a reason. We don't let big pharma make certain claims without ample test data for a whole host of obvious reasons. In this context we were talking about punishing people for "harming" without having proven that they've really harmed at all. This would be more like locking up all the Chinese restaurant owners for using MSG. Your argument sounds like it is in bad logic.

zug_zug 2y ago
That really feels like a bad-faith and misinformed comparison. Can you please at least do a very basic amount of research before you take sides on this? Perhaps watch a documentary (e.g. the devil we know) or read at least 1 wikipedia article -- it was clear from the outset that workers at these factories were giving birth to children with birth-defects for example. [1] These companies had engineers who were actively concerned about its health effects, circulating internal memos to that effect [1], but just because there wasn't a finalized published study are able to claim "well.... it's not proooooven technically for 100% sure to be bad for you in small doses..." Of course small doses of anything can take a decade to be proven harmful to newborn children. These are now being linked to ADHD, that's something that takes years of very intentional research to find (because how old does a kid have to be to get that diagnosis). https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/05/425451/makers-pfas-forever-chemicals-covered-dangers https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/05/425451/makers-pfas-forever...
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  Documentaries are not research. I have read countless actual papers on this. You can find them online. I am not taking the side you think I am, you simply are reading things into what I said that aren’t there. I am sure 3M did awful things. I am sure high levels of the stuff are dangerous, certain occupations were exposed to it at dangerous levels, the company willingly ignored that. I’m sure they deserve this fine. Fines of this magnitude hit corporations where they live in the way that jailing a COO cannot. I just think “mass harm” is not proven. Perhaps some simply define that differently than I do, I don’t consider the relatively tiny amounts of factory workers impacted to be mass harm. Awful, sure. But the hysteria about this, and what I think most people are talking about when they use that term, is the level all of us are exposed to via drinking water, food packaging, etc. There’s simply no proof (or even solid evidence) of mass harm by that definition, just hysteria. Proof may arrive one day, I do not know. As you point out, it may take years or even decades. (Though it has been around nearly a century, and in large quantities for some time.) The word “linked” is always common in bunk science. When you see that frequently on any topic, you can be sure there’s hysteria. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every chemical manufactured (they all can end up in water systems) to be clinically tested. Those chemicals are too important to modern life to yank them all. There are too many.

rayiner 2y ago

Every single western society takes a different approach to drugs that people directly ingest and industrial chemicals that might build up in peoples’ bodies. The calculus seems to be that people would rather have better non-stick pans and are okay with a few more people dying from them. You might disagree with that, but OP is just stating what’s apparently common sense. That’s the exact opposite of “bad faith.”

lazide 2y ago
Well, people buy non stick pans despite there being evidence people may die from it, so I’d say the evidence is strongly in your favor.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  My girlfriend is simultaneously outraged that there are PFAs in the water supply and has entire sets of pans that are disintegrating Teflon that she even puts in the dishwasher. When I point out the irony she shrugs.
  - lazide 2y ago
    A good description of the current state of society if I’ve ever heard one.

lazide 2y ago

That is definitely not the bar for drugs, or most drugs would not be allowed to be sold. The FDA requires that drugs provably and consistently have an effect, and that side effects are generally well known and not excessively bad so as to outweigh the benefits. Drugs without known side effects are the worst in the eyes of the FDA (except those with no redeeming properties whatsoever anyway), because it doesn’t allow for manageable prescribing. If they were proven to be safe, they wouldn’t require a prescription and would be sold over the counter. Though even that bar isn’t really required, or St. John’s Wort, Tylenol, etc. wouldn’t be allowed to be sold.