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[miles]

See, I am for science, but also against it.  I think it is pretty cool we can do these things, but I think it is probably bad for the society.  You got to weed people out, that's where our problems are coming from.

This reminds me of the origin of Karl Pilkington's Apple Pip Reproduction Theory. He complains about rent being too high in London already, so a cures for cancer and AIDS would not be good things. And then he unleashes the theory. If you have the Ricky Gervais Show podcast, it starts at 4:58 in the first episode of the first season. The theory is a wonder of crazy person logic, "the ramblings of someone you'd find by himself in a hospital eating flies."

[Nabubrush]

Probably not unsurprisingly I'm not down with the idea of letting nature weed us out either, I don't spend much time fussing over whether something's natural or not. We're the first species we know of that can intentionally and drastically alter our environment (and ourselves) to our own benefit. I'm not saying we should be reckless about it, we've seen where that goes, but we shouldn't be bashful about doing it either. I'm not going to be satisfied until I'm in my solar-powered 1000 year old body.

I ain't too worried about it because even with a 1000-year-old body, we'll all be striding across a bleak and sun-blasted wasteland of a planet.

[pmcd9]

I ain't too worried about it because even with a 1000-year-old body, we'll all be striding across a bleak and sun-blasted wasteland of a planet.

Nah, we'll be living in lush green colonies on other worlds.

[jay-ell]

I ain't too worried about it because even with a 1000-year-old body, we'll all be striding across a bleak and sun-blasted wasteland of a planet.

Save it for the Fallout 3 thread, buddy.

[AugustWest]

Totally unrelated to what you're talking about, but every time I see this thread title, I hear Jim Mora saying it my head.

[Nabubrush]

Totally unrelated to what you're talking about, but every time I see this thread title, I hear Jim Mora saying it my head.

Goddamn I wish I had the thousand can ability. This has been itching at my brain and I didn't know what it was.

[arkabee]

i'm all for science and shit. and for medicine.  and all that good crap.

what scares me, is how many years ago were we spraying DDT around and wrapping everything in asbestos, and it was science and progress and the future?

i have faith in man, primarily man's ability to get stuff done "just enough so it looks like it works".

and, sure, i am WAY fuck*ng BETTER OFF than if noone had done stuff good enough so it looks like it worked.

don't get me wrong.

but somedays it seems like people look at you funny if you ask too many questions nowadays.

[Choop]

arkabee, man, sometimes i don't know about you :\

[littlefallsmets]

Asking honest questions isn't the problem, ark.

"Hey, what's up with flu shots?" is a fine question that can be quickly answered by consulting good medicine and science books. It is all in there.

The problem is when "asking the question" is really just a framing device/opening thrust for someone's batshit agenda.

"Hey, can you PROVE TO ME that flu shots aren't a conspiracy to change Obama's birth certificate?" for example is a question that presumes its own answer along the lines of "FLU SHOTS changed Obama's birth certificate AND caused 9/11 and HERE is a disgraced doctor who has had all his credentials pulled and has been convicted of fraud three separate times to tell you how that works."

Reasonable questions are rad!

Questions that cannot be answered with anything other than "magnets are a fuck*ng miracle" should be dismissed out of hand.

[Doc]

And as much as I love to bash the profit-hungry drug companies, there are massive reporting systems in place these days because of exactly that kind of thing (DDT, Thalidomide etc.) to try and discover Bad Consequences while they are still in their infancy. Because there's some stuff you honestly won't notice until 100,000 people have taken your drug because it's so rare and there's no practical way to look for that until it's on the market.

Vaccines as a general principle have been around for ages now though, so if there was something fundamentally wrong with them we'd probably have noticed, doesn't mean there can't be anything wrong with specific preparations and so on though.

[jaydub]

With all that talk of 'herd immunity' earlier in the thread, it makes me wonder what changed around here to have something like Whooping Cough spike back up...

You're only a few miles from pinhead central with Jenny McCarthy and the antivaxers.

[AugustWest]

And as much as I love to bash the profit-hungry drug companies, there are massive reporting systems in place these days because of exactly that kind of thing (DDT, Thalidomide etc.) to try and discover Bad Consequences while they are still in their infancy. Because there's some stuff you honestly won't notice until 100,000 people have taken your drug because it's so rare and there's no practical way to look for that until it's on the market.

Vaccines as a general principle have been around for ages now though, so if there was something fundamentally wrong with them we'd probably have noticed, doesn't mean there can't be anything wrong with specific preparations and so on though.

Here's a can for reasonableness and informativeness.

[theinevitable]

oh man, now I am thinking about a Personal Thing where someone refuses to take certain medications because they know someone who had a bad reaction. "____ kills people" even though that person didn't die, and there is no reason to think that the drug is unsafe, and they clearly have testing in place to make sure that that drug does not kill people.

[Nabubrush]

oh man, now I am thinking about a Personal Thing where someone refuses to take certain medications because they know someone who had a bad reaction. "____ kills people" even though that person didn't die, and there is no reason to think that the drug is unsafe, and they clearly have testing in place to make sure that that drug does not kill people.

It's the opposite of "Grampa smoked like a chimney and he lived to 108".