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The 5 Most Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scares of All Time
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Fear is our national pastime. As a society, we have a long history of getting whipped into a collective frenzy over threats to our health or children that are nearly (or completely) non-existent. No danger is too small or remote to be exaggerated and screamed from the headlines. For example: #5.
Three Mile Island
On March 28, 1979, what should have been a minor plumbing problem somehow escalated into a reactor fuel meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Station in Pennsylvania. Within five days, the Governor had ordered the evacuation of all children and pregnant women (fuck you, dad!) within a five-mile radius of the area. Since that time, the name Three Mile Island has been synonymous with nuclear disaster. Hooters even named one of their hottest (and most delicious) wing sauces after it!
So why all the ruckus? Much like that restraining order Catherine Zeta-Jones slapped us with a few years back, we blame Michael Douglas for this. Just 12 days prior to the incident at TMI, The China Syndrome premiered. In the film, Michael Douglas plays a television news reporter who surreptitiously films a nuclear power plant crew as a near meltdown is taking place. As luck would have it, the events depicted in the movie almost perfectly mirrored what occurred at TMI. With the movie stirring public debate about the safety of nuclear power, there was no way the incident at TMI occurring just days later would do anything less than scare the ever-loving shit out of people. And that's exactly what it did.
In 1979, Three Mile Island killed fewer people than ...
Robot attacks. Ford factory worker Robert Williams was killed when a robot hit him in the head, thus outranking Three Mile Island's death toll, 1-0. |
But unlike other nuclear disasters, Chernobyl for example, which caused at least 4,000 eventual deaths, Three Mile Island was responsible for a whopping zero fatalities. In fact, there weren't even any injuries. Later tests revealed that the level of radiation people were exposed to in the five-mile radius was equivalent to the amount of radiation a person is exposed to while flying on a commercial airliner. In other words, the danger was nil.
129 Comments
Yeah, Texan12, why bother spraying DDT? Mosquitos will only develop resistance to it. Definitely not a long-term solution.
Also you diabetics should stop taking insulin because we know it isn't going to cure your diabetes. What you need to find is a LONG-TERM solution.
It still stands that DDT kills a crapload of malaria-carrying mosquitos. And having malaria = massive suck.
I say let the DDT flow. I couldn't care less what happens to a couple species of birds if it means a dramatic decrease in malaria-related deaths.
And if you really want to be a smarty-pants, the way we develop a resistance to the flu and how mosquitos would develop a resistance against DDT is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. So there.
Silent Spring, while most definitely a boring piece of literature, hardly deserves to be a "Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scare".
The evidence in this article disavowing Carson's hypothesis that DDT is dangerous is both sparse and qualitative. An increase in the population of 26 bird species is trivial to the fact that there are thousands of other bird species in the US alone.
Also, DDT has never been banned for anti-malaria use. Even so, the use of pesticides to decrease the population of disease carrying insects is a temporary solution, as it would only be a matter of time before the insect would develop an immunity to the pesticide (much like you or I would develop a resistance to the flu).
I hardly see how one could think Carson's work resulted in a panic- there is no evidence linking Silent Spring to any harmful side effect. Oh, unless your talking about the "increase of approximately a bajilllion fofillion percent".
Wait! Kinda like parsley is a health scare now?!
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hippies overreact too much and end up dooming everything they try to save.that's why Kiera gets on my nerves a little too much these days...
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Make no bones about it, behind a stiff majority of these "scares" are people who's buddies need a little "government contract" work. I've seen it, many times.
Maybe you should do an article about 10 Ridicules Ways Proved To Be Able To Give You Cancer...
Or a Top 100. There are so many silly/weird ones, I promise you!
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More articles like this on Cracked! Informative and yet very funny stuff.
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I actually had to read Silent Spring my senior year of high school
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damn you Rachael Carson!!
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Hey... Did you know that 90% of the stuff you come into contact with is carcinogenic?? This is not some crap I found on a dodgey site... I actually major in Chemistry!
You really should have included Ralph Nader's take on the VW Beatle.
Remember that? The faulty brakes issue?
At least we got the Beatle back, but now its water-cooled and not so neat anymore...
The population of Ceylon grew 147,059% in the next six years? Because if the DDT had nothing to do with it that's what you're implying
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Texan12
Your right, its more like a virus that develops an immunity to a vaccine. Still, it doesn't change the fact that if you don't kill all the insects, a few will inevitably develop a resistance to DDT (evolution) and make the problem worse. I don't know much about Diabetes and insulin, but I don't think insulin makes Diabetes worse.
The reason we should worry that birds are being killed from DDT is that, like us, they are higher up on the food web. DDT concentrations increase each time you move up a step in the food chain, so DDT could have a similar effect on humans if we spray the crap out of everything.
Yeah, malaria does = massive suck. However, I really think there must be a better solution for the present that doesn't endanger our future.