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The 5 Most Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scares of All Time
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#4.
Artificial Sweeteners, Circa the '60s
In the 1960s, cyclamates (salts of cyclamic acid) were the artificial sweetener of choice for health conscious consumers everywhere. Although initially only intended for use by the obese and diabetics, they quickly gained popularity among those who wanted to eat like the obese without becoming diabetics. This all changed in 1969 when FDA scientist, Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, went on the NBC Nightly News to tell the world that baby chick embryos injected with cyclamates suffered from severe birth defects. And she had pictures of the deformed birds to back her claim up! When it comes to putting an entire nation off of non-caloric sweets, few things are as effective a picture of a grotesquely malformed bird. Here's one we made ...
... maybe that's a bad example, because that was kind of awesome. But you get the idea. At any rate, there's a reason the FDA likes its scientists to run the results of their wacky lab experiments past their peers before they take to national television to share them with the world. In this case, Dr. Verrett's peers were quick to point out that, while the results of her experiment were troubling, most humans didn't get their artificial sweeteners by way of in-the-womb injections and therefore may not be affected in the same way. But when tests performed a few days later showed that cyclamates caused bladder cancer in 8 out of 240 rats when consumed in an also-real-world-applicable dosage equaling 350 cans of diet soda per day, the deal was sealed. Cyclamates were banned in America.
In the years since the ban, tests on cyclamates have continued but none of them have been able to duplicate the results of the 1969 tests. The World Health Organization along with several other research groups has gone so far as to publicly declare that the evidence shows no link between cyclamates and cancer. Nevertheless, subsequent appeals of the initial cyclamate ban have all been rejected and cyclamates are still unavailable in the United States. But don't lose too much sleep over it, our team of scientists have conducted some studies of their own and 4 out of 5 of them agree, even if cyclamates were available, most of us would still be lard asses anyway. In 1969, Cyclamates killed fewer people than ...
... were killed by Moose attacks. |
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"Who gives a f**k about the damn birds?"
I DO!!!! They're in my username, dagnabit!
Put otherwise, it was a good article.
There's the SL-1 reactor in Idaho, 1961. All 3 of the crew died there. (One of which had a control rod shoved through him.) It's biggest asset is probably why it's so unknown: it's remote location.
3 mile island didn't cause any deaths but if the fuel had melted though the containment vessel and into the ground it would have eventually reached the water table and caused a steam explosion. And that would have caused a radioactive cloud and massive contamination.
Evacuating people was not an overreaction. All that may not have happened, but it could have.
"Because it was kind of effective in fighting malaria. When spraying of DDT stopped in Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka), malaria cases rose from 17 in 1963 to 2.5 goddamn million in 1969, an increase of approximately a bajillion fofillion percent. And to this day, the mosquito remains the deadliest killer Mother Nature has to offer, with a confirmed 2 million kills per year."
Ok tree huggers, what exactly about this statement is a lie? How do we know mosquitos here are unaffected by DDT? They stopped using it! TWO million is not a small number of HUMANS... And I doubt they have Bald eagles in Sri Lanka and if they did, aren't human lives more important? I wish all tree huggers would go live in Sri Lanka armed with nothing more than a net.
TMI ACCIDENT WAS INTENTIONALY CAUSED BY AN EX-US NAVY NUKE SUB OPERATOR WHO DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE...HE SAW THE CHINA SYNDROME MOVIE AND WAS TRYING TO RE-CREATE IT BY REMOVING ALL THE WATER FROM THE CORE...WANTED TO SEE IT MELT DOWN INTO THE EARTH....AND IT DID...JUST DIDN'T MAKE IT THROUGH THE FLOOR COMPLETELY AND PEOPLE NOTICED IT AND PUT WATER BACK ON THE CORE....CAUSING BIG STEAM & HYDROGEN BUBBLE...WHICH THEY VENTED INTO THE AIR OVER YORK HAVEN...BUT ANYWAY....JUST LIKE 90% OF ALL ARSONS ARE CAUSED BY FIREFIGHTERS...TMI ACCIDENT WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT...IT WAS DONE ON PURPOSE BY A NUTCAKE WHO ALTERED THE LIGHT ON THE VALVE DISPLAY
the problem with DDT is that it effects the generation after, the eggs were cracking for pecivorous species such as the American Bald Eagle and lowering the birth rates. Yes, let's let the symbol of American life go extinct. Also the US still sells DDT to foreign countries and it pretty much doesn't work for most mosquitoes anymore anyways.
Why all the profanity? I enjoyed reading the story - but the profanity really puts me off. This language has become every-day for most people, including children. I say - JUST SAY NO to profanity.
I'm surprised that there's nothing about Alar here.
You're right, don't believe everything you read...including all of this article.
the percent increase for the malaria is %14705782.35
HIPPIES ARE DESTROYING THE WORLD
Trains are a good one, when they were first introduced people were scared to ride them as it was believed that going faster than 30 mph could squash your internal organs into nothingness.
Putting DDT on this list is absurd. It wasn't so much banned for its carcinogenic effects as much as for its absolutely devastating ecological impact. And like it or not, the state of the environment DOES affect the state of humanity eventually.
But don't worry, the United States still to this day manufactures and sells DDT to third-world countries (you know, the ones that don't care about human rights, much less human responsibility to the environment).
DDT is no longer useful for preventing malaria; most mosquitos are now resistant to it. Still, the hippies should shut up.
To all the nuclear power proponents: It really isn't nearly as cheap as you make it out to be. It's just cleaner, which in my view, already recommends it enough.
Heh. Haven't heard about DDT since The Machine used it to try and kill Willy in the Free Willy Cartoon. GOOD times...
The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island is what caused all nuclear power plant building to come to a screeching halt. Thereafter we have visions of glowing green whenever we we hear the word "nuclear" much less use it. This is still true dispite the many years of safe use by electrical utilities (and military aboard ships and subs.)
Oh yeah, those of that will bring up Chernobyl should note that it envolved a screwball, obsolete reactor design that we don't use and there are modern pebble bed reactor designs that would be as safe as running a microwave.
And those environmentalist got the DDT banned once it had removed the malaria from their continents. Once they were safe from it, save the f*****g birds!, who cares of the africans and asians that still die in millions because of no DDT?
"No, when you absolutely, positively must kill every m**********r in the room, crocidolite or amosite is what you need."
Substitutes not accepted. That made me laugh a lot.
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Some countries still use DDT. THAT'S how they know mosquitos build up immunity to it. That's also how they're able to test for the dozens and dozens of other fucked up problems it's use causes. I swear some of you believe it's some f*****g miracle product. It's a fucked up chemical that does a lot of damage. So what if it saves people from Malaria? It kills them in other ways. And yes it does kill a lot of animals and causes severe environmental damage as well. Plus it's not like they don't have other chemicals that are JUST as effective and don't have all the band side effects.