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#3.
The Cranberry Scare of 1959
When it comes to breaking bad news to people, timing is everything. For instance, if at all possible, you'd prefer that your girlfriend not tell you she's leaving while she's banging your best friend. In a similar vein, it may have not been the best timing ever when on November 9, 1959, just 15 days before Thanksgiving, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Arthur Fleming announced that a shipment of cranberries from Oregon was found to be contaminated with aminotriazole, a weed killer that had been shown to cause thyroid cancer in rats.
In a matter of days, grocery stores across the country were pulling products containing cranberries from their shelves. Better safe than sorry, right? Well, there was something Fleming failed to mention. For a human to match the cancer causing aminotriazole dosage fed to the lab rats, they would have to consume 15,000 pounds of berries. Daily. For years. As these photos of a plate of cranberry sauce before and after a recent Thanksgiving celebration show, Americans don't eat nearly that amount.
Officials familiar with these minor details grew increasingly wary of the damage that Fleming's comments may have on the cranberry industry and began to distance themselves from the scare. After Presidential candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy both ate cranberries at a campaign stop in Wisconsin, the nation slowly came to their collective senses. By Thanksgiving, cranberries were back on grocery store shelves and back to being universally ignored on Thanksgiving dinner tables nationwide. In 1959, cranberries killed fewer people than ...
... were killed flying in a plane with Buddy Holly. |
This article reminded of last year when everyone in the United States died of avian flu. It was sad when that happened.
Oh yeah, and when everyone in the US died from eating apples sprayed with Alar. That was really sad too.
By the way, everyone in the US is going to die from all the plastic we use. We will all be dead by the end of next week. It will be sad.
If a spider doesnt wanna get killed, it shouldnt make a web in my house...
So if you don`t want weird diseases like malaria - dont live in a jungle.
Stop f*****g with nature. DDT is not a solution for a reason, you literally can't eliminate a species just because it inconvienences you, go read war of the worlds and origin of species, get some perspective
Some of you should be taking notes
You forgot your mom.
everything causes cancer
the sun
milk
food
air
so statistics say
if you are reading this with a friend one of you will get cancer
HAVE FUN!!!!
Add Sudan 1 food colouring - it will give you CANCER!!!!!!!! ..... if you eat about three tons of instant noodles.
Wait. Aren't ospreys and peregrine falcons the same bird?
My Dad was there for the clean up, I still have all the pictures. When he was done his hands and feet were full of radiation so they taped him up with plastic bags and sent him to work on another power plant. A lot of the guys sent in after were exposed to a lot of radiation. Good news my sister only has ADHD and works on military aircrafts.
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.
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?!
she is also a hippie.
incase you didn't know,kiera is the girl at my school that is best friends with "the h**o".
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!
LMFAO. The spam comment below mine is priceless. I love it.
we have only one earth mother and she is a sexy big beauty, and lives at http://www.zhongwenred.com
Mother Natures hates you.
Even more embarrassing now that it's on Cracked.
Riches to rags stories can be inspiring too!
"Restructuring," "Redistributing," "Reshuffling."
Also, no more Nickelback.
Number 6: Invest in Cracked.com.
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How about that dihydrogen monoxide scare? Nasty stuff....
:P