The 5 Most Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scares of All Time
|
#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. |
As if making the announcement just weeks ahead of the one day of the year when some people do actually eat cranberries wasn't bad enough, Fleming leaned a little too heavily on the "Holy shit we're all going to die!" technique when it came to getting information to the public. Even though tests of cranberries from several other states showed no signs of contamination, when asked how a housewife could be sure the berries she buys are safe, Fleming replied "To be on the safe side, she doesn't buy. Also, he might as well have gone on to say, 'If you've eaten any cranberries in the last 24 hours, make your peace with the Lord.'
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Digg
Del.icio.us
FarkRecommended for Your Pleasure
-
6 Geniuses Who Saw Their Inventions Go Terribly Wrong
by: Ken Goldstein877,940 views -
6 "World-Changing" Inventions (That Didn't Change Shit)
801,763 views -
5 Pathetic Groups That People Think Rule the World
by: Fernando Espino768,350 views -
6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain
by: Andy Guerriero2,526,804 views
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.
The Mad Cow Disease scare should be on there. 319 cases out of 6.5 billion, and there isn't conclusive evidence that eating mad cow beef gives you the disease, scary s**t
WTF1920, the amount of radiation from 3 mile island was far less than a chest x-ray, that level of radiation is basically negligible, nuclear power is still the cleanest most effective alternative power source available today
Lol @ MarcAbian's comment.
Don't forget the obviously fake video of the lady pouring out the diet pepsi and a syringe came out.
The less hazardous chemicals around us, the better. I'm not saying we all have to be hemp-wearing, organic-eating hippies, but I can say that I wouldn't send my daughter to a school full of asbestos, even 'harmless' asbestos that is 'more easily' expelled from the lungs. Although, living in NYC, I doubt that any asbestos is as dangerous as the air outside.
Asbestos Over-Hyped? I don't think so. It doesn't have to kill you right away to be dangerous. It can cause lung cancer 20 years AFTER exposure. Same thing with Three Mile Island. And these "statistics" can be manipulated to downplay the dangers of anything.
Yaraday
lots of people die from dihydrogen monoxide every year... ps learn to swim people!!!
Asbestos isn't a big deal for short exposure... but what about the teachers who work for decades in the school... or do you not count them?
Bird flu not dangerous?
Hmmm, very clear evidence on one side, someone called Luftwaffe commenting on Cracked.com on the other...
I just don't know which to believe.
Don't forget to include SARS and the Bird Flu on this list.
How about that dihydrogen monoxide scare? Nasty stuff....
:P
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
More on History
-
5 Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a Pussy
2,253,875 views -
The 5 Most Popular Safety Laws (That Don't Work)
944,577 views -
6 Random Coincidences That Created The Modern World
931,559 views -
6 Writers Who Accidentally Crapped Out Masterpieces
881,372 views
- Zombies
- Celebrity Baby Names
- Boobs - New
- Japan
- Bacon - New
- Star Trek - New
- Christopher Walken
- Beer - New
- David Caruso
- Vampires
-
: Good news for chronic pain patients. The FDA is about to solve your little...
[link] [59 comments] -
: Eleven arrested for stealing $10,000 in high end jeans. No word yet how...
[link] [40 comments] -
: Fremont zombie walk: Guiness Book of Records must verify pulse, appetite for...
[link] [27 comments]
-
Stuff Talks: The Most Terrifying Comedy Premise Ever
by: Genius Camp28,318 views -
A Series of Poor Decisions: The Twitter Song
by: Cody Johnston26,436 views
-
Articles
-
Videos
-
Columnists
-
More Cracked
-
About
Copyright © 2005 - 2009 Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. CRACKED, CRACKED.COM and the "CRACKED" logo are trademarks owned by Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.
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).