The 5 Most Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scares of All Time
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!
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.
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.
"Hi, I'm a giant asshole."
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.
People are losing their f*****g minds over climate change (formerly global warming but changed because the globe is not warming). Al Gore claimed a couple of years ago that it is likely the Arctic ice will be completely melted in five years! Panic merchant techniques and unfortunately everyone's buying.
ReplyThis format sucks. Why can't it just be all in one page?
ReplySo Left wing celebrity activists were causing trouble back than as well. Michael f*****g Douglas. The entire Western world could be on nuclear power today if it wasn't for left leaning liberal idiots like Douglas. The man should have shut his mouth and let the experts do the talking. But he knows it all. I really hate Hollywood liberals.
ReplyWay more than 4,000 people died from Chernobyl...
ReplyThere is no global ban on DDT. There is no government-related organization which supports a ban on DDT and, in fact, most support the Stockholm Convention which (among many other things) supports the use of DDT in cases where public health is at risk and specifically names malaria as a valid concern. Rachel Caron's book goes into detail about the pros and cons of using DDT, including mentioning malaria and mosquito, and isn't a screed against DDT.
ReplyNow, you don't mention where you get the information about deaths in Ceylon/Sri Lanka. However, if you start doing some digging, you'll find that it comes from Roger Bate and the American Enterprise Institute. Bates and the AEI are promoters of "sound science", a term first used by the tobacco lobby. In fact, AEI was part of the tobacco lobby in the 1980s, and is part of the water-privatization and global warming denial groups.
But, hey, this is a comedy article, right? They can't be expected to get every little detail right.
Wow...this article should be retitled "The 5 Most Ridiculously Over-hyped Health Scares of **All Time**...In America."
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesKeep ignoring the rest of the world, America. It's cool.
Except if you had read the article you'd have noticed just how much of a worldwide affect #1 has, seeing as how most malaria-carrying mosquitos don't live in America, and most malaria-related deaths don't occur in America either.
But hey, keep making yourself look like a moron. It's cool.
Wow, one exception. Big deal.
Also, thanks for the very mature *personal insult* rather than actually refuting my point - beyond the "hey this cool thing happened so you're wrong so ner."
Oh no, an article made by an American author for a site in America for mainly American reads is focused on America. ... in America.
DDT? more like XD-T
ReplyYou some kind of idiot?
Holy shit! That picture of Michael Douglas just needs a crown and he'd look like Burger King! Scary.
ReplyWell, it takes a while for the DDT to get to the birds. First, the pesticide particles are eaten by microorganisms, who're then eaten by really tiny fish, who're then eaten by bigger fish, then bigger fish, then bigger fish and it keeps multiplying over until it reaches the birds of prey. It's late at night right now so I can't remember the name for that kind of event, but it's the reason why it's dangerous to eat sharks, since they contain HUGE amounts of mercury by eating a lot of fish containing small amounts of mercury.
Reply Hide All See All 5 Replies...it's called a chain of some sort, and it first explained in 'Silent Spring' and by the debunked scientists....
Yeah, but that same mercury is being spread around a much larger predator, so ounce for ounce it's probably the same exact concentration.
The food chain?
@Candi its called biological magnification and it HAS NOT been debunked...
no. your liver filters it out of your blood -- and KEEPS it -- so it is highly concentrated in larger predators.
I heard somewhere that someone died of a heart attack from the stress in the Three Mile Island fiasco. That's about it.
ReplyYou can't stress yourself to a heart attack without underlying conditions, unless that guy became completely insane or something, in which case he was probably already a ticking psychosis bomb.
you can die of a broken heart, pretty sure you can freakout into a heartattack
One point which the article misses entirely, besides the fact that DDT use was not banned completely, is that a main reason for severely limiting its use, besides bioacc*mulation and effects on wildlife, is to postpone the development of DDT-resistant mosquitoes. DDT is still one of the most effective mosquito pesticides we posses, widespread agricultural use will only speed up the evolution of resistant vectors.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesMosquitos are animals, meaning that they evolve very slowly, over an incredibly long period of time. Saying that mosquitos will become DDT resistant in a few years with widespread use is like saying people will become immune to fire if we all start to die because of it. Genetic mutations are few, and very far between. Take a genetics or developmental biology class and you'll realize how improbable the statement you made is.
Actually, Loaloa is right, it could happen, it would just take longer than with bacteria (most bacteria can replicate in the order of minutes while mosquitoes spawn a new generation about every 45 days.) Things like pesticides and antibiotics effectively accelerate evolution by eliminating the competition. The mutations happen at the same rate they normally would, but suddenly only the strain which has mutated is still alive and any offspring they have will probably have the same mutation. There are already DDT resistant insects out there and excessive DDT usage would rapidly make them the dominant strains.
The main problem here is also that DDT was doing far more than just killing a few ospreys; the long term effects of that sort of damage to an ecosystem and food chain could easily have been a lot worse, making the use of DDT a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Hmmmm, how about the effects of parasites affecting mutations (even specifically in insects), neppinger?
the fact it is a parasite has nothing to do with the insects mutation rate, only the micro-organisms it harbors
this is for neppinger82: maybe you should read the biology books again - evolution in humans take thousands of years, but not in lower animals that reproduce faster. Why do you think we know as much about evolution as we do? It's not just Mendel, it's also mice and other lower animals. So, that kills your argument.
Asbestos doesn't kill quickly. It takes decades, but I do know that miners of asbestos were allowed to take the bad kind home. why you ask? Mostly because it takes decades to kill a person, so at least part of that time they didn't know better and it was pretty, sparkly, and looked good in their gardens.
Replyand all the kids will drop out of school before they can die from it anyway so there's no problem.
I am very mixed with what you said about DDT. DDT is very safe for humans, and should not be banned. DDT does in fact damage bird eggs (and thus their populations), but if we just sprayed it on crops responsibly, and used it to fight malaria, it would be ok.
ReplyHowever, stupid people back in the day actually came up with the genius idea of trying to erradicate nuisance insects (thats like trying to stop the sun from comming up) which led to them convincing the government to have trucks and planes spraying DDT everywhere aimlessly.
Its like someone dumping road salt all over the place, and then trying to get road salt banned for use on roads because it killed everything else when used improperly.
thanks to bioacc*mulation, even safe, small amounts of DDT still harm wildlife like fish and bird egg shells.
Gonna have to disagree with you there. We didn't have birds where I live for the longest time because of DDT, and they've just recently started coming back.
Number 1 would have been a lot better if maybe, I don't know, you'd have explained what the hell DDT IS? a*****e.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesreally? the picture of a mosquito didn't give it away or the talk of mosquito proliferation?
Seriously? You don't know what DDT is?
Get off my lawn. Damn kids.
if cracked had to explain everything you didn't understand, that would prbably be everything. go learn things.
I thought DDT was stopped because it killed a LOT of fish. Not birds.
ReplyBut yeah, a current dumb health scare today would be the radiation leaks from j*pan. WE'RE ALL DOOMED!! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!
No, it was mostly because of the claim about bald eagles and their hatchlings. Apparently DDT made the egg shells ridiculously thin, causing the chicks to have a tiny chance of surviving into adulthood. And as you well know, America loves it some bald eagles, so that s**t had to stop.
Of course, proponents conveniently ignored the fact that bald eagles were already endangered almost two decades before widespread DDT use... but hey.
The problem with DDT is bio-acc*mulation. It was especially harmful to aquatic life. True, it would take a f**k ton to hurt a human, but it did succeed and royally screwing over all sorts of birds and fish by acc*mulating in their fatty tissues and poisoning their asses. Its not like it degrades all that quickly either. I forget the half life exactly, but it was something outrageously high in water, like over 120 years.
ReplyTL;DR yeah, it kills mosquitoes. No, they didnt ban it just to save the ospreys, they had good reasons.
Oh, and its legal to use DDT in case of an outbreak of malaria in the states. Its not legal to use it for agricultural purposes.
It also harms farm workers and when DDT breaks down it turns into DDMT which is even worse as far as health effects.
#1 was a really weak ending to this article. You've got all these supported facts in 5-2 and then at the end you just say "I dislike birds"
ReplyI stopped reading as soon as you said Chernobyl only killed 4000 people. The data that I have seen says Chernobyl killed over 900,000. Unless these figures are comming from the liberals who want you to believe that radiation is bad for you. I've noticed since the reactors in j*pan went into partial meltdown there are more and more sources trying to convince the stupid public that radiation is not bad. Im aware that this was wrote in 08 but it still pisses me off.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesWhy would data coming from a source that wants you to believe radiation is bad for you say that Chernobyl killed 225 times fewer people than it did?
Also, the past particlple of "write" is "written".
The only figures that I can find that come close to that number are from Greenpeace, a relatively extremist environmental group that vehemently opposes nuclear power. The WHO's estimate, however, is around 4,000. Personally, I'm more inclined to believe the UN agency that has eliminated smallpox than the environmentalist agency with a history of questionable methods.
That being said, I don't think anyone's being convinced radiation is good for you. You might have seen some of the articles and reports about the radiation plume from those meltdowns not being a threat to the West coast of the United States. Which it isn't. No extra appendages here.
OMG.... I swear, people like you and Ann Coulter need to be shipped off to Chernobyl and made to live there for the rest of your lives. THEN I'd like to hear a report back as to how radiation has done wonders for your health!
OMG.... I swear, people like you and other idiots need to be shipped off to the sun and made to live there for the rest of your lives. THEN I'd like to hear a report back as to how radiation has done wonders for your health!
DDT rubbed people the wrong way at some point when there was a commercial of a DDT sales person who drank a cup of water contaminated with DDT and didn't show all of his cards by not admitting that water dilutes DDT into a harmless substance. It didn't help DDT's case by having it's supporters go behind our backs like that.
ReplyThe Toyota acceleration pedal defect, since 2000, is alleged to have caused between 21 and 37 deaths (about 2 per year), making it a statistically safer "defect" than ostrich attacks, which kill about 14 people per year.
ReplyYay for "X thing kills less people than Y" equalling "X is absolutely safe"
It's more about taking appropriate precautions in proportion to relative risk. The odds of an ostrich attack in my yard are slim, hence, I do not spray myself with ostrich repellant.