On 8/15/2013 12:42 AM, scott wrote:
>> The actual, supposed, scientist, himself, simply ignored the odds of
>> being wrong, and reported, "I see no reason to believe, at all, that it
>> will rise higher than the 'average'."
>
> And nobody questioned this ridiculous statement? Did this person
> actually have any qualifications?
>
Sadly, the whole reason he "was" listened to was the fact that, 
apparently, he was the "expert on the scene", and had been working there 
locally, as the "expert" on this subject for years. Its not like this 
sort of thing doesn't happen, and way too often in many cases. Even 
experts will only, sometimes, see what they want to see, or they think 
their boss wants to see, and will convince themselves that, if the boss 
wouldn't like the truth, the truth can't be anything other than what the 
boss would want it to be.

Oh, on a sideline, and more to the point of the whole argument we have 
been having here.. Been reading a new book "Do you Believe in Magic?" by 
Paul A. Offit. In the current chapter he has a timeline of regulation on 
"patent" medicine. It goes like this:

1906 - Its strongly suggested, on lots of good evidence, that there 
needs to be regulation of patent medicines. Products containing 
everything from opium, to hashish, to even morphine, and who knows what 
all else, are being marketed to literally "everyone" including children, 
and its killing people, who have no idea how dangerous any of it is. 
Some of these products contained, in the cases of those with alcohol in 
them, proofs (i.e., percent content of alcohol) which where **higher** 
than many hard liquors, like Whiskey.

Around the same time, a hard core socialist, who wanted "less" 
government, instead of more, ends up writing "The Jungle". It horrifies 
the public so much they demand something be done to make their food 
safer. One of the notable things - rats everyplace, including in the 
food being sold, along with, obviously, their droppings, urine, and who 
knows what else. (This point I make because it comes up later, all over 
again.)

The Pure Food and Drug act, as watered down version of what one of the 
proponents of changing things wanted, required that, *gasp* if it 
contained a drug, you have to label that it did, and how much. There was 
no requirement that they prove it did what they claimed, or where safe 
to use.

1927 - A new agency was formed, Food, Drug and Insecticide 
Administration (it was previously the USDA Bureau of Chemistry who 
handled it), three years later, it was renamed the FDA.

Early 1930s - Squibb, Merck, Winthrop, Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, and S. E. 
Massengill Company of Bristol, all start making a product, for children, 
which is a lovely purple color, tasted like raspberry, and contained as 
much as 72% of diethylene glycol. Less than 3% was shown, in their own 
tests, to cause kidney failure in rats.

1937 - Massengill ships 240 gallons of the stuff, while ignoring the 
signs that it is dangerous. 350 people drank it, all of them suffering 
numerous symptoms, and over 100 of them died from kidney failure, 34 of 
them children. It was the first, and last, batch ever sold.

1938 - The Food, Drug and Cosmetic act passes, requiring that a new 
product "must" be proven safe ***before*** you sell it, that plants had 
to be kept clean, and inspected, etc. Again - they still didn't need to 
prove that it actually **worked**.

1957 - A German company Chemie Grunenthal, releases a sedative called 
thalidomide, declaring it safe, even for pregnant women. This lead to a 
birth defect called phocomelia, and damaged the at least 24,000 unborn 
children, half of which died before birth. An attempt to license it in 
the US was turned down by the US FDA.

1961 - A new law was added, again, it required that they not only prove, 
before sale, that the drug was "safe", but also "effective", before it 
was allowed to market.

So far, so good, right.. Well..

1972 - Linus Pauling goes nutso, and stops doing sound science, and 
instead starts promoting "megavitamins". The FDA states, "We have no 
evidence, that massive doses of these things are safe, as such, we need 
to consider testing them first, before allowing them to continue being 
sold on the market." Some of these things contain 150 percent of the 
"recommended" amounts. At this time, its only a $700 million dollar 
industry.

1974 - Senator William Proxmire proposes that this is unreasonable, and 
has the NHF behind him (the guys making money selling this stuff, and 
whose board is made up of:

	Harry Hxosey - made his fortune selling arsnic, pepsin, potassium 
iodide and laxitive to "treat cancer", then fled to Tijuana, to avoid jail.

	Fred Hart - president of the Electrical Medical Foundation, a maker of 
useless devices, which he claimed could cure diseases (a precursor to, 
basically things like the "bomb detectors" someone else was recently 
charged with selling, which where basically a dowsing rod).

	Royal Lee - Owner of one of the big vitamin companies, and claimed 
polio was curable via "diet alone".

	Kirkpatrick Drilling - The lawyer, and also layer to a quack cancer 
cure group, called Cancer Control Society.

	Bruce Halstead - convicted of 24 counts of fraud, for claiming that an 
herbal tea called ADS could cure cancer, and which was made from 
bacteria found in human feces, and sold at #125 - $150 a quart.

	Victor Earl Irons - maker if Vit-Ra-Tox, which he sold door to door, 
and claimed would cure nearly *everything* you can imagine. He was also 
one of the "coffee enema" nuts.

1975 - Proximere's bill passes. It goes into effect 1976. It denies the 
FDA the right to regulate how much of any sort of vitamins someone puts 
in to a product.

1991 - Pauling is even, himself, taking insane amounts, and promoting 
others do so, of vitamin C, in doses up to 10,000 milligrams (he later 
dies, month after his wife, both of them from cancer, likely caused by 
vitamin C poisoning, which has 'already' been shown to likely be 
dangerous, even as he is promoting taking more of it). There is no 
research, no facts, no information, and no one, other than the 
manufactures think its a good idea for this to continue, and they love 
it because they can literally claim that vitamins will do everything 
from cure every disease known to man, to possibly make you fly (assuming 
they could manage to make the commercial convincing enough). A 
proposition is made to allow recall of any food, drug, device, or 
cosmetic, which violated the law, represents a significant risk to 
humans, or animals, **or** constituted fraud.

The industry immediately began a campaign to convince the public that 
the government wanted to not just regulate, or determine the safety, of 
products, but the ban them, and arrest the people buying them, like they 
where raiding drug labs, or arresting purchasers of illegal products. 
They insisted that we, the public, needed to stop this from happening. 
And, we fell for it, hook, line and sinker.

1992 - 100 people develop kidney failure, due to a "slimming" new 
product, containing a plant extract. 70 of them had to have kidney 
transplants or dialysis, and many later developed bladder cancers. This 
is only one of the most notable signs that things are seriously wrong.

1993 - Despite evidence already appearing that there where safety issues 
already known, and unanswered questions, and a complete lack of 
information on "any" of it, as well as opposition from every medical 
college, doctor's organization, agency, and other group of experts on 
the planet, they passed the Supplement Health and Education Act. The 
times calls it the "Snake Oil Protection Act". The test of the bill does 
several things - 1. It denies the FDA any right to require testing on 
either vitamins, or, now, anything at all labelled a "food supplement". 
2. It allows companies to, for the first time since 1906 for them to not 
tell you what everything is *actually* in it. 3. They do not need to 
prove it works, ever. And, 4. They do not need to prove it is safe. The 
public had spoken, with a bit of prompting from a lot of propaganda, and 
declared, "We don't want to know, just let us buy it!"

1994 - The bill becomes law, and the industry is worth $4 billion dollars.

2007 - A year before one of the bigger disasters which this bill causes, 
its worth $28 billion.

2008 - More than 200 people, including a 4 year old, are, again, due to 
a new product, poisoned with Selenium in the products Total Body Formula 
and Total Body Mega. They where suppose to have only 200 micrograms, but 
had 40,800 micrograms. Since the industry is now 100% unregulated, only 
170 out of 51,000 new products have *ever* been tested for safety, since 
1994. Third party tests show that not only may the "listed" contents be 
harmful, but as much as 20% of them may contain dangerous levels of 
lead, mercury and arsenic.

2009 - A recall does happen, on 15 thousand bottles of a supplement 
given to autistic kids, which is found to contain undeclared levels of 
antimony.

Betwee 1983 and 2004, 1.3 million actual reports are filed, about bad 
reactions, of which 175,268 required medical treatment, and 139 died. By 
2012, the FDA, last year, its estimated that the number of adverse 
reactions, reported or otherwise, are close to 50,000 a year.

68% of the public believe that the government requires reporting of side 
effects. 58% that the FDA has to approve supplements, and 55% believe 
that the manufacturers of these things cannot out right lie about how 
safe they are, or what they do. All of which is, thanks to the "Snake 
Oil Protection Act", completely wrong.

Oh, and, here is where those rats come in. In 2007, they decided to 
finally let the FDA do the standard inspections of the labs/factories 
that make the stuff. They can't stop them selling it (unless its 
contaminated, of course), require they test it for safety, or prove that 
it actually does what it is supposed to, but they where allowed to make 
sure it wasn't, for example, mixed in a toilet, or something. It might 
as well have been. Of 450 manufacturers of supplements, roughly half had 
"major" health violations, or just plain.. wtf issues. On the relatively 
sane end, where the ones that either just randomly tossed in ingredients 
(they didn't even have recipes they followed), or changed what they 
contained, without bothering to relabel them. On the sick and horrifying 
end, was the ones whose product where mixed in places infested with 
rats, which contained everything from feces, to urine, to, in some 
cases, dead rat.

2012 - As of last year, and this one, no new law exists to fix this, and 
the industry is worth $34 billion. Also - third party studies, after 
study, after study, show that herbs often do not do what they claim, at 
all, or do entirely different things, or cause cancer, instead of curing 
it, and on, and on. The evidence mounts that a medical disaster looms, 
and its killing people, but, its "natural", and the public demanded the 
right to buy it untested, unproven, possibly unsafe, and not even 
required, if it is found unsafe, to inform them of it. Some big pharma 
drug has side effects, they spend half the commercial telling you. A 
"bioidentical" extract, which is the same, identical, chemical, probably 
even, in some cases, made in the same lab, and there doesn't even need 
to be a warning label, as long as it marketed as a "supplement", not a 
medicine. And, because of this, the public **believes** that "natural is 
safer than stuff made in a lab".

Yeah, effectively "deregulating" the industry definitely improved 
business for these people, growing, in 1972 from a $700 million dollar 
'vitamin' industry, to a $34 billion dollar, "Magical Miracle Cure" 
industry, but.. you know.. I don't think it made the world better (never 
mind safer), people healthier, the public "more informed" (as apposed to 
ignorant of the facts, and not legally required to be told them), and.. 
I have a damn hard time seeing how the "market" is going to fix the 
problem, instead of the government changing them mind and letting the 
FDA do what they, and every other medical expert on the bloody planet, 
who wasn't a total nutcase, suggested in the first place, and make them 
test the stuff, just like any other drug, before being allowed to sell 
it, never mind claim that it cures, or treats, an actual disease.

And, yeah, it was a bloody Democrat that put the final nail in the 
coffin of safety and common sense on this one. Which just goes to show 
that its not which side you are on that determines how dangerous the 
things you promote are, but purely **what things**. And, that, no matter 
what some people might claim about their own political views, goes for 
*anyone* that thinks a particular political theory can, "solve all our 
problems", instead of applying the ones that work for a specific problem 
to that problem, and *not* to all the other ones. Sometimes, that means 
the market does best. Sometimes.. it means the market is an idiot. 
Figuring out which one is which matters. Claiming, as some people might, 
that not even trying to figure it out, or put in safety 
nets/valves/etc., in the mean time, to keep the whole thing from 
exploding, while we try to figure it out.. is insane, and no different 
than one other, "My system can cure everything." Its the political 
version of the mess I presented above. But, no one, to date, and 
proposed an Fools and Dogma Administration, to make sure people bloody 
test their wild theories, and both prove what they will do, as well as 
if they are "safe", before selling them to the public.

And.. I am pretty sure they would refuse warning labels, if someone 
tried to insist they list ingredients, and side effects, too.

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