|
E-Tank posted:Its less that, and more lacking in knowledge of exactly how dangerous diseases are. A mother hears that your child might be turn autistic if you get him vaccinated thinks "Well, if he gets sick I can take him to the doctor and we can get medicine for that sickness. . . but autism has no cure and that's *FOREVER!*" This would be a good counter-argument if all diseases that we vaccinated against were horrible, awful diseases, but then you've got stuff like chicken pox. Chicken pox is very rarely fatal, it's just uncomfortable as hell for a week. That is, as long as you get chicken pox when you're relatively young, because it can really wreck you if you get it while you're an adult (75% of deaths are in adults, versus <10% of the cases). And the vaccines for this aren't permanent, they're just good for a decade or so, so the only thing you're doing is pushing the disease off until a time when it's roughly 10x as lethal. Vaccines are great for the lethal stuff, but they are medical treatment and do carry risks, and it's really unnecessary to take those risks for something as minor as chicken pox (unless there's some other risk factor that might make it worse for you). Sometimes just sucking it up and dealing with itchy blisters for a week is really the best course of action. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Mar 26, 2014 |
#
¿
Mar 26, 2014 18:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 11, 2024 15:53 |
|
|
Solkanar512 posted:Chicken pox really fucks with a developing fetus. Just because a disease isn't lethal doesn't mean that that symptoms such as malformed organs should be tolerated. Which is a really great argument not to use a vaccine that pushes the window of susceptibility back to the age when most people are trying to have children. Last time I checked most people in the age range where chicken pox strikes in the absence of vaccination (exposure is 90% in the <15 age group) are not trying to get pregnant. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Mar 26, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2014 19:00
|
|
|
Solkanar512 posted:Yes, pregnant women are never, ever around children. If this pregnant woman didn't have the vaccine, there's a >95% chance that she is exposed and therefore immune to it (and baby is safe). If she did have the vaccine (meaning it wore off), then she almost certainly is not immune to it and there are severe medical risks involved. quote:I am pregnant and been in contact with chickenpox or shingles
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2014 19:09
|
|
|
Ghost of Reagan Past posted:What's the problem with chicken pox vaccine? It's an annoying disease to kids, devastating to adults, and there's no reason to not get the vaccine now that it's available. Sure, it's not deadly but there's no downside, unless you think not getting chicken pox is bad. It's been a long time since I had chicken pox (pre-vaccine), but I remember it sucking pretty badly and I just don't know why we should really protest vaccinating kids against it. Is there some reason you're against the chicken pox vaccine? You should never make absolute statements like the ones I bolded, there are definitely downsides and contra-indications to any medical treatment. As mentioned, you could delay the onset of the disease until it's dangerous to you, or dangerous to a fetus for example. You have to weigh the upsides against the downsides, that's why it's a risk-benefit analysis and not just a benefit analysis. Rhandhali posted:Between 1995 when the vaccine was first licensed and 2011 there were approximately 115 deaths attributed to the vaccine. It's estimated that the number of deaths prevented every year is over 100 with about 10,000 hospitalizations a year prevented. Chickenpox also has a massive economic impact in terms of lost school days and lost work days from parents tending to their children, completely aside from the costs associated with thousands upon thousands of hospital days. I actually did some digging and found a Markov model from 2002 on this, which was eventually backed up with longitudinal studies. quote:Population Decision The specific childhood-vs-adult tradeoff: quote:Population compliance with vaccination. As more individuals opt for vaccination, 2 effects might be observed. First, the varicella attack rate among nonvaccinated children might decrease, as has already been observed elsewhere [67]. Consequently, more nonvaccinated children would reach adulthood without having immunity. Second, the attack rate among nonimmune adults—including those with waning vaccine immunity—might increase. Figure 2 shows that, as vaccination compliance increases from 0% to 97%, the decrease in the number of cases occurring during childhood is much more dramatic than the increase in cases occurring during adulthood. With increasing vaccination compliance in a population, the life expectancy for unvaccinated individuals decreases, because more of these individuals reach adulthood without immunity (figure 3). For vaccinated individuals, however, life expectancy remains fairly constant, because the chief determinants of their life expectancy—vaccine efficacy and the rate of complications due to BV—are independent of population compliance. The difference in life expectancy between vaccinated and nonvaccinated individuals ranges from 9 h (with 25% compliance) to 22 h (with 97% compliance). The key unknown is still infectious shingles carriers. They are essentially giving us all a continuous booster against chicken pox and it's a bit unsure what will happen as they die off. It's possible that the efficacy of the vaccine will decline in their absence and you'll see more/harsher adult cases. But at present it does seem to be a net benefit. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Mar 26, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2014 19:48
|
|
|
Rosalind posted:This article has nothing to do with autism. Most of the symptoms referenced are clearly aligned with autism spectrum disorders (poor communication skills, behavioral problems, etc), even though they don't actually use the word "autism" (they use "neurodevelopment disorder" instead). There's a 2014 paper that is paywalled (I can't see it at all) here, and here's a 2013 paper that has a free abstract. quote:Prenatal and perinatal analgesic exposure and autism: an ecological link. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Mar 27, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2014 04:45
|
|
|
I actually sourced that paywalled paper. It's a "general status of research" kind of update, less than a page. The Brandlistuen paper is the "this has nothing to do with autism" paper, the other one they reference is the 2013 paper I cited above.quote:Brandlistuen et al. recently documented the detrimental role that gestational paracetamol exposure has on childhood neurodevelopment, putatively due to oxidative stress. Although the authors did not use the words ‘autism spectrum disorder’ (ASD), clearly some of the adverse neurodevelopmental effects they demonstrated are consistent with ASD. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Mar 27, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2014 05:02
|
|
|
Crain posted:Of course much of the lack of research is due to the bans in place so it will be forth coming but the practice still reeks of naturopath woo-woo. Most of what research has been done up to this point can charitably be described as "low quality". Among other things any official research had to be done using ditch-weed grade marijuana grown by the National Institute On Drug Abuse. quote:NIDA administers a contract with the University of Mississippi to grow the nation's only legal cannabis crop for medical and research purposes,[30] including the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program. A Fast Company article pointed out, "Based on the photographic evidence, NIDA's concoction of seeds, stems, and leaves more closely resembles dried cat brier than cannabis".[31] An article in Mother Jones describes their crop as "brown, stems-and-seeds-laden, low-potency pot—what's known on the streets as "schwag""aka "Bobby Brown". United States federal law currently registers cannabis as a Schedule I drug. Medical marijuana researchers typically prefer to use high-potency marijuana, but NIDA's National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse has been reluctant to provide cannabis with high THC levels, citing safety concerns:[30] They are extremely selective about what science they will allow to be done and who they will allow to do it. The science should be viewed about the same as oil industry-sponsored climate change research: tainted by obvious manipulation and conflicts of interest right from conception. That doesn't mean that we should assume that marijuana does have anti-seizure properties, etc, but you really shouldn't take negative findings as permanent and conclusive when the scientific process has been tampered with as much as it has been. The fact that some seedy brown outdoor-grown schwag doesn't seem to have the same effects as the hydroponic medical strains people are finding improves their seizures doesn't prove they're just making up "naturopath woo woo". Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Apr 1, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2014 21:12
|
|
|
Tatum Girlparts posted:Or in Pakistan's case, a bunch of poorly educated people hear a story about a specific military thing and just kinda assume it's a massive thing and start kicking out doctors. What about a months-long fake vaccination drive isn't "a massive thing"? Like, if some anti-vaccination employee at Phizer started filling vials with water instead of vaccinations because he was ethically opposed to it, and people were administered this water thinking it was vaccines, that would be a massive, massive problem. That's what happened here, except it was officially sanctioned, and the kicker is that when you went to get this fake vaccine the orderly stole your bank records and started poking through them. That's definitely a massive thing, incredibly unethical, and incredibly undermining of vaccination programs in developing countries. The fake vaccination programs have most certainly contributed to the resurgence of Polio in Pakistan. I mean, you guys will argue the ethics of herd immunity from vaccination programs and call people who don't vaccinate "child murderers" till you're blue in the face, but here's people getting useless fake vaccinations en masse because of a massive ethical violation and now it's no big deal? Why is that, specifically? Is it just because the military is involved? I'm drawn back to that phrase of yours, it's just "a specific military thing". Even apart from the massive ethical problems inherent in a fake vaccination drive, using the Red Cross or other humanitarian organization as a cover to perform military or intelligence operations is a war crime. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:18 on May 6, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 6, 2014 18:02
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:They do provide the actual services, just to be clear here. They are actual doctors giving actual medicine and vaccinations, while also keeping track of anyone going through. They actually didn't. The vaccinations require two more follow-up doses in a relatively short timeframe to be effective, which the fake vaccination program did not administer. That's particularly important for people who are likely to come into contact with Hep-B, like healthcare personnel or people who live in places like Pakistan. quote:In March health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher. The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But in April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, the doctor returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived. So yes, people were administered useless vaccinations. It may have been "real medicine" but it was not administered in the proper fashion to be effective, so in the end it might as well have been water. There's a reason the headline was "CIA runs fake vaccination program" and not "CIA-administered vaccination program takes blood samples". Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:13 on May 6, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 6, 2014 18:25
|
|
|
Oh yeah and I forgot to mention that they literally stole the WHO's vaccines in order to do this fake program. As in, walked into their stores warehouse, opened up the coolers, and walked out with their boxes of vaccines. So in total we have:
In the short term, not only did a bunch of people not get vaccinated properly, now we have a bunch of people going around thinking they're vaccinated when they're actually potential carriers - carriers in an environment with rampant disease levels. They all need to be revaccinated, wasting even more resources. Doctors will face the difficult task of figuring out who the people with the fake vaccinations are, and to be safe probably anyone vaccinated in those regions during that time window will need to be revaccinated, making the scale of the waste huge. Easily millions of dollars of doctors' time and medicine will be spent unraveling this poo poo, in a country that's broke as gently caress. More likely aid organizations will eat the majority of the cost, at the expense of care elsewhere. In the long term, the population just had their suspicion that vaccines are a Western conspiracy confirmed in the worst way. They're likely to be even more suspicious of aid programmes in general, both putting the aid workers at increased personal risk and causing continued harm among the general population. It's an absolute debacle for public health on every timeframe. There's no way that any self-respecting believer in vaccination should treat this as just a minor incident. Under the logic put forward about parents who fail to vaccinate their children, this intel operation will directly maim tens of thousands of people and result in them foregoing vaccinations that will kill and maim countless more. If an anti-vaccer had been involved the tone of this discussion would be quite a lot different, but the military is an authority figure and we gotta respect that. They came up with a way to confirm their other intelligence that Bin Laden was cloistered in Abbottabad, it's gotta be worth screwing over the Red Cross and maiming a bunch of people, right? quote:The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 17:10 on May 7, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 6, 2014 19:19
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:So is sex-selective abortion completely unproblematic, because parents have the choice to do it? It has some troubling social implications in the short term, like causing the male/female balance to be terribly out of whack. But social norms change and it's certainly possible that we adapt to massive wars that kill off a lot of our male population, or a shift to a more matriarchal society that places high value on females, etc. It's only troubling to society and social relations as we understand them right now. Long term, I imagine before terribly long (say within 100 years) we'll have the ability to use arbitrary genetic material to fertilize eggs, and to produce eggs using arbitrary genetic material, meaning male/female ratio stops being very significant. In which case even sex-selective abortions are a lot less troubling. Absent the larger social implications of the male/female, sex selective abortion doesn't really seem that troubling for me at all. Our society loves sex selection, a ton of people clearly want a son or daughter in particular. My girlfriend's family had five kids in their efforts to have one son, and I find having a bunch of kids you don't really want to be a lot more troubling than having an abortion. What is truly problematic in the "sex-selective abortion" question is the value that people are placing on having a son or daughter in particular, but it's a lot easier to just attack the symptoms of sexism than the sexism itself. However, that same argument doesn't really apply to genetic diseases. There is no serious social consequence from having 0 in 20 families with a Downs family member instead of 1 in 20 (purely made-up number), and there's no particular social drive to have Downs kids to support you in your old age. And furthermore, short of banning genetic testing, there's no good way to prevent people from making such decisions without violating their bodily and reproductive integrity, so why get all hot and bothered about a thing you can't change? Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jun 28, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2014 19:03
|
|
|
GROVER CURES HOUSE posted:The smallpox genome is well-documented. If there's a massive smallpox outbreak, the first place people will look will be the labs that store it. So if Russia wants to gently caress itself over with smallpox, it will not use the samples it has in store. Just because a weapon is apocalyptic doesn't mean it's not a weapon, there is such a concept as a doomsday weapon. If we could get enough consensus to destroy a major strain of biological weapon why shouldn't we take it?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2014 03:51
|
|
|
Ogmius815 posted:Because reasons. Yeah I mean the same logic applies to letting nations keep chemical weapons around. And really any type of weapon of mass destruction. Oh, international pressure (read: magic wish-granting fairies) would come down like a ton of bricks on a lovely little tinpot dictator who used them! And you never know, that chemical might come in handy someday, like if you needed a heavy-duty paint stripper or something!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2014 03:54
|
|
|
GROVER CURES HOUSE posted:It's a bad weapon because there is a well known, well tested countermeasure against it. It's not a doomsday weapon. No, it's not a good weapon against uniformed troops who have received the vaccine. They don't give the general population the smallpox vaccine anymore, and although it would be less effective (although not entirely ineffective) against those troops it would still be extremely effective in killing incredible numbers of people. Yours included, of course. It's not a weapon you'd use as an tactical weapon, it's a "gently caress you" weapon for when you're losing and you want to leave your enemies ruling a heap of ash. Or a planetary leper colony. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jul 9, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2014 03:57
|
|
|
disheveled posted:To be fair, this really isn't clear-cut at all, largely because of the homology with other poxviruses. The "coherent and sensible" reason is simply that there is a non-zero risk of transmission, which is why the WHO recommends destroying the stocks. Speaking as a scientist, I really wouldn't be upset either way. Exactly, there's much less deadly poxviruses in the event that we really need to have a live virus to work with (we needed to create a new vaccine, etc). The hypothetical that we need smallpox, specifically smallpox, to perform some unspecified  research is absolutely ludicrous and flies in the face of both science what the actual scientists are saying right now.Remember that the original vaccination process was "use cowpox" and we haven't eradicated cowpox. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jul 9, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2014 14:45
|
|
|
Tatum Girlparts posted:Again there are tons of breakthroughs that happen through science that 'doesn't seem to serve a useful purpose' and destroying every bit of smallpox means we will literally never have the chance to study/test it ever again. Are you a loving psychic who knows that suddenly in the future we'll have literally no use ever for it? twodot posted:Ok cool, and your panel of experts in the field asserting this is where? Right here, bucko quote:May 18, 2011 (CIDRAP News) – When the World Health Assembly (WHA) considers the fate of the remaining stocks of smallpox virus this week, the debate is likely to be framed in part by a report from a group of independent experts that says the only strong reason for keeping the virus is to satisfy strict regulatory requirements for new vaccines and antivirals. Money shot: literally the only ones arguing to keep it around are the US and Russia, and the only significant research use would be live in vitro testing, which is rather risky given how infectious it is. Th existing research using smallpox has not been very effective, and there is no research case that we need specifically smallpox for anything, the other poxviruses are more than adequate. And don't try to lean on the "regulatory issues" here, those boil down to nothing more than "the US and Russia passed a law that says they get to keep their weapon stocks". Independent experts are more than OK with eradicating it, given that this disease no longer occurs in humans, has no real need for research apart from some outdated regulatory requirements, and is crazy dangerous to work with. And if we really needed it anyway, we could just build it from sequenced DNA. The idea that you've somehow presented compelling uses for keeping live smallpox virus around is absolutely absurd, you have thrown up your hands and said "who knows!?" and nothing more. This argument is analogous to keeping a loaded gun in the house for no good reason. Can you put it in a safe and be reasonably sure that it won't be stolen or your kid isn't going to shoot himself? Yeah, probably. On the other hand, if you have no need for it, why are you keeping it around at all? Dumb hypotheticals don't measure up to the risk of keeping one of the most lethal pathogens in recent history around in live form, however remote you consider the chance of release. Just to be clear, your behavior is exactly the same as that of gun nuts, only instead of a piece of metal you're clinging to the right of nation-states to keep a highly infectious, extremely lethal pathogen that can cause millions or billions of deaths if something untoward were to happen. And that's actually being generous - if anything, you're more akin to the crowd who think it's a great idea to let individuals keep artillery pieces and other tools of mass death. That's what smallpox boils down to for nation-states - it just lacks other plausible uses. For that matter, why have we limited this to two repositories? If it's such a great tool for research, and this research is perfectly safe, then there's no downside. If other nations build secure repositories, why not let them have samples too? The same logic applies as the US and Russia keeping it and performing "research" after all. China's a superpower these days, and it wouldn't be fair to shut Europe out, why not four repositories? More access means more research and results after all! Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Jul 10, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2014 15:55
|
|
|
Irradiation posted:This is a dumb derail but in the latest WHO report from the previous page the consensus was to keep the virus alive, not for vaccine research but for antiviral research. No, the latest WHO report (from their AGIES) actually recommended that it be destroyed. There's two committees studying this within the WHO, one wants to keep it for antiviral research and the other committee thinks they're full of poo poo. quote:1. Members of AGIES conclude that there is no need to retain live variola virus for the further development of diagnostics. This confirms the previous conclusions reached byAGIES in 2010. If you read the report itself, they discuss the animal models using smallpox, which haven't produced useful models because smallpox doesn't act the same in other animals, and the antiviral research, which has been very successful using other poxviruses as surrogates. So basically the debate comes down to a handful of narrow uses of the virus, which a significant number of experts empaneled by the WHO consider to be unnecessary and un-fruitful despite concerted research by multiple teams, against the risk of allowing the continued existence of an incredibly virulent, incredibly lethal pathogen. One which we've finally managed to eradicate in the wild at great expense and difficulty. However, chronologically speaking this is "the latest WHO report", as this one came out in December 2013 and the ACVVR report came out in September 2013. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jul 10, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2014 18:27
|
|
|
Just The Facts posted:It did. Well, no, actually with the Hobby Lobby case the SCOTUS actually allowed business owners to refuse to provide types of medical care that they believe violate their conscience. They tried to narrowly contain it to contraception because they realize there will be consequences when people like Christian Scientists try to make these claims, but they provided no basis for doing so and it's almost certainly not going to hold up in future cases.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2014 19:07
|
|
|
E-Tank posted:If you understand how something works, you know how to make it *not* work. You know how to stop it. You know how to disrupt it and possibly save billions of lives. You're saying we shouldn't know gently caress about it, even if we can actually use that knowledge to defend against it. You're making the arguments that all scientists are Frankenstien, and to be quite honest that's like something from Dees or the anti-vaxxers. Yes, but we can do all those things with cowpox, because there's a century-plus of research showing that anything that kills one kills the other, and unlike with smallpox we don't need to infect humans to do research with cowpox. Smallpox doesn't even work in other animals and is far too dangerous to use on humans. You seem to think he's arguing against viral research as a whole, and he's not. There's just not any good reason to keep smallpox in particular around, none of the research being done on it is very significant or promising and it's an incredibly virulent and deadly pathogen which most of the population is no longer vaccinated against. The idea that weighing risk and benefit makes you anti-science is absolutely ludicrous. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jul 12, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2014 19:24
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:Prove it. quote:ACVVR at its 15th meeting discussed the need to retain live variola virus for drug development. Proponents of retention argued the uncertainty of regulatory approval of the two lead compounds and the possible need for additional antiviral agents to be developed, which would require thorough testing (including the use of live variola virus. Some participants maintained that the development of an animal model of smallpox was highly desirable. Opponents of retention argued that regulatory approval of tecovirimat and brincidofovir was highly unlikely to fail and, if needed, suitable surrogate orthopoxvirus infection models could be used for drug testing and development. The WHO's AGIES committee: You can't perform research on something that doesn't behave the same in animals as in humans, other poxviruses have always been used instead and will continue to be used in the future, and in the event we really did need specifically Smallpox for an absurd fight-the-martians scenario we could synthesize live virus from DNA stores. Given that there's 300+ years of research using surrogate poxviruses and they are the scientific norm, maybe you should give some examples of possible cases where the usage of surrogates wouldn't be appropriate. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jul 12, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2014 19:38
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:The CDC and their equivalent in Russia disagree. Both of which are policy instruments of their respective governments. Yes, the owners of weapons of mass destruction frequently do disagree about whether or not they should be allowed to keep them. Pretty common behavior all the way down to your garden-variety gun nuts. Those two countries also happen to be the only countries who show significant opposition to destruction of live smallpox, not coincidentally. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Jul 12, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2014 19:46
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:Smallpox isn't a weapon of mass destruction. Sure it is. quote:U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 113B › § 2332a Biological agents are absolutely weapons of mass destruction, the traditional definition is "nuclear, biological, and chemical" weapons. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Jul 12, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2014 19:53
|
|
|
Obdicut posted:Where did you get this idea that scientific research ought to be arguably 'useful' before it occurs, and how do you square it with the actual reality of scientific research, which demonstrates that you are wrong? We certainly require scientific research to be "useful" (novel, informative, etc) before it occurs. Especially when it involves risk to human life, and in these cases we require the human risk to be strictly minimized. That's a basic feature of all ethical research protocols. quote:Study goals and objectives The funny thing is Ogimus is abolutely right here that you guys stray way far into fetishism of science as an abstract concept. Of course science proceeds on a goal-based framework, if you don't have goals and testable hypotheses you're not doing science, you're playing with germs and chemicals. If you disagree, go to the CDC and tell them that you want to play with Smallpox but you don't have any specific theory you want to test, you just want to generally advance science, and see what they say. You literally have to deal with basic versions of these concepts to even perform basic research in un-related fields, so I can only conclude that a lot of you guys lack any sort of advanced education. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Jul 13, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2014 19:34
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:Ogmius were you also one of those guys arguing that we shouldn't turn on the LHC because there was a small (miscalculated) chance that it would turn everyone into taffy or whatever the gently caress those idiot people were saying? The difference there, of course, is that the LHC is testing stuff that can't be tested in any other, potentially less risky fashion, whereas we can perform Poxvirus research just fine using far less risky surrogates such as Cowpox. Also, there's a fundamental difference between testing physics stuff where we don't know if our models are correct or not, and assessing the real-world risk (however unlikely) of an accidental or deliberate pathogen release. It's well understood what happens when you release virulent and deadly pathogens into un-vaccinated populations. Again this is where you cross the line from making a different call on the risk-benefit analysis into just spouting bullshit about how great science is as an abstract concept. We do particle physics research, therefore the risks of all pathogenic research is absolutely zero! Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jul 13, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2014 19:41
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:But we can't do smallpox virus research, which is what we are doing. Most smallpox virus research does not involve live smallpox virus, that's what we have surrogate poxviruses for. Since there are no animal models using smallpox virus itself, such research would be tremendously difficult anyway. Hope that clears up your misuse of terminology and/or misconceptions about research 
Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jul 13, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2014 20:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 11, 2024 15:53 |
|
|
.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2014 19:02
|
|