On Saturday 15 Dec 2007 11:41 pm, Charles Haynes wrote: > Do you assume the effects must needs be negative?
In fact I have no assumptions. No solutions. Nothing. This whole train of discussion was started off by my saying that nobody knows the exact effects, good or bad, although the bad tends to work me up me more than any good. I was asked to keep spouting opinions and I did just that. I am guilty of introducing philosophy into what started off as a technical issue. For the past many decades, it has become imperative that every single drug used in medicine has to be tested for safety and side effects beyond reasonable doubt. That could mean a decade or more before a class of drug actually comes into general use. We take our personal safety and concern seriously and tend to be less concerned about what happens to the environment and there are fewer demands for rigorous studies of the impact of any new technology than there are for individual human safety. In India the potent anti-inflammatory drug Diclofenac has almost become a food item. The virtual extinction of a couple of species of vulture in India has been linked to their eating carrion treated with Diclofenac before they kicked the bucket. I personally believe that absurdity sometimes heads the list of characteristics that can be attributed to solutions. I tend to have a pile of the last 4 or 5 issues of Scientific American (I am a subscriber) to read at any given time. This morning I read about an innovative (to say the least) solution to reduce deaths in automobile accidents. Deaths, it says, are increasingly being caused by disparity in car size as manufacturers outdo each other in trying to make smaller and more energy efficient cars. Therefore there must be legislation to prevent manufacturers from making cars smaller. Keep having accidents. We can't stop road accidents (although we can do a better job of preventing airplane crashes.) But do have those accidents in bigger cars with better engine technology and use the engine as a buffer between you and the other big car. Brilliant stuff. shiv
