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Toxic metals in baby food

Revoltingest

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
ChristineM said:
It is safe to say that the American inventor Thomas Midgley Jr. Is responsible for more deaths and illness and has caused more damage to the world environment than any other person who has lived.

First came up with the idea that lead in petrol would reduce engine knock. The legasy is that millions of additional people die each year from respiratory problems.

Next, not content with that he went on to discover that chlorofluorocarbons (cfcs) made exceedingly efficient refrigerants.

He has succeeded in poisoning of three generations of children with future generations to be effected, increased the risk of skin cancer and other skin problems related to UV rays, and has contributed greatly to global warming.

Finally, he contracted polio. He invented a device to help him get out of bed in the morning. In an accident he was strangled in his own device.

My thought on this is that is could not happen to a more deserving person.
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To be fair to the guy, the deleterious effects of his technologies weren't known at the time.
(Lead toxicity was just gaining attention at that time.)
 
ChristineM

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
It's My Birthday!
dianaiad said:
I have come to the conclusion that you don't think I'm wrong because I take incorrect positions. You think the positions are wrong because I'm the one taking them.

I think you don't REALLY believe that Midgely deserved the death he suffered. You just said something outre'....and even though you know it was over the top and you regret it, you can't dial it back because *I'm* the one who called you on it.

Do you really believe in the death penalty?
Do you really believe that Midgely absolutely deserved the rather horrific death he suffered?
Do you really believe that every person who ever invented something that was later found to be dangerous should be killed in interestingly macabre ways?

Do you think that Marie Curie deserved to die of aplastic anemia?
....because her research has been responsible for more deaths than Midgely has.
I find your position on this to be troubling....and very unlike the person I have assumed that you were.
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You have your opinion of a mass murderer, i have mine that i took before you replied to my thread, before i knew of you, before i joined RF. Many years before so why do you think yourself special whenever we dont agree?
 
dianaiad

dianaiad

Well-Known Member
ChristineM said:
You have your opinion of a mass murderer, i have mine that i took before you replied to my thread, before i knew of you, before i joined RF. Many years before so why do you think yourself special whenever we dont agree?
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I was simply surprised. My opinion of you has been "Christine is a kind liberal who is fairly forgiving and concerned for others; we don't agree on politics, but we could probably get along just fine as neighbors, and might be friends if we could avoid certain topics of conversation."

The thing is, having looked at Midgy's life, I honestly think that he would have been appalled at what lead in gas and Freon did. He was heavily into research for substitutions in fuel, and in polymers of all sorts, that we still use. Of course, there was no way that he....or anybody else....could have known what Freon would do to the ozone layer. Which, in spite of your horror and fear, caused a hole in the ozone layer OVER THE ANTARCTIC. Which, true, would have grown and been a huge problem had we not figured out the cause,

Which, in spite of your wish to lay the whole blame upon poor Midgely, was NOT mainly the freon in fridges. It was ..er...hairspray. Hairspray and other aerosols.

You aren't the first to wish to assign responsibility to someone safely dead; Pope Stephen IV dug up the corpse of his dead predecessor, Formosis, tried it, found it guilty, beheaded it and threw it in the Tiber, Mobs in general love to take whatever misery or wish to solve a problem aim at a specific person or group and do nasty things to them. I just hadn't thought that you were the type to join mobs.
 
dianaiad

dianaiad

Well-Known Member
ChristineM said:
So is there a problem with lab testing?
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You are guilty of 'presentism.' That is, judging past actions by today's morals and ideas.

There isn't anything wrong with lab testing...if the tests were available, or there was any reason to do the tests. What you are doing is kinda like criticizing Sir William Osler because he didn't use X-ray machines in his practice; X-ray machines DID exist at the time. OR like going after Rontgen for inventing the idea in the first place, because for quite a few years patients who were x-rayed had to hold still for an hour and a half and be subjected to radiation doses 1500 times higher than they are today.

Lot's of hair loss and cancer resulting from that. y'know.

Certainly my own bald pate is due to less dosage than that...and I'll never grouse about how long a PET scan takes again.

ANYway, stop judging a man who died in 1944 by the understanding of 80 years later.
 
ChristineM

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
It's My Birthday!
dianaiad said:
You are guilty of 'presentism.' That is, judging past actions by today's morals and ideas.

There isn't anything wrong with lab testing...if the tests were available, or there was any reason to do the tests. What you are doing is kinda like criticizing Sir William Osler because he didn't use X-ray machines in his practice; X-ray machines DID exist at the time. OR like going after Rontgen for inventing the idea in the first place, because for quite a few years patients who were x-rayed had to hold still for an hour and a half and be subjected to radiation doses 1500 times higher than they are today.

Lot's of hair loss and cancer resulting from that. y'know.

Certainly my own bald pate is due to less dosage than that...and I'll never grouse about how long a PET scan takes again.

ANYway, stop judging a man who died in 1944 by the understanding of 80 years later.
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Midgely did lab testing, he stuck his head his in a box containing leaded exhaust fumes for 60 seconds. Stood and announced "see perfectly safe"

I will judge people on their legasy and you will not change my personality.
 
dianaiad

dianaiad

Well-Known Member
ChristineM said:
Midgely did lab testing, he stuck his head his in a box containing leaded exhaust fumes for 60 seconds. Stood and announced "see perfectly safe"

I will judge people on their legasy and you will not change my personality.
Click to expand...

Then you will judge the guy who first used fire to cook with....and go into the wilderness and eat all your stuff raw.
You will also go naked, because the people who invented the methods used to manufacture clothing today depend upon processes which, when first discovered, caused many, many deaths.

Or you COULD, as I do, spin fibers that you gather from bushes and fences...fibers that come from animals (like muskoxen) who rub against them in their spring molt, spin them into threads and then knit them. with needles that you have made yourself from branches fallen from trees.
BTW, that's called quivit...and is the most expensive fiber and yarn in the world...and you have to go very far north to get it.

And yes, I have done ALL that, including the making my own needles. I prefer Hya Hya or ChiaGoo, and get my fiber from other people, but I do still make my own spindles.

Everything else you have, or do, is the result of things discovered by people who did the best they could with what they had, and what they did/discovered STILL caused unintended misery and death.

I will forgive those; anybody can be put in that situation, and Midgely was no Pol Pot or Hitler or Stalin or Mao. THOSE men were mass murderers. Midgely invented things, and two of those things turned out to be bad ideas. THAT does not make him a mass murderer or deserving of being strangled by his own invention.

It makes him mistaken.
 
ChristineM

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
It's My Birthday!
dianaiad said:
Then you will judge the guy who first used fire to cook with....and go into the wilderness and eat all your stuff raw.
You will also go naked, because the people who invented the methods used to manufacture clothing today depend upon processes which, when first discovered, caused many, many deaths.

Or you COULD, as I do, spin fibers that you gather from bushes and fences...fibers that come from animals (like muskoxen) who rub against them in their spring molt, spin them into threads and then knit them. with needles that you have made yourself from branches fallen from trees.
BTW, that's called quivit...and is the most expensive fiber and yarn in the world...and you have to go very far north to get it.

And yes, I have done ALL that, including the making my own needles. I prefer Hya Hya or ChiaGoo, and get my fiber from other people, but I do still make my own spindles.

Everything else you have, or do, is the result of things discovered by people who did the best they could with what they had, and what they did/discovered STILL caused unintended misery and death.

I will forgive those; anybody can be put in that situation, and Midgely was no Pol Pot or Hitler or Stalin or Mao. THOSE men were mass murderers. Midgely invented things, and two of those things turned out to be bad ideas. THAT does not make him a mass murderer or deserving of being strangled by his own invention.

It makes him mistaken.
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Dont tell me what i will do

Ok, lets talk fire. Who descovered that it can be used for smelting iron, who descovered that it can be used to change the state of inedible substance into a digestible food. Who descovered that it can be used to heat an area thus prolonging life in inclement areas. And who descovered it can kill if handled badly.

And that is the key, to be deadly it has to be mishandled, not so lead in petrol.

You want to dictate what i would do you need to research the subject you impose on me first.

Let me give you another heads up. I am dyslexic. I think you know this. I dont usually entertain big blocks of text. I have, for you, made an exception. I wont be doing it any more.
 
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