Ephoron
there are indeed people with ideas so toxic and so dangerous they need to be removed.
Probably. But the argument is about who gets to decide who they, not whether they exist.
Nazis are identified by their affiliation with the Nazi party. People you think are Nazis are identified by your opinion of them and absolutely nothing more.
If you could provide an objective definition of these ‘apologists’, we might have something to discuss, but clearly there can be no such definition, these are not facts like the shape of the earth or the speed of light.
We (almost) all agree that some levels of intolerance should not be tolerated, what we disagree on is which opinions confer such a status on someone.
None of it is ‘clear’, and of course we don’t ‘know’. The question is what on earth you have on your list of reasons to give Antony Blinken the benefit of the doubt.
I’d love to know what it is about his record in office that inspires such trust.
Honestly, the level of fawning obsequiousness to the government these days is like something from Mccarthy’s America, I thought we’d moved on as a society.
The point isn’t whether he actually did approve bombing aid trucks. The point is that he, like any government official, should be terrified of the response if he did, because it’s only that fear that reigns in the abuse of power.
Do you think Antony Blinken is going to be terrified of “oh, we don’t have absolutely conclusive proof he actually said those exact words so we’ll just drop it”?
Funny how so many responses have skimmed over the implication of antibiotic use.
Now ask yourselves, these antibiotics… If you’d have asked your doctor at the time “are these drugs safe and effective?”, what do you think the answer would have been?
Now ask your doctor if the latest vaccine is safe and effective and tell me how confident you feel about their response.
No, not at all.
I’m pointing out that concern about vaccine safety is legitimate given that many treatments thought “safe and effective” at the time later turn out to have been harmful. The effect antibiotics have on the gut biome being just the latest example.
People concerned about the safety of the drugs they are told to use are not all “lunitic conspiracy theorists” as often branded. Some simply have a completely reasonable caution about the hubris of the medical establishment.
So “no firm conclusions” means what, in terms of the other comments here?
As far as I can tell, people are understandably a bit troubled, and a bit cross (since some of the proposed causes probably should have been dealt with a lot earlier). They’re maybe hastily jumping to theories about a few likely candidates. Do you blame them?
Or should we just do nothing? Wait, and put all our faith in…? What?
The vast majority of the things mentioned would do us absolutely no harm at all to avoid, or even legislate against as a precaution. So is there a good reason we should wait for “firm” conclusions?
Its the one that coincides with a concern of mine, yes.
Do you comment on absolutely everything regardless of whether it interests you or not?
Are you suggesting that the mere fact of being more interested in some issues than others indicates some kind of unreasonable level of fantisicm?
Antibiotics and other prescription medications are more often prescribed to older folks
But https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6996207/
In this study, we also analyzed antibiotic prescription rates according to age. The highest prevalence rates were observed in patients aged 71 years (80.3%) followed by 4-year-old children (60.7%).
Since 71 year olds wouldn’t show any long term effects, that leaves the four year old group.
as a prescriber, I do warn my patients of the dangers of taking antibiotics willy nilly.
Of course you do, I’ve no doubt you’re very diligent. Because now we know they have serious negative consequences. 40 years ago, however, the people this article is about would have merely been told they were “safe and effective”. That’s exactly the point I’m making.
You now have to take precaution with a medicine because of new information about its safety that wasn’t known at the time it was developed.
Same is true for every other factor mentioned in the report. Human innovation is absolutely suffuce with things we thought were safe and effective at the time, but later turn out to be quite unsafe.
Yet taking this unequivocal fact and applying it to a rational scepticism about new medicines has, since 2020, become ‘misinformation’.
That’s just not what they are incentivized to do on their own. Consumers can sometimes influence those incentives, but there is not always enough market choice to put that kind of pressure on corporate behavior.
So why doesn’t the same apply to governments? If the alternatives aren’t there we can’t vote for them.
If everyone refused to pay their gas bill. BP would collapse in a week. But of course there’d never be such action because people don’t care it’s all just virtue signalling.
Apparently we’re supposed to be in a ‘climate emergency’ that represents an ‘existential threat’ to humanity, and the best humanity can muster as a response is a very strong leafleting campaign.
If it’s really an actual threat to the survival of humanity then just storm BP headquarters and threaten to burn the place down if they don’t stop funding new oil. No one will, might break a nail.