250 BCE Lead, Lead WineAncient Romans use lead in everything from paint to dishware to plumbing, despite warnings from Caesar's engineers. Actually, Romans love the stuff so much that they add lead acetate to wine as a sweetener. Lead poisoning runs rampant, leading future historians to speculate that lead-induced insanity caused the fall of Rome. (Image: Dionysus as baby by Guido Reni) 50 CE Listen To Your ElderRoman historian Pliny the Elder notes that asbestos in clothing "affords protection against all spells, especially those of the Magi." If that's not handy enough, the Romans also discover that asbestos is a strong building material, and that it can make tablecloths flame retardant. (Simply burn off the food to clean them!) Curiously, Pliny also warns against purchasing slaves who've worked in asbestos quarries. He writes, "They die young." 1527 CE Opium for the MassesPhysician and toxicologist Philippus Paracelsus prescribes opium as a painkiller throughout Europe. Using his marketing genius, he also re-brands the drug under the more wholesome name "laudanum." During the next 300 years, the drug becomes as commonplace as Advil, and it's prescribed for everything from colds to diarrhea to insomnia. Poets and novelists, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charles Dickens, even take laudanum to cure writer's block. Mary Todd Lincoln combines the drug with camphor in an effort to commit suicide, but she's foiled by a suspicious pharmacist who plies her with sugar pills instead. (Photo: NLM Visible Proofs) 1850 CE And Speaking of Camphor ...In the mid-1800s, swallowing camphor is thought to cure hysteria, cholera, and gout. Later, however, medics wise up to the toxic nature of the gummy compound, and it's relegated to things like fireworks and embalming fluid. But camphor hasn't totally retired from its career in medicine. It's an active ingredient in Vicks VapoRub, anti-itch creams, and several other products with warning labels that read, "If swallowed, contact a Poison Control Center immediately." 1898 CE Heroin for Everyone!Got a nagging cough? Some heroin will fix you right up. At least, that's what mothers believe in 1898, when they start buying Bayer Heroin for their sick kids. Soon approved by the American Medical Association, the drug is marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute - which is wrong on many levels. Not only is heroin extremely addictive, but the body also metabolizes it into morphine. When reports of extreme addiction become known, Bayer acknowledges its blunder and stops making the medicine in 1913. But for the next decade, heroin lozenges, heroin elixirs, and heroin tablets continue to dominate the market. 1920 CE Video Killed the Radium StarIs there anything radium can't do? In the 1920s and early 1930s, companies tout it as a cure-all and put the radioactive element in toothpaste, ear plugs, soap, suppositories, and even contraceptives. One of the biggest sellers is a radium-laced water called Radithor. Steel magnate Eben Byers drink approximately 1,400 bottles of the stuff over the course of several years, believing that it is the key to longevity. After undergoing operations to remove parts of his mouth and jaw, he dies in 1932 as the rest of his bones disintegrate. The drink's popularity plummets after it's implicated in his death. (Photo: Oak Ridge Associated Universities) 1971 CE Breakfast of ChampionsExecutive Robert Loibl decides to prove that his company's pesticide, DDT, is completely harmless. For three months, he and his wife take a concentrated dose of the poison every morning before breakfast. The Loibls report no negative side effects and claim to feel more energized after their "treatments." Studies later confirm that DDT is not acutely toxic, but rather, that it induces certain cancers and neurological disorders that take years to develop. (Photo: Roadjunky.com) |
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The article above, written by Stacy Conradt and Hank Green, appeared in Scatterbrained section of the Mar - Apr 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine (the excellent "The Future of Sex" issue!). It is reprinted here with permission. Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today! |
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http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/synthetic_genome
Be on the list in 20 years?
"Studies" I like that. On what, mice? Taken in what quantity and over what period of time?
The only known "neurological disorder" it has ever been known to cause, is among environmental leftists who have willingly sacrificed millions of third world children, victims of malaria, on the alter of their delusions.
So it's okay to offend a minority, but not an assumed majority. Gotcha.
I am not a Christian, thank God, but I do have to agree the whole CE thing just seems like crap. I guess we are stuck with the Gregorian calendar (which doesn't even match up with when the alleged savior was allegedly born) since it is convenient and well-known… sort of like standard measurement in the US.
Really, if you think the calendar represents an endorsement of your religious views and not a convenience/force of habit/way of telling time, well, you're probably dumb enough to be offended when someone uses CE instead of AD.
Perhaps the Christians in this thread should spend a little less time worrying about BCE/CE/BC/AD, and spend more time trying to be Christ-like. You know, kind, loving, compassionate etc.
This is generally why I don't care for religion .. no one seems to be able to live it.
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html
Wasn't there a public official in UK, who fed a hamburger to his granddaughter at the beginning of the the mad cow disease crisis? He would be a good entry for this list.
Religious fundamentalism can easily be added to this list of culturally acceptable delusions . . . the problem many people in America seem to have is that we perceive fundamentalists being everyone other than US.
That being said, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are douchebags representing the same ideological ignorance, just batting for the other team. Bring no the Robocalypse!
I always thought the problem with DDT was that over-use made some insects resistant. (Quck Henry- the Flit!)
@bob: yea, word.
LOL Bob! and Mooncake, I agree.
the Roman emperors used gold cups to show their wealth but did not line the cups with any other method. it has been theorized that the gold molecules that leaked into their water/wine combined with the lead molecules already in the water, was the main cause of dementia/insanity that so many emperors seemed to suffer from. i dont know if it is 100% true but it makes sense
why don't you sit in your garage with your car running tell me how long you live?
It is now universally accepted that when BC/AD was calculated, those doing it got the year wrong. So Jesus was actually born in a BC year, which, you are bound to agree, causes some philosophical problems with the definition.
To make matters worse, there is no year zero. So even if they had got it exactly right, he would still have been born in 1 BC, because he was not born on New Year's eve.
BCE/CE has neither of those complications and we all still know what it really refers to.
Mr. Milloy is a known shill for big oil & tobacco. He has regularily recieved money from astroturf groups like "CropLife America" (formorly the American Crop Protection Association) - a group of pesticide producers. His site "Junk Science" is more aptly named than you may have first recognized.
However that has nothing to with the truth of the claims presented about DDT. Except he is basically wrong.
DDT has continued to be used selectively around the world and when it hasn't been it was often because of overuse as an agricultural pesticide. Resistance evolved in mosquitos and this often no longer made it cost effective.
Some environmental groups have aggressively campaigned against DDT - not always for for reasons that were accurate - but their impact has been exagerated. And the idea that you can get from a few environmentalists are "chicken littles" to saying that Racheal Carson is worse than Hiler is ridiculous.
Check out a slightly more balanced view from an entymologist:
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/ddt-junk-science-malaria-and-the-attack-on-rachel-carson/
quote:
"DDT is NOT a cure-all solution for malaria. It has to be used–if it is used–carefully, with planning, evaluation, and forethought. It’s easy to understand why some folks want DDT to be a panacea–Malaria is a horrible disease, and children suffer the most. But jumping in and randomly spraying DDT can have the potential to make things worse, not better, in the long run."
Deltoid's series is enlightening as well:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/who_put_out_the_contract_on_ra.php
Yeah, like Gore-Bull Warming!
Farmers love selling the stuff because it is easy to grow and will grow anywhere. Soy cannot be eaten raw, it needs extensive processing before it can be eaten. Even then, it is high in isoflavones (like female hormones) and is seriously damaging to the thyroid.
Feeding a child soy-based baby formula is like giving them 5 birth control pills per day. Male babies fed soy milk may never develop an interest in girls.
Still, though, a look at Asian society today will show some of the long-term damage caused by those hormones (I can't tell you how many male students I have who look--and act--like girls, for example).
Like EU Copyright said, Western farmers and food producers love soy--but the soy they sell is NOT what we eat over here (in Asia).