Religion and the State

[thegreekdog]

bedub - your initial post linked to a pro-cat website (a quite disturbing website, I might add). My initial post linked to the CDC website. Notwithstanding my distrust of the government, I would say my source holds more water than your source.

Your source says cats can carry fleas. I agree with that. Now lets move on to the rest of the conversation, and sources, which explain how cats keep rat populations in check, and how the pope through his ignorant ideology lead to the death of millions of Europeans.

Cats eat rats, get plague, give it to people

/thread (again)

You obviously didn't read anything I posted, don't know anything about the black plague, don't know anything about cats or rats, don't know how to think rationally. you can /thread yourself to death all you fucking want. It just shows how wrong you are and how you have absolutely no argument, when you feel the need to declare victory and the conversation over after each thing you post. You clearly can't sustain a discussion about this which is why you try to constantly end it.

Obviously you are a pigeon.


/thegreekdog

Did you get that jpg from a cat website?

[bedub1]

coooo cooooo, coo coo, coooo cooooo, coo coo

[patches70]

This is Hermann Muller-



He was a Swiss Chemist and he won a Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine.

What did he win the prize for you may ask?

He discovered that DDT was a superb insecticide in 1939. DDT was so good at preventing mosquitoes that carried malaria that the World Health Organization decided they'd wipe malaria off the face of the earth by having the stuff sprayed on everyone and everything.

Too bad Muller or the WHO didn't study the effects DDT would have on people.....

The WHO abandoned it's lofty goal in 1969.

Thanks to science, a harmful substance was used on a massive scale. DDT poisons the ground for years causing severe ecological effects. It thins eggshells of birds killing the baby chicks in mass severely killing populations. The use of DDT is blamed as the reason for the the Bald Eagle, Osprey, Brown Pelican and other species decline.
It kills amphibians nearly as well as it kills bugs.
In humans, chronic exposure to DDT causes cancer and has been linked to causing diabetes. Linked to premature births, damages semen quality in males, disrupts menstruation in women, reduces reproductive success, infant death.
It's been linked to retardation in children, the inability for a woman to breast feed, miscarriage and interferes with the thyroid.
And many other negative health effects too vast to be listed completely here.

Now, I could be a backseat criticizer and say "These idiots, should have known what they were doing was bad!", but I know, or at least hope, that it was all done with good intentions but that people were just ignorant of the effect DDT would have that they just didn't or couldn't have known about.

Would it be fair of me to say "Hermann Muller is responsible for untold numbers of deaths and ecological damage!"

Of course not. Just like blaming the Pope for the million who died from the plague is just as wrong. Does anyone think that the Pope, had he known that the plague was carried by the fleas of rats and that cats would be a good control of said vermin, that he would have still ordered the killing of the cats?
I should hope not.

Just as one could speculate that maybe Hermann Muller or the WHO had an idea of possible negative health effects but decided to spray anyway. I should hope not.
DDT was passed off as having no side effects at all, I watched the old clips of kids being sprayed directly all over their body and face with the stuff and smile afterward.

It reminds me of that clip of Homer Simpson spraying himself with insecticide and screaming in pain afterward- "What?!?!? Spider poison is people poison to?!?!" LMAO.



Is it possible for people to look back at history and remember that people back then didn't know what we know today? Or is that just too much to ask?

[Woodruff]

DDT was passed off as having no side effects at all, I watched the old clips of kids being sprayed directly all over their body and face with the stuff and smile afterward.

Ack!

[thegreekdog]

coooo cooooo, coo coo, coooo cooooo, coo coo

A pigeon website?

[BigBallinStalin]

This is Hermann Muller-



He was a Swiss Chemist and he won a Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine.

What did he win the prize for you may ask?

He discovered that DDT was a superb insecticide in 1939. DDT was so good at preventing mosquitoes that carried malaria that the World Health Organization decided they'd wipe malaria off the face of the earth by having the stuff sprayed on everyone and everything.

Too bad Muller or the WHO didn't study the effects DDT would have on people.....

The WHO abandoned it's lofty goal in 1969.

Thanks to science, a harmful substance was used on a massive scale. DDT poisons the ground for years causing severe ecological effects. It thins eggshells of birds killing the baby chicks in mass severely killing populations. The use of DDT is blamed as the reason for the the Bald Eagle, Osprey, Brown Pelican and other species decline.
It kills amphibians nearly as well as it kills bugs.
In humans, chronic exposure to DDT causes cancer and has been linked to causing diabetes. Linked to premature births, damages semen quality in males, disrupts menstruation in women, reduces reproductive success, infant death.
It's been linked to retardation in children, the inability for a woman to breast feed, miscarriage and interferes with the thyroid.
And many other negative health effects too vast to be listed completely here.

Now, I could be a backseat criticizer and say "These idiots, should have known what they were doing was bad!", but I know, or at least hope, that it was all done with good intentions but that people were just ignorant of the effect DDT would have that they just didn't or couldn't have known about.

Would it be fair of me to say "Hermann Muller is responsible for untold numbers of deaths and ecological damage!"

Of course not. Just like blaming the Pope for the million who died from the plague is just as wrong. Does anyone think that the Pope, had he known that the plague was carried by the fleas of rats and that cats would be a good control of said vermin, that he would have still ordered the killing of the cats?
I should hope not.

Just as one could speculate that maybe Hermann Muller or the WHO had an idea of possible negative health effects but decided to spray anyway. I should hope not.
DDT was passed off as having no side effects at all, I watched the old clips of kids being sprayed directly all over their body and face with the stuff and smile afterward.

It reminds me of that clip of Homer Simpson spraying himself with insecticide and screaming in pain afterward- "What?!?!? Spider poison is people poison to?!?!" LMAO.



Is it possible for people to look back at history and remember that people back then didn't know what we know today? Or is that just too much to ask?

Are you saying that Hermann Muller and/or the WHO should not be held responsible for the unintended consequences of their own actions?

[patches70]

Are you saying that Hermann Muller and/or the WHO should not be held responsible for the unintended consequences of their own actions?

They weren't. It's a tough question to answer. There are people who still think DDT should be used. There are still a few places that do use DDT to this day. India for one.

Some say that the banning of DDT has led directly to the deaths of 20 million people lost to malaria since the banning.

So what's worse? The unintended effects of using the DDT or the lives lost from not using the DDT? If someone dies of malaria, that could have been prevented with the use of DDT, should the Stockholm Convention be held accountable for banning it's use?

As for Hermann Muller, no he shouldn't be held accountable. He just discovered that DDT kills bugs. DDT was invented in the 1800's, it wasn't until 1939 that Muller figured out it would kill bugs like nobodies business.

As for the WHO, I suppose someone could try to hold them accountable, but proving anything would be pretty hard probably. Yeah, this person or that person got cancer, miscarriage, or any of the other horrible things that could go wrong if exposed to DDT, they would have to prove that it was the DDT and not any other possible factor, right?
And who is the WHO anyway?


We just didn't know any better. That shit happens time and time again through human history. People making decisions without complete information. I'd say most decisions in life are made under such circumstances. Rarely can anyone or anything have complete knowledge of every conceivable consequence that may or may not stem from any particular decision or course of action.

Hold Fate accountable. Not that it'd do much good.

You know as well as I do, that the Central Planners of the world have no accountability when things go bad, but when things go well, they claim responsibility. It is what it is.

[patches70]

This is funny stuff, "DDT, so safe you can eat it!"



or, "absolutely harmless to humans and animals"


Or this can of DDT-



on the top there it says this (translated)-
"Destroys parasites such as fleas, lice, ants, bedbugs, cockroaches, flies, etc.. Néocide Sprinkle caches of vermin and the places where there are insects and their places of passage. Leave the powder in place as long as possible. " "Destroy the parasites of man and his dwelling". "Death is not instantaneous, it follows inevitably sooner or later. " "French manufacturing" ; "harmless to humans and warm-blooded animals" "sure and lasting effect. Odorless.

It wasn't until birds started dropping dead that people said "hey....wait a minute...." and even then it was a tough sell to get rid of.

One of the first acts of the newly formed EPA was to ban DDT, but at first the EPA tried to maintain it was safe for use.
DDT was used in Britain all the way up until 1984.

Now, after the harmful effects were well documented, if a nation kept on using it, then yeah, someone should be held accountable, I just don't know who.