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Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

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Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#141
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some companies would lose money. We can't allow that.

This is Hacker News, so you should probably include a "/s" to indicate sarcasm, because otherwise you'll get a lot of people agreeing with you.

if one includes the "/s" then they get a lot of people arguing that profit is why companies exist.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#142
post #125

This is to some degree reassuring; as the chemical was phased out in the 1970s, maybe it means Parkinson's rates among people who are middle aged or younger today, and thus much less likely to have been exposed, will be lower than boomer+ rates.

These kind of Mitochondrial Complex 1 inhibitor induced Parkinson's are like 1% of cases. Granted these cases are probably highly underdiagnosed, but even if they really make up 10% of cases that probably doesn't change your overall risk that much. C.f.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9496895/#:~:tex....

Alternatively, the idea that you can get actual Parkinson's (not PSP) from mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitors might be new and noteworthy on its own, because I'm not aware of other research showing this.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#143

>"But in the 20th century, TCE was used for many purposes, including making decaffeinated coffee" ... This is exactly the reason I never touched decaf coffee until I found Swiss water process (SWP) decaf. It never made sense to me to use hydrocarbon solvents in a food application

It's volatile enough that it won't be present in the final product.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#144

>"But in the 20th century, TCE was used for many purposes, including making decaffeinated coffee" ... This is exactly the reason I never touched decaf coffee until I found Swiss water process (SWP) decaf. It never made sense to me to use hydrocarbon solvents in a food application

Halogenated solvents should definitely be avoided at all costs but I'm generally not too concerned about how hexanes are used to extract cooking oil, for example.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#145
post #3

When you drink your coffee without caffeine in your 30 for escaping a harm from caffeine, but end up with Parkinson in your 60+.

According to Bing Chat they stopped using TCE for decaf back in the 70s, at least in the US.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#146
post #3

When you drink your coffee without caffeine in your 30 for escaping a harm from caffeine, but end up with Parkinson in your 60+.

It's worth noting that almost all decaffeinated coffee is made using water as the solvent. Even 30 years ago this was true.

Citation needed, swiss water decaf isn't the only type of decaf on the shelves at my local grocery store.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#147

Widely used chemical *(that was generally phased out in the 70s) linked to Parkinson's. Still important, but you don't need to start searching product labels in 2023 for it.

I remember my chemistry teacher in high school telling how they used to use 'tri' (that's how they called it) a lot to wash their hands in. Until they discovered that it was highly carcinogenic. But yeah, that chemistry class was in the early 80's, so it is now ages ago that tri was still widely used.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#148
post #49
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Tricholoroethylene? "A widely used chemical" ....

Imagine this headline A widely known basketball team wins NBA finals Clickbait?

This is very common in regional newspapers, especially online. Even for "real" stories. "This local team is advancing to ..." Garbage.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone should be taking mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitors These processes have billions of years of evolution behind them and are highly conserved. People shouldn't mess with them until there are huge studies, and not in the context of cancer therapy. Just because something helps with cancer, like mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitors (or radiation) doesn't mean we should all do it. Remember all the talk about how…

> Remember all the talk about how we should all eat lots of anti-oxidants to prevent cancer? It turns out it's more complicated than that, and an anti-oxidant rich diet can actually increase cancer risk. Which is probably because Mitochondrial Complex 1 inhibitors work by producing radical oxides in the mitochondria. I definitely agree with you that it's inherently very risky to mess around with them, but I also don'…

I think their point was - don’t do something daily with potentially powerful but unclear effects until we have some evidence on it’s long term safety. Unless there is a pressing, specific need (like cancer that may be worth the risk).

Which seems reasonable?

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#150
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The naturalistic fallacy should not be confused with the appeal to nature..." (3rd paragraph in your link)

The more relevant article for those who are curious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

Note how there is no actual substance to the classification as "fallacy". In general, it only makes sense if it condemned some absolute claim that "anything natural is better than anything man made". But people appealing to nature rarely if ever claim that - even when they appear to be making that argument, it's because they use loose language.

What they actually mean is that something natural will tend to be better - and there's nuance about why that might be so (having benefitted from evolutionary pressure and adaptation, a thing empirically tested and shown working, more effortessly fitting to our biology, and so on). Of course we're talking of man-made stuff thus-far, not some futuristic utopia where we know how to make everything better.

So unless the claim is "all natural things are always better", it's doubtful how the "fallacy" accusation actually applies in real life arguments. Does it address the claim that "X is better _because_ it is natural"? Well, doesn't that being the case or not, depend on the quality of the specific non-natural alternatives to X?

If those aren't any good, then X is indeed better not by chance, but precisely because it's natural. That is, because it had millions of years to evolve, millenia to be used and tested by humans, and so on, and it had all sort of evolutionary pressures to improve it.

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