A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929 • Hacker News Board

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#161

Post by svara » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 3:29 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #138

svara wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tired of this framing. We get it, you don't like the government. So what? If you're spreading lies about medicine because you distrust authority... Well, first of all, you're dumb because you believe falsehoods. But more importantly, you're a danger to my health, my friends and my families' health, and to your own health as well. Why would we have any patience for this? Your rugged self-important individualism is…

>We get it, you don't like the government. So what? Well, if you don't trust the government, then the likelihood that you'll be willing to follow their "orders" is pretty low. > But more importantly, you're a danger to my health, my friends and my families' health, and to your own health as well. And __this__ response is exactly why people can become anti-vaxx without having a problem with medicine or science in gene…

> You're coming at it from a "the gov said its safe, so it's safe, ...

What makes you think so? I don't need a government to make up my mind on scientific topics, and neither should you.

Ironically, it's the person who believes the opposite of what some government says that is doing so.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#162

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 3:29 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #154

insane_dreamer wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doctors prescribing medication balance those risks with the potential benefits except for the thousands of doctors who overprescribed opioids due to either ineptitude or their own benefit, or perhaps lack of alternatives yeah, the Sacklers are primarily at fault, but I think people forget that they weren't handing out these pills themselves on street corners, but that __doctors__ were handing them out, triggering t…

I’m not inclined to think cutting the doctors out of the equation and allowing everyone to self-prescribe would have made the opiate epidemic better .

I agree. I'm not saying the doctors were the primary problem. I am saying the doctors were complicit (knowingly or not).

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#163

Post by lanstin » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 3:45 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #88

lanstin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would read that short story.

You can watch the film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)

Come on, not with killing the parents, that's not that close to the human experience of reproduction. Raising a baby is really fascinating and fulfilling albeit tiring and really I feel other people should be just a tiny bit more helpful. But maybe if they might catch the baby fever from helping it would be even more on existing parents to help each out than it is - or more on grandparents (maybe you can only catch it if you are younger).

And what would the anti-vax position here be?

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#164

Post by noworriesnate » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #118

aphantastic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is vaccinated and all of his children are as well. What specifically of his statements do you consider “anti-vax”?

Not sure if you're "playing dumb" (sometimes people do that on chat boards). Kennedy isn't just "pro-choice on vaccines", he's repeatedly amplified nonscientific views about vaccine safety. For example, as recently as 2023, "Autism comes from vaccines". Then he pivots to a more useful comment, that vaccines are exempt from the normal requirements on drugs to go through full clinical trials. If you want to claim "auti…

I would LOVE it if there were reliable studies about whether specific vaccines cause specific conditions, how common those conditions are, etc. The CDC does not share my interest. Instead, they mostly just publish information-free booklets that attempt to guilt trip me into getting the vaccine. My experience as a parent is pediatricians attempting to coerce me to allow the vaccination of my child AND accept legal responsibility for any side effects. That is fucked up.

I was predisposed to be favorable towards vaccines when I first became a parent. But experience has taught me that those who push vaccines are simply uninterested in a convincing me, they are only interested in coercing me.

At this point if the CDC has a LOT of work to do to rebuild trust. I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#165

Post by noworriesnate » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 5:30 PM UTC

llamaimperative wrote: post #77

aphantastic wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not “anti-vax” but rather “pro-choice”.

"anti-vaccinating people at the scale required to yield good public health outcomes" is sufficient to qualify for the label, IMO.

To be fair, vaccinating all humans, dogs, cats and other animals that can carry COVID-19 was never going to happen before the virus mutated, so you could also apply the label to reality itself.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#166

Post by aphantastic » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

noworriesnate wrote: post #164

dekhn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're "playing dumb" (sometimes people do that on chat boards). Kennedy isn't just "pro-choice on vaccines", he's repeatedly amplified nonscientific views about vaccine safety. For example, as recently as 2023, "Autism comes from vaccines". Then he pivots to a more useful comment, that vaccines are exempt from the normal requirements on drugs to go through full clinical trials. If you want to claim "auti…

I would LOVE it if there were reliable studies about whether specific vaccines cause specific conditions, how common those conditions are, etc. The CDC does not share my interest. Instead, they mostly just publish information-free booklets that attempt to guilt trip me into getting the vaccine. My experience as a parent is pediatricians attempting to coerce me to allow the vaccination of my child AND accept legal res…

In that case, you should read the book RFK Jr. published with Dr. Brian Hooker that provides a treatise on the topic, referencing 100+ published, peer reviewed studies on the topic. A free sample of the first few chapters is a available here: https://lfpl.overdrive.com/media/6093658

Of course, you should additionally read the various counter arguments that have been published, for instance: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5789217/, and likely more beyond.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#167

Post by aphantastic » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 5:50 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #145

insane_dreamer wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he's repeatedly amplified nonscientific views about vaccine safety. For example, as recently as 2023, "Autism comes from vaccines". I've heard this said in the NYT and elsewhere, but have yet to read any actual quotes of his __in context__. > RFK Jr is doing is sowing doubt in established science. the first rule of science is that it is never "established". This is especially true in health sciences, where thing th…

He said it on Fox. You can go view the video here: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6330950198112 When you say that science is never "Established", that's horse pockey. Established means we have a high level of confidence (not absolute). Yes, things get updated, for example we now don't go around saying that "stress causes ulcers". And when it comes to vaccines, multiple high quality studies have failed to find a relati…

He’ll head the Department of Health and Human Services soon, little use debating what his position is here when we will see it play out soon.

I do recommend you read his book, https://lfpl.overdrive.com/media/6093658, it seems you are of the misconception that a paper being retracted is a statement that it is false. In reality, it’s a statement that state officials (sponsored by big pharma) have threatened the livelihood of the author and/or publisher. It’s extortion, not science.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#168

Post by llamaimperative » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 5:53 PM UTC

noworriesnate wrote: post #165

llamaimperative wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"anti-vaccinating people at the scale required to yield good public health outcomes" is sufficient to qualify for the label, IMO.

To be fair, vaccinating all humans, dogs, cats and other animals that can carry COVID-19 was never going to happen before the virus mutated, so you could also apply the label to reality itself.

To be fair, that’s not required to yield extremely strong public health outcomes, as evidenced by the extremely strong public health outcomes we saw in reality.

(If you’re about to go on some statistically illiterate sidebar about how the COVID vaccines weren’t actually that effective, you can save your breath)

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#169

Post by beepbooptheory » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 5:59 PM UTC

Kamq wrote: post #157

beepbooptheory wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will you feel like you all have won the war here? What is it that you need to happen? Is it simply a matter of removing academics you deem too woke from their positions, or is it more a matter of public opinion becoming less woke? Just really at this point trying to get a gauge for how long we have to live inside this particular discourse.. Because it just structurally is such that it cant last forever, for I ho…

> When will you feel like you all have won the war here? What is it that you need to happen? I was involved in a previous iteration of the culture war (religion vs atheism) pretty heavily. If this is anything like that, it'll start fading once people feel like the cultural dominance of the group is broken. If you want a rule of thumb, hollywood being considered non-woke and universities not requiring diversity statem…

Ok the diversity statement thing seems pretty actionable. Hard to say about hollywood I guess bc its feels very subjective: one guy's "woke" is always going to be another's "fun/wholesome" or whatever.

But for the universities ok, this is at least a thing we can hold onto. It's a little rough to implicitly associate the "diversity" considered in hiring/enrolling at a school with the evil professors, because the entire argument then quite easily contracts down to: "there are too many non-white academics, and that is the real problem." But I guess the whole point is to free ourselves from such silly concerns like racism, institutional or otherwise.

Either way, I just hope they/you get what you want. I used to be worried that this whole thing would spiral too much into violence, but its easy to see now that all the people who care about the "wokeness" are, yeah, exactly like creationists: they just want to feel represented, they just want the blurb in the textbook; its not so much about the world outside, but just how they feel about it; that its ok for them to be angry about the kids sports team or whatever. People want to be principled!

I am truly hopeful at this point they will eventually find some peace while still allowing everyone to live with some self-determination and everything else. Its a little long in the tooth now, but hopefully the recent political ascendency will temper it a bit.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#170

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 7:07 PM UTC

lanstin wrote: post #163

ceejayoz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can watch the film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)

Come on, not with killing the parents, that's not that close to the human experience of reproduction. Raising a baby is really fascinating and fulfilling albeit tiring and really I feel other people should be just a tiny bit more helpful. But maybe if they might catch the baby fever from helping it would be even more on existing parents to help each out than it is - or more on grandparents (maybe you can only catch i…

> Come on, not with killing the parents, that's not that close to the human experience of reproduction.

Childbirth used to be one of the key killers of women.

(Also, depends on the kids...)

> And what would the anti-vax position here be?

Our ancestors didn't get eaten by xenomorphs, you'll be fine!