Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 03:59:39 -0700 From: "Crist J. Clark" <cristjc@earthlink.net> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>, Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it>, "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" <root@pukruppa.de>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <20011011035939.W387@blossom.cjclark.org> In-Reply-To: <00ad01c15232$ea21a340$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Thu, Oct 11, 2001 at 01:58:37AM -0700 References: <20011011095845.B475@lpt.ens.fr> <00ad01c15232$ea21a340$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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On Thu, Oct 11, 2001 at 01:58:37AM -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
[Too many snips to track them all.]
> No, the overpopulation is a result of the disruption of the traditional
> way of life in many of these areas. I don't recall reading that
> the American Indian had significant overpopulation problems and
> they were around for thousands and thousands of years.
Mayans and Aztec's may have had some over-population problems in their
urban areas. Not sure what that has to do with anything.
Traditional ways of life change. Wherever you live, did people live
like you 100 years ago?
> >Overpopulation also has little to do with the pill, and more to do
> >with the fact that in a poor family, children are cheap labour and
> >hence regarded as valuable assets; especially sons.
>
> And why do you think this is? It's because many of these societies were
> changed from the nomadic hunter-gatherer/tribal to farmers by ignorant
> Europeans.
> Most country borders in Africa today were drawn with total disregard for
> ancient tribal boundaries, that's why there's been so many civil wars there.
>
> Most of the do-gooders and social workers in the Third World have exactly
> your attitude - overpopulation is either a Good Thing or an Indifferent Thing.
> Very few are actually out there preaching and telling people it's wrong to
> have 10 children even though the disasterous results of that are evident
> all around them.
It's a classic "Dilema of the Commons" problem. It's just like energy
conservation efforts here in California. It's hard to get one person
to turn their air conditioner down. One person turning it down does
not make a difference. But if everybody does it... It is economically
advantageous for any one family in many of these "third world" regions
to have as many children as possible. Just one family having 10
children doesn't make a difference. But if everybody does it...
[snip]
> Today, we have an array of cancer treatments
> >which are still of no help if you were diagnosed just a bit too late.
>
> Have you ever wondered why the incidence of cancer has skyrocketed in
> the last 50 years or so?
[snip]
> Well, guess what - there's
> no OFFICIAL reason for most cancers. Some are obvious, like smoking causes
> lung cancer, destroyed ozone causes skin cancer, but most cancer rates have
> no obvious reason.
I think the reasons are pretty clear. First, we do not have reliable
data on historical trends. We don't really know what the incidence in
cancer was 200 years ago. We really don't know how much, or if at all,
the incendence of cancer is rising. The reason is something we've
tocuhed on a lot here already, improvements in medical
science. Everybody dies. Everybody dies because something kills
them. Medical science can cure a _lot_ of stuff that it used to not
be able to cure. One of the things that medical science still as
trouble with is cancer. That means more people live longer and have an
opportunity to get cancer and get sick from it. 50 years ago, how long
was the life expectancy? I'm going to take a completely wild guess
'cause I don't feel like looking it up and say it was one's early
sixties, if even that. Now it is somewhere in the seventies? Of all of
the cancer cases, how many of them develop in people in the range from
mid-sixties to mid-seventies? This is prime time for prostate, breast,
colon, and a lot of other relatively common cancers. There are more
people living long enough to get cancer. The effect is that when you
look at mortality statistics, you'll see more deaths per 100 000 due
to cancer than you did 100 years ago. But I have never seen anyone
actually normalize the data and take into account that where as 100
years ago, you had large numbers of people dying from scarlet fever,
mumps, measles, dysentery, etc., and very few die from these kinds of
things today.
But if anyone has cites for peer reviewed papers from scientific
journals on the topic, I would be greatly interested in seeing a study
that accounts for these things.
[snip]
> There is far too much evidence that many of these so-called "diseases" are
> actually natural responses to screwed up lifestyles. I know that people
> will tar and feather me for saying this but by gun there's a right way
> to live and a wrong way to live.
And either way you are going to get sick and die from _something._
People have always died of something. Funny how people keep living
longer despite "screwed up" lifestyles. Fresh fruit and vegetables are
good for you. High sodium and fat are generally bad. In cold regions
of the world before refrigeration or high speed transportation, no one
had fresh fruit or vegetables all winter. They often lived off of
fatty foods that had been preserved by salting them. I wonder if these
people were not constipated from December until March. Obviously,
these people should have known better and moved to warmer
climates. That would be the "right way" to live. Not that it mattered
much. They all died of something more mundane before they lived long
enough to develop colon cancer. Human's have been living "screwed up"
lifestyles since pre-history.
> Freedom must have responsibility and
> you don't have the right to stuff your face with McDonalds cheeseburgers
> every day of your life until you keel over with a heart attack at age 55
> then expect the rest of us to dump all our tax dollars into funding
> research into a new medicine that will dissolve your cholesterol and
> allow you to continue stuffing yourself like a pig with both trotters in
> the trough.
People shouldn't smoke. People should not overeat. People shouldn't
eat saturated fats. People shouldn't sit around all day. People
shouldn't have multiple sexual partners (and catch diseases). People
shouldn't hang glide (you can fall and get hurt). People shouldn't
drive cars (you could get in an accident). People shouldn't drink too
much alcohol (liver damage, mouth, throat, stomach cancer as well as
increased likelyhood of trauma due behavior). People shouldn't ever
leave their house (any human or animal contact is risky with respect
to disease or one could be attacked).
Pretty much _everything_ people like to do has some inherent
risks. We are mortal and the world is a risky place. Lot's of people
like to do risky things. I don't like McDonalds hamburgers, but I must
admit I do occasionally like to have a few drinks and hit the town
with some friends. I do other risky things too because I derive great
enjoyment of them. Where the balance between the enjoyment a person
gets from a behavior against the risk it entails lies is very personal
thing. I don't know you, maybe you are really into skydiving. Why
should society, via public health costs or increased insurance
premiums, pay for your medical bills when you bust your leg on a bad
landing? You took the risk. I don't think skydiving is an acceptable
risk versus what benefits I would get out of it. Why should I pay?
> Only if the emphasis on the medicine is on solving the root of the problem
> not alleviating the symptom. Today the entire emphasis in Western medicine
> is fixing the symptom, once that's done your free to go back to your
> artery-hardening, lung destroying lifestyle if you wish. As long as that's
> the attitude, the system is fundamentally screwed up and making it a
> public industry isn't going to change much.
This is because study after study has shown that changing people's
behaviors is a very, very hard thing to do. It is a pretty common
assumption that you cannot change a person's behavior. So, what is the
medical profession to do? They do not live in a vacuum. Do you really
want the medical profession to sequester itself in an ivory tower and
make proclamations about how _you_ must behave and what ailments it
will and will not treat? No, the medical profession is part of our
society and our society wants the medical profession to fix all of our
problems without us having to do anything we don't wanna. It's not
really just something wrong with Western medicine as it is a problem
with what Western society as a whole expects and demands of the
medical community.
--
Crist J. Clark cjclark@alum.mit.edu
cjclark@jhu.edu
cjc@freebsd.org
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