On Jun 29, 2009, at 11:50 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Edmund Storms wrote:
While what you say is true, Jed, not all vaccines are equally safe or
effective, especially when it involves influenza.
Absolutely! The 1976 swine flu vaccines were spectacularly
ineffective and dangerous.
Personally, I would rather wait to see how many people suffer from
the shot and how many people get the flu before I take the risk.
That's wise but unfair. If everyone did what you are doing, no one
would go first. You are letting other people act as guinea pigs,
taking the risk for you, like collective food tasters. Since you --
Ed Storms -- are more valuable to society than most people, I
approve, but it is ethically questionable.
That's an interesting approach to ethics. Everyone has a choice to be
first in line or to wait until the path is more clear. For example,
many serious operations had a high mortality
rate initially. This was reduced by people choosing to be first,
which allowed the mistakes to be corrected. Are the people who
waited, provided the affliction allowed a wait, unethical?
Besides, I resent the government telling me to do anything because
their advice is always bad in the long run.
That's a preposterous thing to say. Generally speaking, despite some
well known exceptions, the U.S. government is one of the most
knowledgeable, fair and effective organizations in history.
Organizations such as the NIH and the CDC here in a Atlanta have
made the largest and best contributions to public health in the
world, bar none. The government directly invented or paid for most
of the top technological breakthroughs of the 20th century in public
health, and also for things such as aviation, lasers, computers and
the Internet. It has done more for cold fusion than all private
industry in the world combined.
Here are a few of the bigger lies.
The government said that invading Iraq was necessary and people should
join the military to protect the country. This was a lie and over 4000
of the people who took this advice are dead and many more are
handicapped for life.
The government said that people should spend as much as possible and
they would get richer by taking out the equity in their homes by
assuming larger mortgages. This was a lie and now many of these people
are homeless.
The government has said that drilling for oil offshore and in the
Alaska wilderness is the best way to solve the energy problem. This
was a lie. Now we are in a no win situation where oil is too expensive
for the average person and too cheap to justify further drilling.
It remains to be seen how many of the statements about the economic
recovery are also lies. Meanwhile people are investing as if a
recovery is underway based on government information. Even the
claimed unemployment rate is a lie.
I could go on, but you can see that some really big lies, along with
many smaller ones I have ignored, have been told. As for the US being
" one of the most knowledgeable, fair and effective organizations in
history", I need only remind you that it was the failure of the US
government to control the financial system in the US that has caused
the greatest loss of wealth in the history of mankind and the process
is not finished. The consequences of this monumental incompetence are
slowing developing and will be catastrophic. The US government has
some good points, but it also has some really bad characteristics. No
government is perfect, but the evaluation must rest on how the actions
of the government affect its citizens and the world. The US
government talks a good line, but its actions leave a lot to be
desired. But, I need to stop because this is politics and is a
forbidden subject here.
Ed
Of course the DoE has been dysfunctional with regard to cold fusion,
but nowhere near as dysfunctional as, say, General Motors, General
Electric or Hitachi. These corporations should have invested
hundreds of billions in cold fusion by now, but as far as I know
they have done nothing. People say they are only following the lead
of the DoE and the APS, but they pay no attention to the DoE with
regard to things like plasma fusion, so I do not think we can blame
their inaction with regard to cold fusion on the DoE.
- Jed
