We keep encountering situations like this where a new chemical compound was introduced, becomes ubiquitous in our diets or environments and only later do we find out "Oops, it has serious health or environmental consequences."
It is worth the cost of slower introduction of new materials to take the time to ensure that those materials are safe. We're still paying the cost of introducing lead into our environment in a myriad of subtle ways. We still don't fully understand what the cost of the introduction of microplastics or PFAS is going to be. And regardless of the whether this particular study holds up under replication it is looking increasingly likely that aspartame is not something we should be consuming.
And what's most frustrating is that the people who profited most from these compounds never pay for the damage they cause to generations.
The people were naive. It's not like they had malicious intent. 'Don't hate lazy people - they did nothing'
It cost exactly $0 to not drink poison
Meanwhile, the investors and executives of the companies that produced these compounds are quite wealthy.
Manslaughter is a criminal charge. As is criminal negligence.
And quite apart from facing criminal charges, the folks who introduced lead in the gasoline, produced microplastics and PFAS, and more all have the kind of wealth that gives them raw economic and political power and with it, the ability to do continued harm.
Good luck using your personal consumer choices to avoid Pesticides in aquifers and breathing Tire dust in the air.
It cost 0 to not drink and drive
It cost 0 to ...
It's not a cost issue, it's a "we're slightly above average IQ monkeys, but we're still fucking monkeys" issue, we're easy to use and abuse, companies know that
Ironically all of the rich people migrating to waterfront property may be what finally gets us past where we are today with waterway pollution and global warming.
See also the Cuyahoga catching on fire. Water burning is quite a poster child.
Hang on, that would be awesome. No survelliance, everyone has identical gear with added features like gait protection and infared protection. iPhones built in, with HUD on facemask interior. Heating/cooling pads in clothing. Ventilation as required, optional battery pack addon.
Oh gosh... star wars and space marines aren't meant to be a pratical solution to societal problems....
If a tiny increase in the amount of amino acids found in the body already can cause autism, that's really really surprising, to the point where it's much more likely that this result was just due to randomness.
If you take autistic children and test a hundred things that their parents were doing, one will probably come out statistically significantly higher, just by chance.
You're sneaking free will in the back door. In your view, "victims" don't have free will but big companies do.
It's also a favorite target of the sugar lobby.
Really, what needs to happen most of all, is to let special interest out of nutritional research completely. Unfortunately, that is highly unlikely.
How much slower would we have reasonably gone to avoid lead?
Weirdly enough the money is available when it generates more money or to lobby against regulation...
It's not, it is against fundamental animal/human instinct and hormonal response developed during evolution: eat as much as you can when you have access to food.
They asked about 350 mothers to think back and recall if they drank diet soda daily during pregnancy. Of their children, 235 have since been diagnosed with autism and 121 were in a control group. From their data, the kids with autism were about 3x more likely to have moms who remembered consuming daily sodas during pregnancy.
The best you can say is they have a hypothesis (inkling?), and much more research is needed.
It’s a very strange möbius loop of self-contradiction.
You can say “companies should do more research on the consequences of this chemical before releasing it”, and you can also say “people should do more research on this chemical before drinking it”.
Second, these people spend their entire life mastering the art of manipulating large populations into consumerism and induced demand. Humans have limited bandwidth, and it wouldn't be most people's specific domain knowledge to spot the mechanisms and the resist them.
And, calling back to point one, even if you know the mechanisms of propaganda, you are not immune to propaganda.
Please. This is quite an exagarated claim.
You make it sounds like mustache twirling villians going around and intentionally poisoning people.
How can you ever prove something doesn't have any negative impacts? You're trying to prove a negative. Would you be willing to further delay a new medication that can help people today, but may have some averse effects for a subset of people far in the future? This is what we went through with the mRNA vaccines. We have to look at the tradeoffs. If banning aspartame means we may potentially prevent some cases of autism, but at the definite cost of large increases in obesity, would that be worth it?
There is literally billions of dollars to astroturf the safety of aspartame.
I don’t know if there is a correlation with Autism, but it does not seem completely inert either. I also have a hard time believing statements like - it can only do the following things to the body. We were told similar things about mRNA (can’t travel outside the localized muscle area, destroyed by the body in x many days, etc.) that may have been true in a lab, but was not in practice.
Aspartame and added sugar would both be scrutinized in this hypothetical future where we are bit more cautious.
The answer is to probably ban aspartame if there is good reason to believe it is harming us, and/or tax sugary drinks until their negative externalities on society are paid for.
This was overhauled with the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act of 2015, which requires the EPA to make safety determinations of new products hitting the market. It however ties the hands of states. If the EPA rules a chemical as having no unreasonable risk, states have no authority to regulate it [1].
[1] https://theconversation.com/will-the-new-toxic-chemical-safe...
Incidentally, the lead wasn't really being mined to make lead pipes. They mined galena for the tiny amount of silver it has and got tons of lead from that.
There was huge controversy over aspertame (discovered 1965, limited approval in 1983) in the first decade even though the only solid case against it was that it is bad for a handful of people who have the genetic defect PKU.
Sucralose was discovered in 1976 and wasn't approved in the US until 1998.
The strangest case is Stevia which, since it is a natural product, has gotten into heavy use without really being approved as a food additive. (Loose Stevia rebaudiana leaves make a nice sweet tea combined with Camellia sinensis I'll grant that.)
(2) If you were trying to psychologically manipulate people, "autism" is the threat you would use.
What specific studies should we have done to notice this association? What specific safety studies need to be done before introducing a new chemical compound into our society?
Historically speaking, the only conceivable way they would have learned this if they feed aspartame to pregnant women and then studied the offsprings. This is fine for a final testing phase of safety, but is inhumane to do unless you are incredibly sure it is safe. Animal models for studying autism are flawed, and wouldn't come at all for decades after aspartame's introduction.
In modern testing, we could theoretically generate a super long list of safety checks to do. This test might look like raising a large generation or two of the specific line of mice used for studying autism. Then checking the offspring autism rate of those exposed to aspartame compared to a control. This would be a single checkbox every new chemical compound would need to do, and there could easily be tens of thousands of similar tests that would need to be done. We would need to add to the list overtime, as our understanding of optimal human health improves over time.
Imagine the investment required to pass these safety tests. It's a minimum price tag of 25M, if the safety tests are standardized and lab techs are trained on them and do them in an assembly line like fashion. I wouldn't be surprised to see the cost be 10-100x. At that level of investment there's two issues. The number of new chemical compounds added into our lives will move to a very slow rate. The other problem is this is just the safety test portion of R&D, after spending so much money this seems like a likely target for corruption and my skepticism for the results of such a test will be high.
Perspective time.
Global life expectancy is higher than it has ever been at any point in history and many of these materials you want to be "cautious" about (is any level of "cautious" ever cautious enough?) are involved partially or heavily in providing those health advances.
If there's anything we should be "cautious" about it's glib interpretations of subtly complex statistical studies.
I'm also not sure how much the smash-the-system/anti-capitalist hand-waving helps.
I really dislike the trend of studies claiming a 'link'. It's misleading, as almost all readers interpret it as causality. The article points out the study doesn't imply causation, yet this comment highlights the 'consequences' of aspartame. It just seems like a big disconnect.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c. 80 BCE – c. 15 BCE) wrote:
> 10. Clay pipes for conducting water have the following advantages. In the first place, in construction:--if anything happens to them, anybody can repair the damage. Secondly, water from clay pipes is much more wholesome than that which is conducted through lead pipes, because lead is found to be harmful for the reason that white lead is derived from it, and this is said to be hurtful to the human system. Hence, if what is produced from it is harmful, no doubt the thing itself is not wholesome.
> 11. This we can exemplify from plumbers, since in them the natural colour of the body is replaced by a deep pallor. For when lead is smelted in casting, the fumes from it settle upon their members, and day after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their limbs. Hence, water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes, if we want to have it wholesome. That the taste is better when it comes from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life, for though our tables are loaded with silver vessels, yet everybody uses earthenware for the sake of purity of taste.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Books_on_Architecture/Boo...
It is worth noting that this probably had more to do with the awful state of the city sewage system, so the water was well known to be contaminated. Luckily we've improved somewhat with sewage (I think).
Although anecdotally I've had a local lake closed for weeks at least due to toxic red algae blooms related to run off from farms (I believe it's fertilizer runoff that's attributed to these blooms)
Pliny speaks of the "noxious and deadly vapour" (sulfur dioxide) of the lead furnace (XXXIV.l.167; there was, in fact, a four-fold increase in atmospheric Pb pollution during the Greco-Roman period); red lead (minium) (XXXIII.xli.124) and white lead (ceruse) (XXXIV.liv.176) as poisonous, even though both were used as a medicine and cosmetic; and the power of sapa (and onion) to induce an abortion (XXIII.xxx.62). Dioscorides cautions against taking white lead internally, as it is deadly (V.103). Soranus recommends that the mouth of the uterus be smeared with white lead to prevent conception (Gynecology, I.19.61). Galen (On Antidotes, XIV.144) and Celsus (V.27.12b) both provide an antidote for poisoning by white lead, and Vitruvius remarks on the pernicious effects of water found near lead mines and its effect on the body (VIII.3.5, 6.11).
The earliest description of acute lead poisoning (mid-second century BC) is given in the Alexipharmaca of Nicander, who speaks of "gleaming, deadly white lead whose fresh colour is like milk which foams all over" (II.74ff). The poet describes a frothing mouth, asperity of the tongue, and dry throat, together with dry retching, chills, delusions, and overwhelming fatigue. But if lead poisoning had been endemic, it presumably would have been remarked upon at the time. And yet there is no mention of the fact until early in the seventh century AD, when Paul of Aegina, a Byzantine physician, described chronic lead poisoning (although he does not associate its symptoms with the disease). "I am of the opinion that the colic affection which now prevails is occasioned by such humours; the disease having taken its rise in the country of Italy, but raging also in many other regions of the Roman empire, like a pestilential contagion, which in many cases terminates in epilepsy, but in others in paralysis of the extremities, while the sensibility of them is preserved, and sometimes both these afflictions attacking together" (Medical Compendium in Seven Books, III.64).
Do you think people wake up one day with the bright idea of becoming obese and dying at 45 of heart issues ?
You can only make decisions between the choices you're being provided, and if half of these choices are engineered to be addictive, on a global scale you're fighting a losing battle
> is more responsible for people making bad choices than engineers at facebook.
But... they're the same mentality, don't you see it ? It's been studied and developed by marketing people
You're going to study autism in lab rats? (Only recently has anyone come up with markers, and even then the predictive quality is suspect.)
Artificial sweeteners have been labs tested many times, but not for autism.
Is it more humane to launch it without testing, producing the same effect for a much, much larger group of people than would have been involved in the intentional study? This seems to be a fairly gaping hole in the definition of humane. It reminds me of people who see an accident and don’t help because they might be held liable for the accident and they don’t want to get involved.
Do you avoid food containing Disodium Inosinate? Why or why not? What about Agar-Agar? What about Calcium Propionate? Cyclamate?
If we want to “change the introduction of new chemical compounds to our environment at a mass scale”, what do we… do? We can require more research before something is offered up to the market, there’s dimensioning returns on research. The only way you’ll know FOR SURE that something is harmless is universal consumption, after many decades.
Now, I am taking you saying “ensure that [new materials] are safe” to mean, we stop fucking up entirely. That’s probably not what you really mean. More publicly funded research to LIMIT harm further than we currently do, is a noble goal! Most nations have some entity that researches new drugs/additives/products before going to market. Greater funding (harder to bribe) and power (full power to stop untested substances being used) for those is a good step.
But humanity will keep poisoning itself, no silver bullet there.
And yes if you're on this forum chances are you're above average, if you're college educated you're already above average, it's not that hard really. I think you're overestimating what the average human is and underestimating what the top minds of google &co are being paid millions for.
> I suppose it's pure selflessness that leads you -
What about lobbyist ? The tobacco industry is run on goodwill too ? After all cigarettes were advertised as improving your lung capacity, why don't you smoke ? Don't you want better lungs ? Why would you want kids not to smoke ? Are you anti freedom ?
It has nothing to do with “propaganda”. Are people just supposed to magically know the long term effects of every chemical they ingest? And if not, why are companies supposed to magically know it? Do companies have a crystal ball that normal people don’t have?
Try arguing in good faith for a bit it really isn't that hard. I'm not asking them to see the future, I'm asking them to study their products so we don't discover decades later that "oh snap lead in gas was bad!?", "Oh what, breathing asbestos isn't so good in the end?!"
They have unlimited money when it comes to finding new ways to make more profit but as soon as we talk risk assessment and management the money printing press runs dry, how convenient
Do you think the top behavioural scientists at facebook working on how to make you more engaged don't know what they're doing ? If so why are all people in the loop not giving phones to their kids, not allowing them to access social medias, &c. ?
https://www.independent.ie/life/family/parenting/the-tech-mo...
> Evil Companies pull off one decades-long too-secret conspiracy after another
Famous conspiracies such as DDT, asbestos, freon, lead in gas, lead in paint, madcow disease, &c.
Because all of human progress is just building on top of what we've been able to find, then using those things in combination, and those things, and so on until you get to super evil chemical manufacture. Seems like an arbitratry line?
(For what it's worth I cook a lot and buy very little that isn't a 'raw ingredient', I'm not saying this from a 'let me have my ready meals' sort of perspective.)
Could you elaborate on why this is a problem? It seems to me that there is not inherent right to introduce new chemicals into our lives, and I would prefer this not be done without thorough risk assessment studies.
In the medical industry, introducing a new medicine requires years of testing for something that will be given to a tiny slice of the population. I find it odd that there does not seem to be a similar process for chemicals that could be spread throughout the entire population.
Artificial sweeteners, specifically, are a bandage over the festering wound of a culture of mindless consumption. Companies want you to consume more so you buy more, but as soon as people began to worry about the rather expected obesity resulting from gorging and constant snacking on food and drink, and mediocre food and drink at that, the only alternative in the unhinged profit-above-all-else logic of consumerism is to maintain or increase consumption exceeding actual need, but reduce the apparent consequences of mindless consumption.
The common good requires a conservative legal oversight in this space where weird food additives are concerned, but it also includes abstract truths like "gluttony is evil" or "making financial profit the highest end is disordered". Our cultural and civilizational demise is rooted in things like the latter, and the intellectual and spiritual rot and resulting debasement of common sensibilities regarding such intangibles. Which is to say, regulation by itself, without appropriate cultural shifts, will, at best, function as another bandage that corporations will lobby to dilute and weaken and redefine at every opportunity.
Don't you think it's a bit less simplistic maybe ?
The bad stuff we may already be eating is a given, and something to be distinguished from introducing new things with no existing role in the foot chain.
The amounts of these digestion products are much lower than those obtained from many other natural dietary sources.3,25 For example, the amount of methanol in tomato juice is 6 times greater than that derived from aspartame in diet cola.25 The amino acids aspartate (ie, anion of aspartic acid) and phenylalanine are very common in the diet, found in foods such as lean protein, beans, and dairy, with 100 g of chicken providing an almost 40 times greater intake of aspartate and a 12.5 greater intake of phenylalanine than a diet soda.25 In the body, the 3 digestion products follow their normal metabolic pathways, being broken down further, taken up by tissues in the body, or excreted. Thus, due to the rapid digestion of aspartame in the gastrointestinal lumen and small intestinal mucosal cells before reaching the bloodstream, the intact aspartame molecule is never present in internal tissues in the body or breast milk.3,25,28 The absence of aspartame in the breast milk of lactating women consuming aspartame was recently confirmed.21
https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/74/11/670/...
And yet all those chemicals are allowed in Europe.
So what happened? Were they grandfathered in?
That doesn't make it safe, but it's standard that traditional foods are regarded as safe to eat unless evidence emerges that they aren't.
If a well-dressed person states it loudly and confidently over the tv/internet/etc, it's probably a lie.
Regardless, they have a point. Our system is driven by financially motivated, and subsidized action. Most people are just trying to live their lives with minimal interference and are not sampling for sources of psychological manipulation. Self-generated or external-to-self originated. In point of fact, metacognition is not last I researched on it, a universal thing for everyone.
I do not exclude myself from this population of non-samplers either, but as a tester, I am also well acquainted with the fact that testing costs and nature selects to minimize costs. Just as bacteria will abandon costly resistance mechanisms to a stressor given sufficient time removed from a stressor, so too do we in terms of our mental safeguarding behavior.
* We are often creating chemicals that do the job of existing chemicals safer and more efficient. This ban would probably include a grandfather clause for old chemicals, and thus we might be using inferior products and doing more harm than we otherwise could. Look at refrigerants as an example of a chemical compound that has improved over the decades.
* Many chemical compounds introduced in the last 100 years directly improve productivity. The United States is in economic competition with other regions of the world. We could be creating a disadvantage that reduces our geo-political power.
* Many of these chemical compound increase quality of life. There's a strong unitarian argument for sucralose and polyurethane insulation.
probably more Americans spent time physically working, and not sitting 10h/d in office and another 2h in the car commuting.
> Especially rich folks who have access to infinite amount of food
I am sure there are obese rich, also rich likely in general have more willpower to control their instincts, and that's partially how they become rich.
More relevant to the sokoloff's point is the fact that extraction of lead was not done for the sake of plumbing, it began thousands of years before lead pipes were invented. There wasn't a point where people were weighing the harm of extracting lead against the utility of plumbing; the lead was essentially a waste product of the silver industry.
Do you have a source on that?
That's good but have you considered that this is motivated reasoning? I.e. you think you have free will but all those shlubs making bad choices don't. This casts you as a hero with special insight into various oppressive "systems" to which you are apparently immune.
It would be better to judge people for their bad decisions. Although this strikes many people as cruel, judgment involves respecting other people's agency and creates a culture that encourages people to take responsibility for their lives and make better decisions. To put it another way, people don't intend to be obese...but they also don't believe they have a choice, and that's not good.
Finally, I think you seriously overrate the ability of behavioral sciences to do anything useful. What you're really pushing is the always-seductive idea that shadowy forces manipulate the masses through quasi-magical powers.
Prohibiting new chemicals outright would be fine, but that is pretty far from where we are today.
Cigarettes is interesting, growing tobacco certainly help some poor communities, it had cultural significance etc. Not easy.
I'm guessing you are also a supporter of sarin gas, depleted uranium munitions, white phosphorus, zyklon b, and agent orange.
The discovery (then in its white allotrope) of phosphorus was critically important for many things down the line - not sure we could survive without knowing about that element.
not restricted to the injection site: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-39...