NuttierThanEver: BIG PHARMA

Did anyone else read this as BIG PIRANHA?

NickPappagiorgio: NuttierThanEver: BIG PHARMA

Did anyone else read this as BIG PIRANHA?

I did.

NickPappagiorgio: NuttierThanEver: BIG PHARMA

Did anyone else read this as BIG PIRANHA?

Only when I'm drunk. And drunk time didn't start until 6 minutes ago in my timezone.

NickPappagiorgio: NuttierThanEver: BIG PHARMA

Did anyone else read this as BIG PIRANHA?

Yes. With this to the right:

NuttierThanEver: promoting the lies of vaccines

I'm guessing you're into chiropractics, homeopathy, and herbal medicine.

Nazi eugenics? They didn't invent eugenics, Darwin did. He went so far as to call it a 'moral responsibility'.

TheShavingofOccam123: But the NEJM just published those Nazi eugenics articles. They didn't write them or read them before they were published. Besides, that was decades ago.

And, to be fair, much of the American public was- at that time- really sympathetic to the philosophy behind eugenics... including Dubya's Grandad.

Have fun with that.

J. Frank Parnell: Nazi eugenics? They didn't invent eugenics, Darwin did. He went so far as to call it a 'moral responsibility'.

You're thinking of Galton. He was a contempory and influenced by Darwin but just like the free market Social Dawrinists of today he took the idea in directions Darwin didn't discuss/consider.

meat0918: Really? I'm fairly certain he pointed out the reason we don't let people otherwise unfit for survival die is because of human compassion.

Actually, the quote is from somewhere else, but "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" is where the Nazi's got a lot of their ideas.

And it's not hard to see why. Eugenics is everything Darwin claimed about evolution put into action. If you want the human race to keep going in a beneficial direction, towards a 'master race', if you will, you need to weed out the bad genes.

J. Frank Parnell: Nazi eugenics? They didn't invent eugenics, Darwin did. He went so far as to call it a 'moral responsibility'.

Darwin was really careful not to mention evolution being applied to humans. Considering how controversial evolution still is, think about how the scope of the controversy would have been 100 years ago.

J. Frank Parnell: If you want the human race to keep going in a beneficial direction, towards a 'master race', if you will, you need to weed out the bad genes.

There may be reason why social dynamics evolved in groups of animals- human beings included. I'm guessing because it was "selected-in" over the last few million years or so, as Darwin would have said.

Granted, it could be selected-out just as easily (and by "easily", we're talking, again, millions of years here), but you'd have to figure there's some reason compassion is still practiced these days, even among non-human species. It must work.


It's kinda funny in the reverse that we tend to think of beaver dams as "natural", and man-made dams as something "un-natural"- outside of nature...

Eugenics like issues still permeate the realm of genetic counseling. Suppose medical advances allow an individual with a normally fatal genetic disease to live to have children thus allowing the fatal genetic gene to spread with in the population as a whole. What should be done? This is a real and uneasy philosophical scenario (but falls short of Nazi eugenics).

J. Frank Parnell: meat0918: Really? I'm fairly certain he pointed out the reason we don't let people otherwise unfit for survival die is because of human compassion.

Actually, the quote is from somewhere else, but "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" is where the Nazi's got a lot of their ideas.

And it's not hard to see why. Eugenics is everything Darwin claimed about evolution put into action. If you want the human race to keep going in a beneficial direction, towards a 'master race', if you will, you need to weed out the bad genes.

Well, no. One of the fundamental mistakes that people make about evolution is thinking that evolution means "getting better." It doesn't and Darwin argued against that idea. Things evolve to fit their environment, not into better things.

The Nazi's mistakenly latched on to lots of things that didn't really support them. They loved Nietzsche but only after Nietzsche's sister edited out all of the parts where he talked about how stupid antisemites were.

Pinnacle Point: Suppose medical advances allow an individual with a normally fatal genetic disease to live to have children thus allowing the fatal genetic gene to spread with in the population as a whole.

It, uh... wouldn't be fatal or affect the population in any way thanks to medical advances?

Not really sure what you were going for here...

NuttierThanEver: NEJM also is the biggest mouthpiece for BIG PHARMA promoting the lies of vaccines and Lipitor and anti-depressants. Personally I don't take anything into my body that is not raw, organic and been blessed by ayruvedic Monk living on a mountaintop in the Himalayas

Let me guess, you're favorite band is Dr. Funke's 100% Natural Good Time Family Band Solution (new window)

/Hulu video, skip to 27sec if you want.

NuttierThanEver: NEJM also is the biggest mouthpiece for BIG PHARMA promoting the lies of vaccines and Lipitor and anti-depressants. Personally I don't take anything into my body that is not raw, organic and been blessed by ayruvedic Monk living on a mountaintop in the Himalayas

Please tell me you had fresh goji berries at Base Camp One!

♫ Goo-jiiii berrrieeeees! ♫

meat0918: J. Frank Parnell: meat0918: Really? I'm fairly certain he pointed out the reason we don't let people otherwise unfit for survival die is because of human compassion.

Actually, the quote is from somewhere else, but "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" is where the Nazi's got a lot of their ideas.

And it's not hard to see why. Eugenics is everything Darwin claimed about evolution put into action. If you want the human race to keep going in a beneficial direction, towards a 'master race', if you will, you need to weed out the bad genes.

Hmm. I wonder if that's why the high functioning autistic community is terrified of developing an in-vitro test to determine if a child will develop autism? More and more evidence is pointing towards fetal brain development abnormalities being the cause.

Just look at what the Down's syndrome test did to their population.

Well, it didn't do anything to those who were already born, that's for sure.

Totally off-topic, but the most amusing thing I ever saw was on a flyer trying to convince parents to not abort a fetus with Down's. It was a quote from someone claiming to be "Pro Choice" except, apparently, when it came to Down's. Because, after all, apparently it's only okay to abort a fetus that doesn't have a severe birth defect.

SkunkWerks: Pinnacle Point: Suppose medical advances allow an individual with a normally fatal genetic disease to live to have children thus allowing the fatal genetic gene to spread with in the population as a whole.

It, uh... wouldn't be fatal or affect the population in any way thanks to medical advances?

Not really sure what you were going for here...

Sorry, I oversimplified my question beyond logic. The age of onset, inheritance patterns, and degree of severity can vary with different genetic disorders such as Huntington's or Fragile-X syndrome, but often the question of whether or not a gene carrier or disease carrier would choose to have offspring can come to play. If they already have children, should the offspring be informed and screened. Should offspring have kids or etc. etc. The answers are not always simple as one might think when real lives are at play. Evaluation of ones genetic makeup in terms of family planning is a real medical concern out there.

SkunkWerks: It, uh... wouldn't be fatal or affect the population in any way thanks to medical advances?


I think he is referring to something like the "Lysine Contingency" from Jurassic Park.

Not being able to produce a vital protein would normally be fatal. But if you give someone Lysine as part of their diet, they wouldn't even notice the issue.

The fatal deficiency is still there, it is just papered over. It isn't cured.

Cubicle Jockey: SkunkWerks: It, uh... wouldn't be fatal or affect the population in any way thanks to medical advances?


I think he is referring to something like the "Lysine Contingency" from Jurassic Park.

Not being able to produce a vital protein would normally be fatal. But if you give someone Lysine as part of their diet, they wouldn't even notice the issue.

The fatal deficiency is still there, it is just papered over. It isn't cured. Great explanation.

Pinnacle Point: Eugenics like issues still permeate the realm of genetic counseling. Suppose medical advances allow an individual with a normally fatal genetic disease to live to have children thus allowing the fatal genetic gene to spread with in the population as a whole. What should be done? This is a real and uneasy philosophical scenario (but falls short of Nazi eugenics).

I seem to recall reading that very thing currently in play in the deaf community in particular.

If only the Nazi had shouted WE LEARNED IT FROM YOU, BRO when we tried to stigmatize them for their eugenics experiments. It was the US where 90% Eugenics research was done, particularly looking for scientific validation for the belief that non-whites are inherently inferior. The Nazi just took 75 years of largely American publications to their natural conclusion.

In another world, it could have been us, but our scientific direction radically changed with the Great Depression and the buildup to WW2. (The Bell Curve excepted.)

Cubicle Jockey: SkunkWerks: It, uh... wouldn't be fatal or affect the population in any way thanks to medical advances?


I think he is referring to something like the "Lysine Contingency" from Jurassic Park.

Not being able to produce a vital protein would normally be fatal. But if you give someone Lysine as part of their diet, they wouldn't even notice the issue.

The fatal deficiency is still there, it is just papered over. It isn't cured.

Then we wait another two generations until we have in-vitro gene manipulation, and fix it and everything else so that parents can have their superbabies (and proceed to prove that nurture trumps nature in almost every other way, leaving society as fractured as usual).

If we nuke or pox ourselves back to the stone age before then, then we won't have to worry too much about a few mutations here and there anyway.

vpb: It's a good thing we don't have politicians around today who want to let unhealthy people die to save a bit of money.


Of course there could never be a difference between killing people and letting them die, and it's absolutely evil to acknowledge that healthy or not people all die eventually and spending millions to keep someone at deaths door for a few extra weeks might not be a wise use of limited resources.

THANK YOU SUBBY for avoiding the "wait, what?" cliche.

Magorn: J. Frank Parnell: meat0918: Really? I'm fairly certain he pointed out the reason we don't let people otherwise unfit for survival die is because of human compassion.

Actually, the quote is from somewhere else, but "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" is where the Nazi's got a lot of their ideas.

And it's not hard to see why. Eugenics is everything Darwin claimed about evolution put into action. If you want the human race to keep going in a beneficial direction, towards a 'master race', if you will, you need to weed out the bad genes.

The problem is, they didn't back then, and we don't now, know with any certainty what a "good" or "bad" gene really is

There's a gene that a single copy of it will make you immune to Marlaria. So that's good right? Except that two copies will mean you have sickle-cell anemia. Same with the Tay-Sachs gene. Two copies and you have a fatal disease, one copy and you can't get Tuberculosis

Autism will very likely prove the same way. Brain autopsies have show kids who were autistic have 2/3rds more nuerons in their cereberal cortex. Obviously that's too much, but what if it turns out that one copy of the trigger gene only gives you 33% more, (Aspberger's?) or say only 20% More (Super-genius level IQ) is that a gene to supress or encourage?

So much THIS. If a fairly common gene has nothing but bad effects, you have to ask yourself why it's survived the past 200,000 years of human evolution. We know so little about the human genome that practicing eugenics is like doing brain surgery at home with a kitchen knife. You don't know what the hell you're farking with.

Man, we really missed the boat on the Eugenics thing.

Stupid Nazis ruined eugenics for everybody. We could've sterilized all the stupid people in the '50s and we'd all be driving flying cars and banging super models. But noooooo, for some stupid reason the Germans made it a race issue and farked it all up. WTF good does exterminating the racial demographic with the highest per capita IQ do? When selecting qualities for a master race you'd think you'd want to put the highest premium on intelligence.

Cubicle Jockey: The fatal deficiency is still there, it is just papered over. It isn't cured.

Yeeeaaaaahhhh, but again, if you can "let them live", then the deficiency is already medically irrelevant in the first place. It's similarly irrelevant to survival.

I suppose if "genetic purity" bothers you that much you could just go back and fix it? But then aren't you- once again- mucking with "what was intended"? Or are you not because you're using adaptations brought to you via the same process?

By the way, these medical advances we're talking about being the inevitable result of something else we evolved via traits that were selected in over millions of years called a "neocortex". You can play this whole "it was intended" game with damn near anything in evolution. it's still a fallacy to assume that evolution is some sort of device that operates with some sort of sentient deliberation.

Evolution doesn't work that way. It's a roll of the dice. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes not.

JesseL: Of course there could never be a difference between killing people and letting them die, and it's absolutely evil to acknowledge that healthy or not people all die eventually and spending millions to keep someone at deaths door for a few extra weeks might not be a wise use of limited resources.

Believe it or not there is in fact a concept in accounting referred to as the "cost of a human life". It's a figure you can calculate, and it is in fact taken into account in matters to which it's relevant. Not just by your government, either. Your insurance company is also very fond of this kind of accounting.


Sleep tight.

SkunkWerks: JesseL: Of course there could never be a difference between killing people and letting them die, and it's absolutely evil to acknowledge that healthy or not people all die eventually and spending millions to keep someone at deaths door for a few extra weeks might not be a wise use of limited resources.

Believe it or not there is in fact a concept in accounting referred to as the "cost of a human life". It's a figure you can calculate, and it is in fact taken into account in matters to which it's relevant. Not just by your government, either. Your insurance company is also very fond of this kind of accounting.


Sleep tight.

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