Posted on 04/15/2008 7:56:10 PM PDT by jazusamo
The latest political crusade is the crusade to replace ordinary light bulbs with the new CFL light bulb that is supposed to save electricity, reducing the need for fossil fuels and helping the fight against global warming.
Since crusaders seldom stop to weigh the cost of what they are advocating, it is especially important that the rest of us do so before we get swept along by rhetoric and emotions.
With the CFL light bulb, the initial cost -- several times that of a regular light bulb -- is only the financial cost. A bigger problem is what to do if a CFL light bulb breaks.
You are supposed to shut off all air conditioners or heaters, to keep them from circulating mercury vapor from the broken CFL. You are supposed to open windows and doors to air out the place.
Pregnant women and small children are supposed to leave the area while the mess is being cleaned up by someone else, wearing a dust mask and gloves.
What if there is only a pregnant woman present, with or without small children? And what if there is no dust mask around?
CFL light bulbs are only the latest in a long line of "solutions" that can turn out to be worse than the problem it is supposed to solve. But the crusaders will keep selling their solutions as long as we keep buying them.
Another of the political solutions that can turn out to be worse than the problem it was supposed to solve was the recent cancellation of thousands of airline flights around the country, so that various "safety" inspections of aircraft can be made.
Needless to say, this was not the airlines' idea, considering how many millions of dollars in fares they lost. Nor was it even the idea of the Federal Aviation Agency, which usually cuts the airlines some slack on items that are not considered to be really dangerous.
The pressure to get those "safety" checks and corrections done immediately, regardless of costs, came from Congressional politicians during an election year.
One of the real problems with safety issues of all sorts is that there is seldom a weighing of particular dangers against the costs of correcting those dangers -- including the cost of greater dangers from X while you are correcting the dangers from Y.
In the case of the airlines, we are in an unprecedented era of safety as far as American commercial airlines are concerned and the uninspected items did not all have to be inspected immediately.
Since there were thousands of airline flights cancelled in the name of safety, this means that there were at least tens of thousands of passengers unable to take the flights they had booked.
Some of those passengers drove cars to reach the destinations to which they had originally planned to fly. Since automobile fatality rates per mile have long been several times as high as airline fatality rates per mile, this means that the dangers to life and limb have not been reduced by this political grandstanding.
Instead people have been exposed to greater dangers -- in the name of safety!
This is not an unusual situation with hyped safety crusades, whether by politicians or by other safety crusaders.
The testing of pharmaceutical drugs for safety, under the regulations of the Food and Drug Administration, goes on for years -- sometimes for more than a decade -- before these drugs are allowed to be sold to the public.
Even if the drugs have been used for years in Europe without any ill effects, that cuts no ice with the FDA. Even patients stricken with potentially fatal diseases are not allowed to buy the drugs until after many years of testing -- if the patients live that long.
This is just one of the ways in which people are dying from safety rules. Safety crusaders often say, "if it saves just one life," it is worth it -- without counting how many other lives may be sacrificed on the altar to "safety."
Some safety crusaders may be satisfied just to be morally one-up by making lofty statements. Politicians who are safety crusaders will be satisfied if that gets you to vote for them, which is their real bottom line.
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Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
Terminally ill people can't try experimental drugs?
Shouldn't they be the ones to decide that?
It would seem they should decide but I don’t know the law.
Amen. Great post, jazusamo.
Years ago, lab tests were done on animals -- that is, until the pet nazi's began slashing and burning college and University labs.
Health care costs have continued to rise and because humans are being used as guinea pigs. Most people don't even take the time to read what they are "waiving" away in what are actually experimental quantities inside and among older, more proven drugs, so I've read over the years.
Folks get their prescriptions filled, and once they take receipt of the drugs, most then take the time to read the fine print. By then, they've already given consent.
But for a dying patient willing to be an "in the open" experiment? There's a case pending in CA where exactly that happened, and it involved the man's stem cells. Apparently, the man has no right to any profit, as he did live. And as part of the procedure, he basically gave his DNA map away, among other very personal affects.
Assuredly, there must be a reason why Democrats in CA keep demanding "u" health -- healthcare for the masses....
No thanks, I take my mercury in fish.
” Congressional politicians during an election year. “
We saw Chuckie trying to blame the FAA.
Fixed it.
btt
Thanks for the ping jaz. Once again Dr. Sowell is informative and clear on the matters he is discussing.
I wonder if he ever lurks. He’s got many fans at here, deservedly so.
/johnny
One of the voices in the wilderness making any sense at all nowadays in this country of ours. The masses pay no attention at all.
I guess I’m a testament that the CFL bulbs won’t kill you outright if they break. Eight or ten years ago, when these things first appeared in stores, I bought a 150W (maybe a 200W, expensive) to go in a fixture that was turned on a great deal and where ordinary bulbs were lasting only about six weeks.
The CFL lasted only a very few weeks, then one day I heard popping and fizzling sounds. I was in a different room so went to where the CFL was and it had popped open and partially melted and twisted. I got out of the room and waited a few minutes, then removed the thing, wrapped in a couple of plastic grocery bags an dpt it in the trash.
Was not aware of the dangers, or precautions when this happened and never noticed any ill effects.
Pack up the CFL debris and send it all to Al Gore. Problem solved even better.
Yes, they can. But the pharmaceutical companies take a major risk, both ethically and in terms of liability, in offering them. With any proposed drug first a toxicity study must be done on animals, and only then might an efficacy/dosage testing even be considered for human patients. You don't have a drug at this point, you only have a theory. And there are a lot of drugs that can cure one condition and kill you with another.
It isn't just that a terminal patient is going to die anyway, the ethical issue is quality of what remains of that life. The chances of making things worse are greater than the chances of a "miracle" cure.
There is another form of such testing, "off-label" indications for existing drugs. There at least the toxicity is nailed down and one has an idea of what dosages will produce what side effects. But efficacy for a new indication - a different disease - is not known at this point. It's still risky. My guess is that most of the testing of drugs on terminal patients (in the U.S.) takes this form.
I am not a doctor, so understand that this is a very vague description by a layman with only a peripheral knowledge of the industry. I'll happily take correction from more knowledgable FReepers.
I am going to die, I was in a store where they were cleaning up a broken CFL, with me in the store.
Well I wasn’t in that store with you and I’m gonna die too. :)
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