Re: "Scientific Evidence"

["Glenn Marshall" <GMARSHALL@gtsduratek.com>]

I put this off as long as I could:

Life involves risk.  What a concept!  People have known this since Adam, that life would be a constant struggle, the end result of which would be death.  Ah, but in the last few decades we've become SO SMART that we've forgotten that.  Despite all of our best efforts, the world death rate remains 100%, and it is not likely to drop any time soon.

The incidence of cancer continues to increase due to a multitude of causes-- pesticides, food preservatives, various air and water pollutants, exposure to chemicals, etc.  If we were really serious about reducing the cancer rate, we would eliminate ALL KNOWN CAUSES OF CANCER from our society.  But that's not economically or politically feasible, so we'll just blame it all on minute doses of DEADLY IONIZING RADIATION.

Work causes death.  Eating causes death.  Breathing causes death.  Everything that's enjoyable (or not so enjoyable) causes death.  Birth results in death.  We're imperfect so therefore we die, and no amount of human ingenuity is going to reverse it.  We spend billions of dollars trying to prolong life or at least make dying less painful, but we cannot avoid it.  If we really want to get serious about ending death, then here's one thing that will work: sterilize everyone at birth.  After a hundred years or so the global human death rate will drop to undefinably low levels.  Just in case anyone gets the wrong idea, I'm not advocating it.  I'll leave that to some anti-everything crackpot.

So the generations to come will do study after study to try to determine the exact percent contribution to the cause of death for every human being (and animal, too-- by then they'll be considered equal or even superior).  Then they can assign blame and extract compensation accordingly based on these percentages-- it's the only fair way, you know.  Then there will be no more nuclear plants because they might cause a hypothetical death.  There won't be any coal plants either, for the same reason.  All the farmers will have been sued out of business because they use fertilizer to grow the food, and fertilizer also can be linked to hypothetical deaths.  And even the "organic farmers" plant seeds in naturally radioactive soil.  Cars?  Forget it.  Medicine?  Look at all those side-effects!  Bicycles?  People fall off of them and get boo-boos all the time.  So even the lawyers and movie stars will eventually freeze, starve, and work themselves to death.

Am I advocating any of this?  NO.  Do I think we should ignore risk and send people to work in death camps?  Again, NO.  We should continue to study and do research and learn all we can, with the understanding that no matter how much we study, we will never know everything.  If we have a pretty good handle on what the relative risks are in life, then we as intelligent beings should be able to make individual decisions as to which risks we are willing to accept and which we are not.  Once I accept the risk (by accepting the job), and my employer gives me the tools and training I need to maintain my  exposure within accepted standards at the time, then I do not have a legitimate gripe against my employer if things go wrong later on in my life.  Now if my employer wilfully exposes me to some hazardous substance and then tries to cover it up-- well that's an entirely different story.  I should be justly compensated and the individuals who made those decisions should be sent to prison.

But the root of the problem is our nature.  Law used to be about right and wrong, compared to a transcendent Standard.  That is no longer the case.  Law has "evolved" (downward, of course) to it's current condition of "what can we get the judge and jury to agree to, and how can we do it?"  The reason?  Simple-- the world owes us a free ride!  So the problem is our depraved condition.  And until we recognize that it's only going to get worse.

Disclaimer:  This temper tantrum is mine, not my employer's.  I feel better now.

Glenn Marshall
(865) 220-1666
gmarshall@gtsduratek.com

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