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People vastly overestimate how infallible people are (especially themselves). The rate at which humans make errors is about 0.5%. Which if you think about all the things you do in the course of a day, is a really big number.

About 7.3% of the population were hospitalized overnight or longer (23 million people).

If 250,000 of them died, then fatality rate due to medical errors is about 1.1%. Which is in line with the average error rate compounded over multiple ways in which errors could kill a hospital patient.

If you want to reduce the fatality rate, you either need to get people out of the system (e.g. autonomous cars - but they make people uncomfortable even though they're statistically safer), or implement automated checks to supplement people's work. We're already doing the latter with prescriptions - computers now automatically check for dangerous interactions between medications prescribed to the same person. More operating rooms scan all equipment used during surgery, and re-scans at the end to make sure it's all accounted for, and nothing has accidentally been left inside the patient. And some hospitals are starting to use barcode and RFID scanners to double-check that the medication being administered is the proper one for that particular patient.

So, are you looking to make it more difficult to drive, since you are still more likely to die from a car than a gun, even though there are more guns than cars in the US.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastat...

300m guns
253m cars
(according to Google)

I'm not sure how specific you are talking about but it's all females of the Anopheles genus which includes at least 35 different species. Any colored region on this map is a region in which malaria can be spread. http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/ima...

Excellent response. For other readers desired more detailed information, the CDC has an excellent infographic here: http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/abo...

No study has ever produced strong evidence that second-hand smoke carries health effects; all which have suggested such have been refuted.

According to you. However, Since the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report, 2.5 million adults who were nonsmokers died because they breathed secondhand smoke; The International Agency for Research on Cancer (an agency of the World Health Organization) has classified second-hand smoke as a known carcinogen and many other credible references. Blowing out your ass.

There have been numerous studies on second hand smoke and it has been shown to be quite dangerous. Even a small amount is bad and has been shown that it can cause long-term health issues.

You're missing the point.

"Grandmas" didn't eat this grain, this corn or most other food available today. It didn't exist back then, and most foods eaten back then don't really exist anymore.
Green revolution sought to that.
We grow different plants cause they are more resistant to pests and various climates and cause they bring in higher crops.
We feed our livestock with different plants for same reason. More and better.

We produce more for less - thus we can afford to eat cake every day. Food is THAT CHEAP.
In contrast, grandma would often go without food.
If crop was bad, if there's a drought, if there's a war, if there are bandits, if field animals got sick and died so she had to pull that (wooden) plow instead of oxes...

Both food and eating habits are different today. And so are humans.
Diabetics simply died back then. No penicillin, so everyone with an infection died too. Today we even have cancer and AIDS survivors.
We got different humans. And a lot more of them.
Most of them would simply be dead back in "grandma times". Now, they get to be sickly for very long times. Lifetimes.
Being sickly, they are also more susceptible to dietary illnesses.
Which were so rare back in "grandma times" cause all those people died from something else, long before developing a dietary illness.

"Grandma's food" is the same nonsense as paleo diet which is the same nonsense as appeal to nature.
"Grandma" made it cause she was stronger and luckier than her 8-10 dead siblings.
"Grandma" also often went without food. Even canning was a fucking space-age technology for "grandma". Refrigeration didn't exist.

Meanwhile, gout is no longer a "disease of kings" or even "rich people".
Everyone can afford a rich people disease now - cause food is so fuckin cheap and so fuckin tasty.
Even plain old salt used to be worth its weight in gold - thus salary.

There is no such thing as "grandma's diet". Nor was there ever. "Grandma" died at 40.

Do you really think the point of washing your hands after going to the bathroom is to make them sterile enough to operate with?

The CDC recommends 20 seconds of scrubbing for those of us not going into the operating room.

Replying to my own post!

They have updated the page.
http://www.cdc.gov/zika/pregna...

According to the last Q:A after the virus has cleared from the blood you appear to not be at elevated risk for birth defects.

Average sure. Median.... not even close.

The median # of sexual partners a woman accumulates between 18 & marriage: 7

Median # of sexual partners for men: 2

A small % of the men are banging most of the women.

Citation needed. According to this CDC study the "Median number of opposite-sex partners in lifetime among men and women aged 25-44 years of age" was 6.6 for men and 4.3 for women in 2011-2013. This implies that a modest proportion of women are having sex with a lot of men, an entirely believable proposition.

no, you're just completely ignorant about bicycle related head injuries.
ie, ignorant...as usual.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthcommu...

Sorry my mistake. It was the CDC:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...

As an "adult" I am glad that you did not resort to playing the "authority" without any basis in reality

In particular, this report from the cdc contains some doozies, Possible Association Between Zika Virus Infection and Microcephaly — Brazil, 2015 may give you some good information to base your ideas on

They identify instances of microcephaly and miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) and cite an increase in cases of microcephaly by >3,000 over normal rates, in just the last half of 2015 in Brazil

It is completely justifiable to track and control this problem before it becomes as common in the US as West Nile virus is today

Doesn't mean its wrong. See page 5:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/n...

I know that mainly shows elderly are vulnerable but to be fair, they are listed in the summary which also adds "pregnant" before women.

Thiemerosol has *not* been completely removed from vaccines. It is present in full strength in the nearly useless annual flu vaccine (only 40% - 60% effective, according to CDC. You want to to get an annual dose of bio-accumulative neurotoxic ethyl mercury for a slim chance of not getting basically a strong cold ? ) AND, on the other vaccines like the DTaP, it is still present in "trace" amounts. So get your facts right.

M'kay

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafe...

From the article:

Measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines do not and never did contain thimerosal. Varicella (chickenpox), inactivated polio (IPV), and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines have also never contained thimerosal.

Influenza (flu) vaccines are currently available in both thimerosal-containing (for multi-dose vaccine vials) and thimerosal-free versions.

Also from the article:

Research does not show any link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder. Many well conducted studies have concluded that thimerosal in vaccines does not contribute to the development of autism. Even after thimerosal was removed from almost all childhood vaccines, autism rates continued to increase, which is the opposite of what would be expected if thimerosal caused autism.

So now you are left with only your own most powerful weapons, the conspiracy card and putting your fingers in your ears and screaming at the top of your lungs NANANANANANANANAH I CAN'T HEEEARR YOUUUUU!

Kinda weird that some folks are so hell bent on declaring thimerosol the bad guy that they are willing to allow the real cause (if there is one) go untouched. Facts, they aren't just for breakfast any more.

Broke my link, sorry:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...

So the science is settled. But is it? Why is there still research on vaccines, if the science is settled. There are no new illesnesses?

Yup, the science is pretty much settled. Thimerosol has been completely removed from vaccines as a result of anti-vaxxers outrage. The difference?

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafe...

Okay, so they move the goalposts and call it the vaccines themselves. Now its on shaky grounds, as there is less commonality between different vaccines.

Here's your science teacher's data:

http://www.jennymccarthybodyco...

We live i strange times, when people get their science education from Politicians and women who's main talent is taking off their clothing, and documented frauds with a plan to extract money via the sympathy gene.

But those darned scientists? Never! That's crazy talk!!

No they aren't.

Australia spends less on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than the US and yet has higher life expectancy. Look at the life expectancy from age 25 in the US. It is positively associated with income and education because access to quality healthcare in the US is largely limited to those who can afford it.

The US healthcare system is dysfunctional and inefficient. Australia achieves better outcomes at half the price. For a supposedly capitalist nation, the US is sadly unsophisticated with its healthcare dollars. Where is the business sense in ignoring the problem and continuing with an inefficient model? The US needs to make the hard business decision to change to a model more like the ones developed by Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK.

Democrats can't be the night on the white horse if they don't convince you that there is some dire problem for them to solve for you.

It's silly to politicize something like healthcare because it has has easily measurable practical outcomes. The US is falling short and its healthcare model is broken. The smart move is to switch to a more workable model.

Which is why skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States. Don't underestimate UV radiation. It's bad news.

Exactly this. People worry about terrorism like it's a daily occurrence here. Even if we include the 9-11 attack (which was clearly an outlier), there have been something like 4,000 people killed in terrorist attacks on American soil in the past 15 years. That's an average of 267 a year. Given that there are about 308 million Americans, that means we have a 0.00009% chance of being killed by a terrorist every year.

According to the CDC, 10 people die of drowning every day. That would be 3,650 people a year or over 13 times the risk of being killed in a terrorist attack. But you don't see a "War on Drowning", will calls to ban swimming pools and erect giant fences around lakes. You don't see plumbers being called in for questioning on suspicion of installing a bathtub that could lead to someone drowning.

There are always going to be wackos who threaten lives. We can be smart about finding them and stopping them, but the risk they pose isn't nearly high enough to justify the amount of liberties we are giving up. Whether we should give up liberties at any risk level is another story, of course, but the insanely low risk of terrorist attack makes it all the more ridiculous.

It's not like it hurts the air molecules.

You're the one ignorant of ionizing radiation. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=483&tid=86 When ionizing radiation from outer space hits the upper atmosphere, it produces a shower of cosmic rays that constantly expose everything on earth. Some hit gases in the air and change them into radioactive material (such as tritium and carbon 14). That rocket engine nozzle is pointed down, towards us.

I'm aware there were some designs -- even scale prototypes -- of fission rockets for atmospheric use that did spew fallout.

First you ask if I'm ignorant, and then you admit that it happened.

None of these were seriously considered for obvious reasons.

They were considered seriously enough to get off the drawing board and into the spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere phase.

Drunk drivers kill about 10,000/year (200/year of that kids).
The Tobacco industry kills almost half a million people a year -- and that's for profit. Eve second hand smoke kills about 40,000 people per year. ... That's more per month than died in 9/11 -- and you can argue that those 40,000 are innocent lives. They never made a choice to smoke. Many of them made a conscious decision to avoid smoking.
about 50,000/year die from concussion related injuries.

Even if you include 9/11, over the 20 years from 1995 to 2014 terrorism only accounts for 175 deaths per year. That's not even a BLIP compared to gun deaths. I'll bet you can find more Americans killed per year by NRA members involved in mass shootings (too esoteric to be able to find stats on that one) than you have terror deaths including 9/11.

My point is that the courts should be asked to ignore the media hype, and decide this issue based on the REAL, factual threat that terrorism poses to the average American (roughly none ) when deciding how important it is for Apple to break protection of every I-Phone in America.

The FBI accuses Apple of playing the PR game. Apple should turn that gun on the FBI and ask them to prove the actual threat that they claim to be mitigating. -- ignoring the Media hype over 'Terrorism'.

Drunk drivers kill about 10,000/year (200/year of that kids).
The Tobacco industry kills almost half a million people a year -- and that's for profit. Eve second hand smoke kills about 40,000 people per year. ... That's more per month than died in 9/11 -- and you can argue that those 40,000 are innocent lives. They never made a choice to smoke. Many of them made a conscious decision to avoid smoking.
about 50,000/year die from concussion related injuries.

Even if you include 9/11, over the 20 years from 1995 to 2014 terrorism only accounts for 175 deaths per year. That's not even a BLIP compared to gun deaths. I'll bet you can find more Americans killed per year by NRA members involved in mass shootings (too esoteric to be able to find stats on that one) than you have terror deaths including 9/11.

My point is that the courts should be asked to ignore the media hype, and decide this issue based on the REAL, factual threat that terrorism poses to the average American (roughly none ) when deciding how important it is for Apple to break protection of every I-Phone in America.

The FBI accuses Apple of playing the PR game. Apple should turn that gun on the FBI and ask them to prove the actual threat that they claim to be mitigating. -- ignoring the Media hype over 'Terrorism'.

The second does not follow. We don't like to admit it but we do really make tradeoffs involving human lives all the time because some of them would just cost too much or infringe too much on basic rights. For example, fewer children would die if we outlawed backyard pools http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html but we haven't done so. Similarly, we'd very likely have fewer drunk driving deaths if every car had a built in breathalyzer, but we don't do that either.

An automatic rifle (machine gun) fires as long as the trigger is held. These are very expensive to buy due to regulations, and you can only buy ones manufactured before 1934 (not sure, but what I found in Google)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Semiautomatic rifles fire once for every pull of the trigger, these are the type of many firearms used in mass shootings around the US. They ARE commonly used for hunting, as the ability to fire two or more shots at a deer quickly is desired as the first might not actually drop the deer.

Assault rifle is a made up term for a "scarey gun", the best and most common example of this is an AR-15. AR-15s are a semiautomatic rifle with rails that allow the mounting of accessories such as scopes, lights, lasers, grips, or frankly whatever. They also allow for larger magazines to be used with them, but most magazine weapons can use large magazines.

https://www.washingtonpost.com... (the first picture)

The problem that many US citizens have, is that according to the constitution which is the highest law of the land, ALL gun regulation is banned. Yet, a very uncommon form of death is being fought like it is the top way people die.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastat...

Murder doesn't even break the top ten, it is so rare that you are more likely to die from eating fatty/oily foods. So, lets focus on ending heart disease, fighting cancer, banning or improving help for smokers, fighting alzheimer's and diabetes, ending the flu, stopping whatever the hell Nephritis is, and maybe getting help for those considering suicide, rather than taking guns away from those who don't commit crimes, while leaving the criminals heavily armed as they can just steal guns, or buy them anywhere.

Nah man, even if just a small amount of nanotubes escape, they can cause similar effects to asbestos (another microscopic fiber), http://www.mesothelioma.com/me... The source they link is a dead link, so have this from the CDC instead http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/... There's nothing wrong with being careful and thinking ahead, and there's evidence that nanotubes, while potentially very useful, are definitely a hazardous material that we shouldn't be using willy nilly.

In 2012 over 3,300 people died in accidents but that doesn't fit the left's narrative so it's ignored. If someone's killed with a knife the left will proclaim that's bad, a killing with a car will be met with the proclamation of "how horrible", but a killing where a gun is involved will end with the call to ban all guns. Doesn't make sense and it's due to a lack of understanding and fear of the unknown. http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehicl...

hey, you'd be glad to know, there's been quite an effort to make cars safer recently, like for the past 50 years, with some success. thank a big government liberal,

In 2012 over 3,300 people died in accidents but that doesn't fit the left's narrative so it's ignored. If someone's killed with a knife the left will proclaim that's bad, a killing with a car will be met with the proclamation of "how horrible", but a killing where a gun is involved will end with the call to ban all guns. Doesn't make sense and it's due to a lack of understanding and fear of the unknown. http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehicl...

No actually I don't. It's unacceptable that virtually no one cares that the biggest cause of death in men under 45 is suicide.

First, that's factually incorrect. According to the CDC, suicides are number two, after "Unintentional Injuries".

That's right, the leading cause of death in men under 45 is "hold my beer and watch this". Suicide is second Maybe these are the biggest cause of death in men under 45 because men's general health overall is so good that just about the only thing that will take them out is if they decide to do it themselves, through self-harm or simple stupidity?

Nope. Must be the feminazis.

Are you sure about what happens to people who publish vaccine harm? How many careers died to produce this government report?

I'm so sick of people spewing out misinformation and lies to make their points. It took me less than a minute to prove you wrong.

Not that I had to actually duckduckgo the subject, I'm already much better read on it than apparently 99% of you asshats posting.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/va...

I've never used my fire extinguisher.

I've never used my airbag.

I've never used my life insurance.

Boy, I'm still glad I have them :)

If simply having a tool in your home is enough to drive you crazy, I hate to break it to you, you were crazy well before that tool showed up.

Unfortunately your counter-argument is utilizing false dichotomy in each case. All the safety items listed are statistically far more effective at what they protect against. Life insurance doesn't get found by a child and cause tragedy. Your airbag might fail, but it doesn't kill someone a block away, ever. Guns are simply not effective at deterring violent crime, considering the large percentage of accidental injuries and deaths, and domestic homicides/suicides. A gun can't even defend you from a knife attacker from within 20 feet. The chances of successfully defending yourself against violent crime using a gun are slim. The chances of accidental injury or death from your gun are precisely the same every minute you own it. The only thing a gun does for you is make you feel secure... it doesn't actually make you any more secure. In fact, it is more a danger to you and those you love than any mind-easing benefit you gain. Unless you're a soldier or a cop, its a liability, like carrying a time-bomb.

Unfortunately your post is ridiculous.

Firearms aren't very high on the list of common causes of death for children. Don't believe me? Check the CDC website: http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/.... The most common causes of death are drowning in the swimming pool and traffic. So the idea that you shouldn't have firearms around because "think of the children" is absurd. You need to be more safety conscious with children in general and there are plenty of things they could accidentally die from. The idea that a gun is a time bomb is also ridiculous for similar reasons. It all depends on how safety conscious you are. A lot of non gun owners seem to have this irrational fear that a gun is going to jump off the table and shoot them in the face at any minute.

Do you also discourage people from owning table saws so they don't cut their fingers off? I have terrible news: the world is full of dangerous things. You best not go outside. Or inside. In fact, don't get out of bed or use sharp eating utensils.

And rabbits
And cane toads
And pigs
And cats (okay, to be fair, they haven't necessarily lost this one yet, but feral cats are pretty goddamn good at surviving).

Australia: The world's favorite destination for invasive species.

Yup, http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topic...

Ok. How about the UK then.

The overall UK homicide rate is roughly the same now as it was prior to the ban: graph
So a decrease in firearms cannot be conclusively correlated with a decrease in fatalities (firearms fatalities yes, overall fatalities no). Likewise, in the case of the US, we have seen a large increase in the quantity of firearms in America yet overall fatalities and violent crime have been on a consistent decline. graph So firearms and deaths are again not positively correlated.

I'm not informed enough to comment on what social factors enable effective policing by unarmed police in the UK. I know it works here in Japan....which is part of the reason why I live here.

No requirements for storage, no requirements for training, no requirements for mental health, etc..

Storage requirements somewhat negate the utility of the weapon as a last-ditch means of home defense. Of course, if we built better houses in the first place, maybe home invasions wouldn't be so easy and whipping out your shotgun in the dead of the night wouldn't even be necessary. I don't think breaking into my apartment is particularly easy....but I live in a building that is proof against Category 5 hurricanes (we get a Cat5 typhoon about once a year here), which of course affects how the doors and windows are reinforced.

Training and mental health screening are things that I would agree with. I think most "pro-gun" people see training requirements as an infringement of their rights...maybe an alternative is to instead offer MASSIVE tax breaks (like the Earned Income Tax Credit) for those who complete training. So you could still legally own weapons with no training, but you have very little incentive to do so. With the exception of my parents, every firearms owner I know is ex-military or law enforcement, so we are already at least somewhat proficient in basic weapons handling and marksmanship.

The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled

Um, by definition, half the infants and children have above-average levels of lead in their blood. Normally there's some ambiguity due to "average" possibly meaning the mean. But by stating the number is for a proportion of a group, you're defining "average" to mean median. And by definition the median is the 50th percentile, with half of the population being above the median. Once again, we have a non-technical reporter trying to report on a technical subject, and failing badly.

Reading the study itself, the percentage of children with elevated blood lead (more than 5 g/dL of lead) increased from 2.1% to 4.0%. In the worst-affected areas, it increased from 2.5% to 6.3%. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's 5 micrograms/dL, since 5 grams of lead would be a ball about 1 cm in diameter if I did my math right. The CDC limit for lead blood levels in children sets 10 ug/dL as the threshold when action should be taken. So while the increase in lead levels is notable, most kids should still be within the limits of what's considered safe. The authors of the study are contending that no amount of lead in the blood is safe, and their study is written under that premise.

No
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/n...
Maybe you were referring to mass shootings. Those only account for a small fraction of gun-related deaths each year, so we will ignore the distinction.
I would wager that most Americans reading this post know someone who was killed by a firearm.

Cigarettes still have never been proven to cause harm.

Sorry but theCDC disagrees.

not even with a warning. Just labeled.

That is the crux of the issue. To many people a label is a warning. If you want to be completely transparent all food should be labelled "may contain mercury" as there is mercury everywhere but in such minute quantities that it does not matter. It's not a warning it is just a label.

First, men can be the victims of rape and sexual assault too, and can use this app to report it.

Not only are men victims of rape and assault, according to CDC they are *more* victims of rape than women are.

No - according to the CDC, 18.3% of women and 1.4% of men experience rape. Roughly equal numbers experience other sexual violence - 5.6% and 5.3% respectively.

It's not weird when you take into account the fact that you're using the popular (and incorrect) view of what constitutes autism. The DSM definition of autism details exactly what criteria are used to diagnose Autism Spectrum Disorder and it has nothing to do with seeing patterns or handling information.

While their are some autistics who excel at seeing patterns or handling information, the majority do not. You might as well say that having a big dick is a sign of autism spectrum disorder since there are some autistics who have big dicks even though the majority do not.

Why did I bother? Because facts should be sourced.

Why did I bring these particular facts in the first place? Because I was pointing out that anyone can say "This particular number is bigger than the number you're talking about" (as you did with the IRA deaths vs Islamic terrorists comment)...but that doesn't necessarily make it relevant. I even said as much in my comment.

Suicides aren't necessarily directly related to terrorism related deaths, although they do share the rather significant similar factor of death.

In this case, I'm also obliquely making the point that depression and suicide are a significantly bigger problem than terrorism (if a US citizen dies, they've got a 0.00061% chance it's from terrorism...and a 1.58% chance it's from suicide), and we in America are kinda idiots to ignore this.

Regardless of the motives of the kid who took apart the clock, regardless of whether or not it was random chance or a precisely calculated media blitz by someone trying to grab the spotlight...the fact remains that a kid got arrested because he had a box full of wires that may or may not have looked like a thing that actually kills or injurs less than 0.00071% of all humans, worldwide...and meanwhile, we've got depressed kids (and adults!) in every single school in our nation.

tl;dr version: We're severely overreacting to terrorism (especially in schools), and severely under-reacting to other causes of death.

Sources:
http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/...
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/n...
http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/...

And depression invoked suicides have killed more people than both put together. Did you have a point, or were you just spouting Islamophobia and random "Number A is larger than Number B"?

17,891 deaths by terror attack in 2013.
41,149 deaths by suicide in 2013 (in the US).

Note that those figures for terror attacks may be just for the US, or they may be worldwide...I'm not bothering to check, because if they're just for the US, it means suicides outnumber terror attacks 2 to 1, and if it's NOT just for the US...it's a much worse ratio.

Source(s):
http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/...
http://www.who.int/mental_heal...
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/n...

Completely off-topic, but you made me curious enough to look it up.

Number of deaths for leading causes of death - US, 2013
        Heart disease: 611,105
        Cancer: 584,881
        Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
        Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
        Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
        Alzheimer's disease: 84,767
        Diabetes: 75,578
        Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
        Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
        Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149

Detailed breakdown for those of us who like such things.

Completely off-topic, but you made me curious enough to look it up.

Number of deaths for leading causes of death - US, 2013
        Heart disease: 611,105
        Cancer: 584,881
        Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
        Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
        Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
        Alzheimer's disease: 84,767
        Diabetes: 75,578
        Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
        Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
        Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149

Detailed breakdown for those of us who like such things.

Albeit for the U.S. since I can't read Japanese. The death rate from leukemia in the U.S. (p. 401) is about 3.8 per 100,000 for males aged 45-54 (figure a few years between diagnosis and death, since he was diagnosed in his late 30s). It's tough to say for certain without a demographic breakdown of the 44,000 clean-up workers. But 1 case per 44,000 (2.3 per 100,000) is pretty close to what you would expect from the general population.

I get that _you_ may feel safer if something else does things for you but lets be realistic about the numbers and risk. Fear mongering is not how you go about advocating change, but that is what you are attempting to do. The appeal to emotion is way too obvious.

To start, we are moving the numbers to more recent 2013, in which you had a .0088% chance of a fatal car crash.

By comparison, you had a .17% chance of dying do to heart disease, a .02% chance of dying from diabetes. You had a higher chance of death by suicide and influenza than you did from a car wreck. (math done using a sample size of 350,000,000 and numbers from the CDC and here (easier to find than numbers hidden in the bowels of the CDC PDF).

The point is there are lots of risks in life. Breathing in a lung full of air could cause you to catch influenza, or pneumonia. You are way more likely to DIE from those things than by driving a car, even with shitty drivers on the road. Eating poorly, not exercising, and ingesting the wrong substances (carcinogens) are exponentially more deadly than cars.

If you want to push self driving cars I'm fine with that. You can buy one and do as you wish. Current technology does not make them that much better than humans. Come to Mountain View and drive around near one. They can't differentiate between a speed limit sign and a "during school speed limit" sign so we end up having big backups on some main roads because of those cars. They don't accelerate any faster than my grandma, and don't break any better or worse than a person either.

One day I'm sure they will be great, but that day is not today. I would still rather have the option of manual versus no control of the car. Think about tyranny and extortion for a minute, and that can be corporate as well as government.

I understand the concern, and it's horrible when any child dies, but this isn't even in the top 5 causes of accident or top 10 causes injury death for this age group. https://www.homeminders.com/Ar... http://www.cdc.gov/injury/imag...

43 cases of toddler-involved shootings, and it's front page news. 100,000 cases of children going to the ER after getting grandpa's medication and nobody talks about it.
30,000 people per year die due to guns, and it's a top political story every week. 88,000 deaths per year due to alcohol and nobody talks about it.
Is anybody calling for medication or alcohol control? Maybe somewhere, somebody has this as their pet project, but nationwide, it (correctly) goes nowhere. What is it about guns and their fraction of deaths/injuries that scares people so much?

43, huh?

http://www.cdc.gov/safechild/N... "Unintentional suffocation - which also includes strangulation and choking on food or other objects - killed 1,176 U.S. children in 2010."

Just search a little and find all the other ways toddlers kill themselves and others. One of my friends with kids described it as largely being comprised of keeping his kid from killing himself all the time until he got old enough to try to kill himself less often. That's what happens when anything dangerous is anywhere near a toddler for whatever small amount of time it takes for them to do the wrong thing with it - and there are LOTS of dangerous things around, with plastic bags being higher on the list than firearms.

And you're far far more likely to accidentally drown your swimming pool than be killed by a gun; do you advocate that swimming pools are the biggest source of terrorism?

That statistic in only true if you restrict your investigation to children under 14. The actual number of drownings in the US is about 3900/year (CDC), while the number of non-suicide gun deaths is around 12,000/year. (Gun suicides around 21,000/year)

More importantly, the number of people murdered by swimming pools is about 15, so keeping special surveillance of swimming pool owners is not going to reduce the number of homicides very much. 15 drowning murders/10 million swimming pools = 1/670,000. 12,000 gun homicides/100 million gun owners = 1/8,300.

And, relevant to the topic at hand, there's about 1 Islamic terrorist attack in the US per year. 1 Terrorist/3 million Muslims. You know, maybe we should keep an eye on those swimming pool owners.