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There is not a single serious accident involving a drone. The one which you can see on youtube is a fake.

At the same time about a million and a half people die each year in traffic accidents. http://www.who.int/gho/road_sa... About 20 million wounded. These are the figures of the World War 3, and they continue to grow. And what we see - cars and motorcycles are getting even more overpowered and overweight. Streets and roads are overcrowded by cars.

At the same time delivery by drones could free roads and streets and save millions of lives.

Meanwhile more than three thousand people are killed daily in traffic accidents (1.24 million per year): http://www.who.int/gho/road_sa...

And cars are just getting more powerful and fast.

Salt is a good example as many western nations are now having widespread iodine deficiencies because they've cut out their main source of iodine, which was iodised (table) salt.

[citation needed]

Here's a Lancet published study that found that Iodine deficiency in the United Kingdom was around 70% in 2011. Of course, that's just one study, the WHO put the rate in North America at around 10% in 2004, and this study put the rate of iodine deficiency in Australia between 50% (for pregnant women) to 75% for the volunteers. It's not clear to me whether the samples in the studies are unrepresentative, if the WHO is underestimating the levels of deficiency, or if there has been a rapid rise in the level of deficiency. Regardless, it looks like North Americans are likely getting enough iodine, the WHO result seems to be somewhat confirmed by Stats Canada who estimate that only about 30% of Canadians are not getting enough iodine. The level is higher than the WHO estimate but much lower than the UK and Australian measurements. This could be a cultural difference if North Americans are much more liberal with their salt than comparable overseas populations.

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...

(Not a native english-speaker so sorry for any and all mistakes)

Well, if you count 1600 people directly or indirectly as a result of the accident.. But lets go with your line there.. 1600 lives where lost due to the accident..

If you read a few of the latest reports about Chernobyl they estimate it to be somewhere between 4000 to 9000 people that will die due to the accident. (But Chernobyl is a *really* bad example.... The whole mess there is due to bad design (or none) and idiotic people that actually turned off the safety system etc)

But just for the sake of it i'll round the number up to 10000 people on average per failed plant just to make it easy to count...

Lets list the alternatives..

References used:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
http://www.who.int/mediacentre...
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.g...

Hydroelectric:
Banqiao Dam - "26,000 dead from flooding, 145,000 dead from subsequent famine and epidemics, 11 million homeless. Caused loss of generation, dam failed by overtopping in a 1-in-2,000 year flood[4]"
That's more than 17 times the number in Chernobyl in a single accident...
On average it's 1400 people that dies per year for hydro-electric in the world..

Coal:
170000 people per year on average die due to coal-plants.
- That's 17 times the number in Chernobyl.. Per YEAR!

Biofuel/Biomass:
24000
- That's 2.4 times the number in Chernobyl.... Per YEAR!

If we are talking about saving lives.. start by fighting to shut down the coal-plants and replace them with nuclear/wind/whatever.. Wind will be problematic since the wind does not always blow, but it's great compliment..... Solar will not be possible since we still need power during the night but it's a great compliment..

And the other part.. We do have the knowledge on how to build much safer plants (China is currently building quite a few)..
The main type of reactors available to us.. (simplified, see the references for more information.)
- Boiling Water Reactor
- Pressurized Water Reactor
- Liquid-Metal Fast-Breeder Reactor

The boiler is what it is.. It boils water, not under pressure, to generate steam to power a turbine.. Due to the low temperature it is not very efficient, that's why they moved on to the pressurized water reactor.

The main type of reactor used today, and that is the most dangerous, is the pressurized water reactor.. This is due to that the water is pressurized to allow for higher temperatures, and if the cooling-system fails or there is a breach in the pressure-vessel all that water will flash to steam increasing it's volume many times over. It's also a bit risky due to production of hydrogen, that can cause an explosion.
So to coup with this the whole reactor-design needs to be designed with engineered fail-safes, like a big strong building around it to be able to contail the steam if the pressure-vessel would break. Backup generators to power the cooling-pumps if the external power is lost, and cooling is needed for quite some time after the reactor has been stopped.

Liquid-Metal Fast-Breeder Reactor works a bit different than the others.. No pressure, and if the temperature goes up it self-corrects due to thermal expansion of the material reducing the probability of a neutron hitting the next atom. If all hell where to break loose and power is lost to the plant and the cooling would stop it has a passive feature where it would dump the fuel into a passively cooled tank where it can cool down without causing damage to the plant, or releasing anything toxic.. These plants cannot melt down, and if there would be some extreme case o

Even for a much bigger mess like Chernobyl, radiation leakage causes few cancer cases, either among people involved in the cleanup or bystandards. For example, see this World Health Organization report on Chernobyl:

http://www.who.int/ionizing_ra...

Recent investigations suggest a doubling of the incidence of leukaemia among the most highly exposed Chernobyl liquidators. No such increase has been clearly demonstrated among children or adults resident in any of the contaminated areas. ...
While scientists have conducted studies to determine whether cancers in many other organs may have been caused by radiation, reviews by the WHO Expert Group revealed no evidence of increased cancer risks, apart from thyroid cancer, that can clearly be attributed to radiation from Chernobyl.

So the people who get a large dose of radiation are twice as likely to develop leukemia, which sucks, but leukemia isn't that common to begin with. Among bystanders, the only measurable increase in cancer was thyroid cancer, and that happened because the USSR did a crappy job (no surprise there) and fed a bunch of kids contaminated milk (see previous link). In short, the thyroid cancer could easily have been prevented -- especially because potassium iodide pills are supposed to be an effective way to prevent thyroid cancer caused by radioactive materials. Thankfully, thyroid cancer has a very high success rate for treatment. (I forget the number, but IIRC it's something like 95%.)

Not surprisingly the "elevated levels of child cancer" linked to in the description applies _only_ to thyroid cancer. Moreover, it's not clear that thyroid cancer in children really spiked. For example, see http://thebreakthrough.org/ind...

Considering that Fukushima was much more contained than Chernobyl, I doubt that we'll see that many cancer cases from Fukushima.

I did some reading on Chernobyl several years ago, and going in, I expected that the disaster would have caused a lot of cancer deaths. I was surprised to learn that it didn't, but it makes sense now that I think about it. Yes, a lot of radioactive material got released, but the world is a _big_ place. One reactor's worth of radioactive material diluted over a large area isn't _that_ big a deal. Yes, it's a big enough deal that it's probably unsafe to live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, but the effect beyond that is quite limited. Even if a reactor goes pop every few decades, it'll still probably cause less environmental damage than all the coal we use in the same period.

Also, http://www.who.int/malaria/pub...

I forgot to link the updated Stockholm Convention decision. It is true that they're trying to get rid of ALL persistent crap - can't blame them. However, DDT is really not that harmful when used properly.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre...

Note the "clean bill of health."

Do my own research, indeed.

"Outbreaks of infectious diseases like Ebola follow a depressing pattern: People start to get sick, public health authorities get wind of the situation, and an all-out scramble begins to determine where the disease started and how it's spreading"

I though Ebola spread because of the traditional burial practices of the indigenous peoples. Namely some traditional healer traveling from the next village over, performing a 'purification' ritual, consisting of a crude form of embalming and 'sitting in' with the deceased. The healer goes back to her home village and dies from Ebola. People from miles around attend the funeral and go back home and spread Ebola. Over three hundred cases from the one funeral ref.

Bad idea. You're making the assumption these things work. The idea is well intentioned, "oh those poor people that have no access to modern western medicine".

Pity the poor Baku in the coastal forest of west Gabon who have a natural immunity and cure for Ebola (There are tribes of Indians in the amazon in Bolivia too. Why? Riddle me this: what does the soil in Bolivia have in common with Senegal? That's the key to Gabon. Wouldn't you rather that than 40 years of trying to make a vaccine that at it's best is 25-75% effective. Note the death rate outside africa. Other than 2 (3?) we didn't hear about, or heard about when their liver had turned to soup, nobody else died of a disease that's up to >99% fatal (WHO).

http://en.ird.fr/the-media-cen...
I think its safe to say it's no longer a "possible" immunity. There's more than one way to skin a cat, and immunization technology from 1720 from the school of homeopathy ("like protects against like"; this remains unacknowledged but unverifiable) is one way but not the only way.

"29 January 2015 Last updated at 00:55 - We've now seen several cases that don't have any symptoms at all, asymptomatic cases," said Anavaj Sakuntabhai who suggested the virus might be mutating.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health...

Giggle. The virus didn't change. People did.

British nurse cured of Ebola credits new drug - and strawberries
"Back in Britain, the decision to try MIL 77 was not difficult. “I said ‘I have Ebola, so, yes, I’d rather have that than high-dose vitamin C,’” she said"
"“I reckon I’ve had 10 punnets,” joked Corporal Anna Cross, who smiled nervously as she talked for the first time after her treatment at the Royal Free Hospital in north London." (10 punnets would be about equal to two 1000mg injections a day)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

April 2015 - semen found infected after 175 days, twice the previous record.
http://io9.com/ebola-survivors...

The Ebola outbreak in Liberia is over
9 May 2015 -- Today marks 42 days since the last confirmed case of Ebola in Liberia was safely buried — the period of time set by WHO to declare an outbreak over. WHO now considers Liberia free of Ebola transmission.
http://apps.who.int/ebola/libe...

Wednesday, May 13, 2015 - Ebola Not Mutating Beyond 'Normal' Rate, Scientists Say
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline...

28 May 2015 | Did real-time epidemic modeling save lives in West Africa?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/compu...

Ask yourself what might have happened on October 17 2014.

"Pity the tribes in South America and North America who never suffer the effects of influenza.
"Folklore of past civilizations report that for every disease afflicting man there is an herb or its equivalent that will effect a cure. In Puerto Rico the story has long been told "that to have the health tree Acerola in one's back yard would keep colds out of the front door." 1 The ascorbic acid content of this cherry-like fruit is thirty times that found in oranges. In Pennsylvania, U.S.A., it was, and for many still is, Boneset, scientifically called Eupatorium perfoliatum 2. Although it is now rarely prescribed by physicians, Boneset was the most commonly used medicinal plant of eastern United States. Most farmsteads had a bundle of dried Boneset in the attic

Do look up how many people dies per year due to pollution due to fossil fuel.. (coal/oil etc)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... -- Hint.. they estimate it to around 2.1Million people annually.

Now when you got that figure go do the same for nuclear...
http://www.who.int/mediacentre...
Quote: "A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded."
But who can trust the WHO right?

Btw, the backround radiation in the city of Chernobyl is about the same as you have in the beaches of brazil.. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guarapari)

And just to remember... Chernobyl had many issues, including not having a real reactor-enclosure and look at the fallout there...

I'm not saying nuclear-power is completely safe...I'm saying that all the alternatives we use (including solar (!!) ) causes more death's per year per produced kwh.

Solar would be great if we had a less dirty production of them..

Nuclear would be great if we spent more research on safer types of reactors...
For example the breeder-reactor *cannot* melt down.. Turn off the power to the whole plant (no cooling etc) and walk away and it will shut down by itself. Another benefit of it is that we can use the spent fuel-rods as fuel for this reactor.. (uses up to 99% of the fuel instead of around 1% as our current reactors do).. So even if not built on a big scale they would be used just to get rid of much of the waste we are going to have to store for thousands of years...

Hydro causes large disasters when a dam breaks.. luckily we have not had too many accidents like that, and they can be made fairly safe.. But it has it's limitations in terms of limited places where it can be built etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

fossil fuel is really dirty.. (btw do have a look at what companies that fund many of the "nuclear is unsafe" articles)

Fusion is probably not going to be viable for at least 10 and 50 years..

Wind and wave energy are probably the most long-term viable options in terms of safety but due to large fluctuations in power-generation and the scale we would need to build it at it will probably not be viable as the only option.. It is a great supplement for other types of power-generation...

So... My 5 cents would be.. nuclear for the base-power / hydro to handle spikes in power-consumption / wind and wave to supplement..

"Well controlled and conducted double-blind studies have shown that symptoms were not correlated with EMF exposure."

Done in one.

"The fact that we have brains hasn't made the world any safer"

Now, I understand that life isn't a zero-sum game, and I don't want to belittle any of the truly horrible things that are happening in the world right now... but on the whole, the world is a safer place than it's been in probably any point in humanity's history.

Violence is down.

People are, on average, living longer, healthier lives.

Poverty is declining, if only slightly.

And so on... never been a better time than right now.
=Smidge=

LMGTFY: http://www.who.int/peh-emf/pub...

The most serious conundrum is RF is so ubiquitous that litigation of and changes in the school
will not solve this if it was real. All the new phones worthy of buying have dual band WIFI hardware, bluetooth,
and a gazillion cell service bands.

Unknown and rejected by the tinfoil hats is the reality that more and closser Cell, WiFi towers and
routers is the only way to enable dynamic systems to operate at lower power levels. The further
away a modern router is the more power a phone or laptop must use to hold up the near end
of transmission pair.

WiFi inside of aircraft... WiFi in coffee shops, WiFi in grocery stores so the stock clerks can
scan and check a gazillon items an hour and via wifi send the data back to the home office three
time zones away. WiFi in an aircraft is interesting... the aircraft would reflect in inside the cabin
and even at low antenna power the RF noise could be a thing.

My guess is the parents of this child put their cell phone in the kids stroller...
and continue to use their devices in the automobile and more.

I would love this to go to court and the judge slam the heck out of the first plaintiff attorney
that flips open a laptop and connect to the courthouse WiFi in the presence of the child.

If their child has a true problem and they have not moved to one of the rare almost RF free
locations the parents need to be relieved of the child by child protective services.

I worry about this too but the risk of a broken leg after tripping over yet another wire
is a bigger risk AFAICT.

Here's what the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health have to say. There was a single female individual in the NIH study that could honestly detect the initiation and termination of a field (power cycling of a device), but when one was already on (or not) she could detect nothing. Other than that, everyone seems to agree that it's mostly psychosomatic in nature and without extensive, double-blind testing the kid has very little chance of winning a diagnosis let alone the suit. I would go with something in the environment other than EMF radiation as a cause, if the little bugger is actually ill at all.

http://www.who.int/violence_in...
Nearly 3 400 people die on the world's roads every day, it means more than a million per year. Tens of millions of people are injured or disabled every year.

How many people are injured by the civil drones? One or two per year, if any? Still commercial drones can in perspective free roads in a city by carrying urgent documents and parcels, instead of delivering by cars.

About 1.24 million people die each year on the world's roads and between 20 and 50 million sustain non-fatal injuries.
http://www.who.int/features/fa...

If we compare injuries from consumer recreational drones with cars' accidents, tens of millions of them each year, the figure would be miniscule, almost nonexistent.

" UV isn't ionizing at least the far UV bands are, the lower bands are close enough in energy to cause photochemical reactions that break bonds so they are treated as ionizing radiation"

[[Citation Needed]]

Meanwhile, both the WHO and Wikipedia note that it is considered non ionizing.

It's not ionizing according the World Health Organization. In the same vein, Wikipedia also lists it as non ionizing.

World Health Organization (WHO) global data by country

After Chernobyl we heard the same predictions

I already said that "whether the estimate is correct or not, it will take decades" because of "the long latency period for some cancers. WHO said in 2005: "The total number of deaths already attributable to Chernobyl or expected in the future over the lifetime of emergency workers and local residents in the most contaminated areas is estimated to be about 4000." Again, the numbers do not matter, or that they only look at the "most contaminated areas" in their estimate. All I was saying was that it is too soon to talk about the death toll, because it will take decades of science to say anything meaningful. The OP argument was like "I locked up 10 people in an airtight room and they were all ok when I checked on them a minute later."

Cars aren't a contagious disease that grows exponentially.
You might think there's a big difference between 20,000 deaths and 200,000 deaths, but with exponential phenomenon you have to take logarithms, it's the difference between 4.3 and 5.3; the models were only off by 20%.

And if you look at it from a really high altitude it is practically the same number.
Or on a scale that only counts complete, round, millions - where 20 thousand and 200 thousand are exactly ZERO.

Just because point and percentage SEEM smaller when you decide to only count orders of magnitude, that does NOT mean that the resulting error isn't HUGE.
Had the same model been used to predict whether a certain building code will produce earthquake-proof buildings, rating them a Richter 7-7.9 instead of 6-6.9 - it would be a pretty fucking CATASTROPHIC error when that 7.0000001 earthquake comes along.

AND on top of that it was NOT a difference between 20k and 200k but a difference between 20,712 and 1,400,000.
Only about 70 times greater number. No biggie. What's an order or two of magnitude when spreading panic, right?
Also, it is CASES - not deaths. Than number is even lower, about half of that - 11158

And that's why cars.
Number of deaths by cars is a real, constant and present - ergo it is BORING. Not sensational enough.
But some strange African disease... Oh my!
Better lock up your doors, tape over the windows and don't leave your home unless you want to die horribly!
Like in a burning metal can, bleeding from hundreds of small wounds but conscious enough to smell gasoline all over you while those flames keep lapping towards you...
And your back is broken so you can't even kill yourself while you wait to first start cooking then burning to death...

even if you live in the West, if you weren't scared rigid by the Ebola outbreak, you didn't understand what just happened

No.
It means you're not prone to panic resulting from conjunction fallacy, applied to a strange, foreign, wild, African, deadly disease, running rampant as locals reject treatment, release diseased people out of quarantine and spread the disease everywhere...

BTW... Did you know that there are 250,000 - 500,000 deaths from that harmless disease called the flu?
That's just silly... who dies from flu... I had flu... nobody dies from flu.
Avian flu on the other hand... Now that's dangerous.

Number of avian flu deaths?
One 73 year old Chinese woman with an arm's length list of diseases to her name.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12...
BTW, average life expectancy in China - 75.
77 for women.

Ebola likes hot, humid climate and presence of monkeys and bats so the virus can keep on "simmering" all year long.
And it really loves open casket funerals where everyone touches and kisses the dead person.
It also loves rural areas with little or no medical resources or staff available.

It DOESN'T LIKE quarantine in colder, drier climates, stricter funeral rules and readily available cheap disinfectants... well... cheap in a developed Western country with adequate sanitation and medical facilities and staff.

As a bonus, people get sick quick and start dying really soon. And with no simmering bats and monkeys around... it dies out.

Hint: Despite every king and his uncle prancing around Africa during the colonial age, spreading diseases and generally doing stupid things like biting native women - no epidemic of Ebola ever made it to Europe.
Unlike flu.

can you give me an example of a home school kid infecting anyone because of lack of vaccines?

Measles at Disneyland.

Patient 0 for the Disneyland outbreak had just returned from the Philippines, which is a measles hot zone, and did not self-quarantine for a couple of weeks before mixing with the public, and so did not know he was sick.

Here are the WHO statistics on the number of cases of various diseases reported for various countries, through 2014:

http://apps.who.int/immunizati...

The Philippines has the highest incidence of measles of any country (but China, with a vastly larger population, is not that far behind).

The only way I even know the name is because George Bailey saved the pharmacist from poisoning a kid with it in "It's a Wonderful Life." And the last recorded case of it in Europe was decades ago. So did it go hide out for a while in Africa or something?

It's endemic in some populations; also: a bacteria, Corynebacterium diphtheriae, not a virus, FWIW.

Yes. There are large reservoirs of the bacteria in many North African countries, as well as Pakistan. What's only noted in a couple of places is that while the kid was "a resident of Olot (Girona)", the kids origin was as an adoption of an immigrant child.

To see the reservoirs, here is the World Health Organization data on reported cases by country through 2014:

http://apps.who.int/immunizati...

If you care, you can also look at diseases other than Diphtheria, across the top of the chart. For example, there were 52'628 cases of measles in China in 2014, and there are rather large reservoirs in the Philippines as well (which is whre the person who was pation zero in the Disneyland measles outbreak had just travelled into the U.S. from, presumably infectious at the time they travelled. Somalia, India, Ethiopia, Viet Nam, and China also have significant measles reservoirs.

http://apps.who.int/immunizati...

Of course, we don't perform health examinations or quarantines on people traveling from these hot zones into the U.S.

P.S. India, the U.S., and Australia are the top reservoirs for pertussis (whooping cough), so it'd be a good idea to check those people too, if they happen to be coming into your country.

The only way I even know the name is because George Bailey saved the pharmacist from poisoning a kid with it in "It's a Wonderful Life." And the last recorded case of it in Europe was decades ago. So did it go hide out for a while in Africa or something?

It's endemic in some populations; also: a bacteria, Corynebacterium diphtheriae, not a virus, FWIW.

Yes. There are large reservoirs of the bacteria in many North African countries, as well as Pakistan. What's only noted in a couple of places is that while the kid was "a resident of Olot (Girona)", the kids origin was as an adoption of an immigrant child.

To see the reservoirs, here is the World Health Organization data on reported cases by country through 2014:

http://apps.who.int/immunizati...

If you care, you can also look at diseases other than Diphtheria, across the top of the chart. For example, there were 52'628 cases of measles in China in 2014, and there are rather large reservoirs in the Philippines as well (which is whre the person who was pation zero in the Disneyland measles outbreak had just travelled into the U.S. from, presumably infectious at the time they travelled. Somalia, India, Ethiopia, Viet Nam, and China also have significant measles reservoirs.

http://apps.who.int/immunizati...

Of course, we don't perform health examinations or quarantines on people traveling from these hot zones into the U.S.

P.S. India, the U.S., and Australia are the top reservoirs for pertussis (whooping cough), so it'd be a good idea to check those people too, if they happen to be coming into your country.

News like this makes me angry and sad at the same time. The problem is that it's all so complicated that one cannot really understand the matter without spending years of work and research on it, and even then a citizen only gets a subset of all information that was presented.

You know what makes me angry and sad? The false assertion people need to become domain experts to make informed decisions. The health effects of EDCs are well known.

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitst...

In this case merits of EU regulation don't even matter. There was no evidence offered new data was provided to support changing policy. Local policy seems to have been sidetracked by political concerns.

Unfortunately reality continues to exists independent of politics.

No... but if every single person in the world donated 10 cents once we would get >$700M.... Invest that money with a modest 1% return we would have >$60M per year for this... And that is load's more than the $10M number (i read from other posts) we currently spend on these things..

The avarage income in the world is ~$10,000 ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga... )
Avarage lifespan is 71 years ( http://www.who.int/gho/mortali... )

So.. $10000 * 71 years = $710000 .1 cent of $710000 = .00000014% of a lifetime income..

Odds of being killed by an astroid:
1 in 74,817,414 ( http://www.cnet.com/news/odds-... ) .000000013%

Do the same calculations on how much we invest to reduce other risks...

Why is a solution needed?

Acid Test: Rising CO2 Levels Killing Ocean Life | Conservation Climate

The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct | Motherboard

WHO | 7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution

Air pollution costs Europe $1.6tn a year in early deaths and disease, say WHO | Environment | The Guardian

Abrupt Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future - YouTube

Worst Case Climate Change (2008 TED Talk) - YouTube

Oops - the link

I am getting bored of posting this link. READ IT. Now explain your theory.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre...

This may give you some idea of how dangerous measles is. Admittedly in the west when the numbers of affected are low, so good treatment can be provided to those afflicted, the survival rate is pretty good. (not counting the survived but were harmed rate)
http://www.who.int/mediacentre...

Key facts

Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available.
In 2013, there were 145 700 measles deaths globally – about 400 deaths every day or 16 deaths every hour.
Measles vaccination resulted in a 75% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2013 worldwide.
In 2013, about 84% of the world's children received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services – up from 73% in 2000.
During 2000-2013, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 15.6 million deaths making measles vaccine one of the best buys in public health.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre...

The autism claims are entirely discredited now.

Yes, but everyone is ignoring the fact that the DPT shot has been proven to be the cause of SIDS. An adverse physiological response of shallow breathing occurs 7-14 days after administering the shot. When's the last time you heard anyone advertise a stern warning about that?

Why issue a warning about false information? http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/detection/immunization_misconceptions/en/index4.html

Your French cousins must be idiots. According to the World Health Organization, France has one of the best healthcare systems in the world. On top of that, your cousins already have access to American Health Care. All they have to do is come over here and bring a ton of cash. Unless they're independently wealthy, France and never speak ill of their healthcare system again after they saw the bill from an American hospital.

Republicans scare me as well, but so too do the Democrats. Who thought turning over even more health care to the insurance companies was a good idea? They're the slimeballs who screwed it up in the first place. And try to get Democrats to understand the problem we'll have paying for all entitlements when they come due. They look at you like you are from Mars, claiming, by the way, the SS trust fund has x dollars in it. Really?[...]

I'm not an American, so I don't know the details. But if you are talking about making sure that everyone has healthcare insurance, that seems simply common sense. Because in healthcare there is no choice. If someone gets ill it's better to do something about it sooner than later. If you wait till later it will get much worse (life threatening) at which moment the medical costs will be much higher. And those costs need to be paid too.
So by making sure everyone has access to healthcare all the time you save everyone a big bunch of money! Don't believe me? Compare the amounts the US is spending on healthcare per gross domestic product compared to other developed coutries (tip: it's much higher) Link to WHO.
And that while all this money is used to pamper a few very rich on one hand and to perform the basic life threatening procedures on the rest.

Do you have any citations for your first paragraph? It looks like utter nonsense to me. For example, people aren't necessarily immune to a disease after getting it.

Immunity against measles in populations of women and infants in Poland. Low titers of measles antibody in mothers whose infants suffered from measles before eligible age for measles vaccination. Outbreaks of Measles have occurred in schools with 99% vaccination rates.

As far as your second paragraph goes, the useful question is not "Does the MMR vaccine kill more people than measles kills in a mostly immunized population?" but rather "Does the MMR vaccine kill more people than measles would kill in a mostly unimmunized population?".

Yes, I have thought about that. Most people are vaccinated for Measles so there are a lot less people getting it that would otherwise if the whole population were not vaccinated. But still, the primary cause of problems from Measles is due to the complications that arise from things like dehydration or poor nutrition. Ask your older relatives how many people they knew when younger that died of Measles. I bet you won't find any. Everybody got it and it wasn't a big deal then. Today it is made out to be a big deal. If you are some starving African kid with no medical attention it can be a problem. But that kid probably doesn't have access to the MMR shot anyway. Here in the USA we have good nutrition and access to medical care. Complications from Measles would be rather rare.

Severe complications from measles can be avoided through supportive care that ensures good nutrition, adequate fluid intake and treatment of dehydration with WHO-recommended oral rehydration solution. This solution replaces fluids and other essential elements that are lost through diarrhoea or vomiting. Antibiotics should be prescribed to treat eye and ear infections, and pneumonia.

All children in developing countries diagnosed with measles should receive two doses of vitamin A supplements, given 24 hours apart. This treatment restores low vitamin A levels during measles that occur even in well-nourished children and can help prevent eye damage and blindness. Vitamin A supplements have been shown to reduce the number of deaths from measles by 50%.

Yeah, because no-one every dies from measels. The person who dies every 4 minutes from measels doesn't count.

Source:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre...
145,700 deaths from measels in 2013, one every 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

in 1980, before mass vaccinations it was killing 2.6 million per year

And....uh... why should you be granted the right to make those decisions for me?

Because when your dumbass overdoses on heroin you expect me to both save it and pick up the bill for doing so. You want to live in a Libertarian paradise? Can we start by letting OD victims die without wasting public resources on them? As in, the EMTs show up, see the heroin kit, and leave? Somehow I doubt you'd be willing to get behind that notion.

Some drugs are regulated for the public good. Should antibiotics be freely available to any idiot who wants them?

Long life does not equal quality life.

Yes, it does, according to the World Health Organization. The "healthy life expectancy" ranking nearly mirrors the "average life expectancy" one. Excluding microscopic fiscal havens for billionaires, Japan is first, followed by Italy, Spain and Switzerland.

http://apps.who.int/gho/data/n...

Obviously there might be several different reasons: maybe green tea for the Japanese, healthy lifestyle and food for the Italians and the Spaniards, excellent healthcare for the Swiss. But height really doesn't seem to have any correlation to "quality" life at all, since those countries aren't exactly known for having tall citizens. For how "tolerant" they might be, data say that the Dutch live shorter AND worse lives than the people above.

Electromagnetic fields and public health: radars and human health, Fact sheet N226

WHO has also concluded that there is no convincing scientific evidence that exposure to RF shortens the life span of humans, or that RF is an inducer or promoter of cancer.

The German Wikipedia article on generic drugs. I assumed that the English article would contain similar data. That's an assumption I really need to drop; it virtually never holds.

The cites are as follows:

2006 data: The Generic Pharmaceutical Association: ANNUAL REPORT 2008. Generics: The Right Choice for Better Health. February 7th, 2008; downloaded on December 28th, 2012.

2000 data: World Health Organisation: The World Medicines Situation. September 8th, 2004; downloaded on December 31st, 2012.
(Note: I screwed up here by overlooking a footnote in the Wikipedia article. The 45% figure is not from 2000 but from 1998.)

Your circumstitions.com website belongs with the anti-vaxers and flat earth societies.
Please, try a Google search and pick a reputable web site such as this:
http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/...
From the WHO:
"There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%. Three randomized controlled trials have shown that male circumcision provided by well trained health professionals in properly equipped settings is safe. WHO/UNAIDS recommendations emphasize that male circumcision should be considered an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in countries and regions with heterosexual epidemics, high HIV and low male circumcision prevalence."

You're not even close to the worst. http://apps.who.int/gho/data/v...

According to the WHO, what you are describing is 'heavy episodic drinking', which is defiined as '60 or more grams of pure alcohol consumed on one occasion in the last 30 days'.

In France (by your accounting nobody there does heavy episodic drinking), 43.7% of male drinkers (or 42.2% of the entire male population) engage in heavy episodic drinking. France has the lowest (worst) score for years life shortened by alcohol.

In the US (by your account, all drinkers are heavy episodic drinkers), 30.9% of male drinkers (or 23.2% of the entire male population) engage in heavy episodic drinking.

My father-in-law died of alcoholism. He was never passed out, he was never falling-down drunk, he was never in bar fights. He had built up such a tolerance to alcohol that it seemed to have no effect on him. Nevertheless, that is NOT 'drinking in moderation'.

Maybe it is time to adjust your ever-so-wrong stereotypes and definition of what 'moderation' means.

Yeah, or maybe it's because this outbreak killed more people than all previous outbreaks combined. For example this report from 2003 lists 128 total deaths in a remote area of the Congo, at the peak of this outbreak there were more people than that dying per day in Sierra Leone. It's pretty understandable that you don't spend billions on research and development for a drug that might be used on 40 people per year on average but would on a drug that can stop a global pandemic.

This toy is incredibly dangerous because uranium is toxic. While it is only 1/10th as toxic as something like arsenic, it is almost as toxic as aspirin. A child ingesting that uranium may very well die. On a completely unrelated note: uranium is radioactive too.

Data:
LD50 of arsenic: 15mg/kg
LD50 of uranium: 115mg/kg
LD50 of aspirin: 200mg/kg

Sources:
http://whs.rocklinusd.org/docu...
http://www.who.int/ionizing_ra...

Even with the regulations, several major brands that are considered (perhaps undeservedly) reputable were selling fakes. Imagine if there were no regulations.

Just in case anyone thinks this problem is limited to over the counter herbal supplements:

General information on counterfeit medicines
Counterfeit Medicine
Cracking Down on Counterfeit Drugs
The deadly world of fake medicine

Yes, even in the US, even with all the regulations, it happens more than most people think.

Sorry, I'm most likely to die from heart disease.

Indeed, your argument would be stronger with the proper citation: World Health Organization: The top 10 causes of death

31,000 extra deaths due to cold weather and the flu in 2013:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

584,000 deaths due to malaria in the same year:

http://www.who.int/features/fa...

Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes, which rely on warm weather to live. And that's just one warm weather related cause of death that will go up as the planet warms. :. A warming planet will be a deadlier planet than a cooling planet.

What Africa really needs to fight Ebola is to stop traditional burial practices, such as allowing traditional healers to wash the dead body and then travel back to their home village and spread the contagion. Where there is one case, quarantine the village and cremate the deceased. To quote: "Ebola victims are most infectious right after death—which means that West African burial practices, where families touch the bodies, are spreading the disease like wildfire." In Guinea, 60% of all cases had been linked to traditional burial practices."