Hopefully you have the same water filtration scheme as the bottling companies.
Quite possibly he has a better one.:-)
I doubt the bottling companies do anything more than bare minimum required to meet the norm. Anything other would only increase costs.
On the other hand, when you know that you will drink the water yourself, then you *really* care. >:-)
Cancer is not a simple disease caused by a damage of a single gene. There are too many genes that can, under "proper" circumstances, cause or promote cancer. In most cases, this is not a type of one genetic damage but a complex structure of various events, some of them external. Even with the hardest eugenics, you won't be able to eradicate, or even limit, this type of disease; in fact, you will probably end with the contrary. The risk of malignant growth is too intertwined with the very basical functioning of cells themselves; there is always a need for creation of new cells, and always there is a risk of a runaway loop.
Secondly, if a young person is diagnosed with a type of cancer that is known to be hereditary, he or she is informed by the doctor and probably will decide either not to try having his/her own children, or take special care to minimize the risks.
Honestly, if this was the case of my kid's school, I would be pretty angry. Doubly so if I were the kid. My reasoning is, roughly, as follows:
1. It is just another implementation of an all-seeing eye that sees all "sins" and reports to some higher authority. This is, in my opinion, a serious threat. Freedom is a real freedom only if it allows an option that can be self-destructive. Without it, we are no longer human beings, just slaves under supervision. Do we really want to teach our kids to be less than humans, to always rely on a higher supervision?
2. The current focus on "healthy" food starts to look like a twisted religion, pretty unhealthy in itself. People seem to believe that just "healthy lifestyle" will protect them against everything, exactly like old Catholics believed that spiritual purity is a key to eternal life. But this is simply not true; there are enormous numbers of illnesses that attack people regardless of what they eat; and finally we all will fall ill and die. Yes, of course the diet makes *some* difference, but it is not a panacea, and it is deeply unfair to poison kids' minds with pretending otherwise.
3. None of us, not even the school board, not even the state, is omniscient. Everyone can make mistakes. And the science of wellness and healthy life is an essay in mistakes; every few years it is revised, sometimes substantially, and every decade or so it is completely turned upside down. What if *we* are wrong and the kid's instincts are right?
4. Finally, every human is unique and slightly different in metabolism. Who is wise enough to decide what is the best for him/her? With problems like this, I always remember the Tales of Pirx the Pilot: "Ground control has no right to muck with the decisions of the captain. The situation may look different from the ground than in the commander's seat." Let the kid, as any other human, be in the commander's seat. It is their body, not ours.
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully you have the same water filtration scheme as the bottling companies.
Quite possibly he has a better one. :-)
I doubt the bottling companies do anything more than bare minimum required to meet the norm. Anything other would only increase costs.
On the other hand, when you know that you will drink the water yourself, then you *really* care. >:-)
Sir, your opinion is both ugly and wrong.
Cancer is not a simple disease caused by a damage of a single gene. There are too many genes that can, under "proper" circumstances, cause or promote cancer. In most cases, this is not a type of one genetic damage but a complex structure of various events, some of them external. Even with the hardest eugenics, you won't be able to eradicate, or even limit, this type of disease; in fact, you will probably end with the contrary. The risk of malignant growth is too intertwined with the very basical functioning of cells themselves; there is always a need for creation of new cells, and always there is a risk of a runaway loop.
Secondly, if a young person is diagnosed with a type of cancer that is known to be hereditary, he or she is informed by the doctor and probably will decide either not to try having his/her own children, or take special care to minimize the risks.
Honestly, if this was the case of my kid's school, I would be pretty angry. Doubly so if I were the kid. My reasoning is, roughly, as follows:
1. It is just another implementation of an all-seeing eye that sees all "sins" and reports to some higher authority. This is, in my opinion, a serious threat. Freedom is a real freedom only if it allows an option that can be self-destructive. Without it, we are no longer human beings, just slaves under supervision. Do we really want to teach our kids to be less than humans, to always rely on a higher supervision?
2. The current focus on "healthy" food starts to look like a twisted religion, pretty unhealthy in itself. People seem to believe that just "healthy lifestyle" will protect them against everything, exactly like old Catholics believed that spiritual purity is a key to eternal life. But this is simply not true; there are enormous numbers of illnesses that attack people regardless of what they eat; and finally we all will fall ill and die. Yes, of course the diet makes *some* difference, but it is not a panacea, and it is deeply unfair to poison kids' minds with pretending otherwise.
3. None of us, not even the school board, not even the state, is omniscient. Everyone can make mistakes. And the science of wellness and healthy life is an essay in mistakes; every few years it is revised, sometimes substantially, and every decade or so it is completely turned upside down. What if *we* are wrong and the kid's instincts are right?
4. Finally, every human is unique and slightly different in metabolism. Who is wise enough to decide what is the best for him/her? With problems like this, I always remember the Tales of Pirx the Pilot: "Ground control has no right to muck with the decisions of the captain. The situation may look different from the ground than in the commander's seat." Let the kid, as any other human, be in the commander's seat. It is their body, not ours.