Wait... so creating scenarios where the chances of getting diseases is bad? So cities are bad? Hospitals? MRSA was produced in hospitals, are all these ideas bad?
I believe these ideas need work. The human race tends to blindly run in a direction until it hits a wall, so our current wall is bird flu and swine flu. Sure, we need to improve our course of direction or find ways to mitigate against these diseases but I don't think it helps trying to paint this "running" as being more "immoral", "wrong" or "greedy" than it would otherwise be.
MRSA was produced in hospitals, are all these ideas bad?
Yes. MRSA is a result of bad use of antibiotics and bad hygiene practice in hospitals. Studies have shown that when a hospital goes above and beyond in enforcing hygiene MRSA, and all other infections, drop perspicuously. We also know that proper use of antibiotics almost never results in antibiotic resistant bacterial strains.
So the practices that lead to MRSA, and those include farm use of antibiotics, are bad and should be changed.
We don't really have a solution to resistant bacteria in hospitals. You have to go there to get medical care, and everything has to be cleaned. This combination of sick people and constant disinfection creates resistant bacterial strains, but unfortunately, the human race does not yet know how to fix this problem. We are doing our best.
Factory farming, on the other hand, is harmful to animals and the general health of the planet. We know how to avoid the problems, but it takes a few months longer to get the meat from the animals that way, and time is money. Plus, creating a worldwide pandemic doesn't cut into the profit margin -- treating the animals humanely does. You want cheap meat, riiiight?
Why don't we return to older mechanisms of healing people. Why have hospitals for efficiency when we can have more traveling and local doctors?
Factory healthcare is harmful to humans, we know how to avoid these problems but it would be expensive to fund this way and money is money.
You want cheap healthcare, riiight?
Sorry to me mean and argumentative but I think you're adding some FUD to this debate. The issue at hand is bird flu and swine flu and prevention of these. However I note that animal rights is also being pushed as an agenda. I'm not sure _everyone_ cares about that.
Really? You think cities are the equivalent of industrial farms? That the human experience is exactly like cows huddled in their own shit with no room to turn around? Like pigs forced into quarters where they go crazy and eat the tails of the pigs in front of them? Really?
No. Cities are more likely to breed human disease than lots of small hamlets. That's all.
The argument being put forward is that anything that creates disease is bad. My argument is that a lot of what we already have is built with that trade-off against us.
That wasn't the argument at all, that was your absurdist disingenuous interpretation of the argument. Anything that creates disease is a pretty wide net. He was specifically talking about industrial farms, because they seem to have particularly dangerous conditions in this regard.
Staph bacteria are normal flora. In some circumstances they can become infection, usually if you have a compromised immune system. Due to negligent use of antibiotics, a resistant strain now exists.
The diseases produced in factory farms have the potential to kill you in your house, and kill healthy children and adults. In fact, the conditions in these farms is almost ideal to produce such a flu strain.
A pandemic doesn't come about from diseases that evolve within the same population, for at least 2 reasons. The first is that the disease co-evolves with the population, and being a pandemic is not a good survival strategy. A dead host cannot continue to spread copies of a disease. Secondly, large parts of the population would have partial immunity from infections leading up to a would be 'pandemic' strain, causing it to not be a pandemic at all.
So to answer a later point, lots of disconnected hamlets are far more likely to breed pandemics, since a disease can evolve to be highly virulent in one population, and suddenly get dumped on a population with no natural (through antibodies or natural selection) resistance to it.
Wow, so just because the current design of hospitals is so bad it breeds microbes that cause incurable diseases, nothing else that isn't that bad should be improved?
If someone can afford organic food and doesn't wish to partake as a guinea pig in the experiment if low dose pesticides have long-term harmful effects, why shouldn't they?
Reality is that it is impossible to determine if low doses of toxins or chemicals with hormone mimicking effects have adverse long-term effects in people. Anyone who wishes to be a guinea pig in the experiment can line up.
I believe these ideas need work. The human race tends to blindly run in a direction until it hits a wall, so our current wall is bird flu and swine flu. Sure, we need to improve our course of direction or find ways to mitigate against these diseases but I don't think it helps trying to paint this "running" as being more "immoral", "wrong" or "greedy" than it would otherwise be.