2692: Who Watches the Watchmen?

[Sparrow]

i don't know what to tell you, Apia. i'm still trying to reconcile it myself. i'm neither mystified nor surprised from the lack of response, i'm just…god, disappointed is not the right word, but take that and multiply it by infinity.

[Hera]

Originally Posted by Apia

About smoking and so on.
60 years ago physicians recommended cigarettes and people thought smoking is fine.
But this is very long ago.
So it's possible to know it's bad. After all the lawsuits against the tabaco industry.

When it comes to food, it's more complicated but that lots of sugar isn't great should be known.
When it comes to others carbs and fat, the scientific opinions changed often in the last years.

I was in high school in the early 1970s and even back then we had creepy old people with tracheotomies come to our school and talk thru their throat hole to warn us of the dangers of smoking.

[Hera]

Originally Posted by Apia

And of course we have some white supremacists here too.
But I thought you would despise Nazis as you freed Europe from them.
And here it's a crime to expose symbols like swasticas.

Most of us do despise Nazis, but there is a new generation growing up unconnected to the lessons of history. And, racism has always been alive and well throughout the world, at all times and all places.

[Jmsmittyroad]

I voted with Chemda on the poll because it wasn't that we didn't know smoking/sugar were bad, but the level has always been down played. My dad smoked for forty years and tried to quit more times than I can count. If wasn't until much later and after being sued did the tobacco company admit that they messed with nicotine levels and it was deadly.

We have known that too much sugar would make you fat or rot your teeth, but we are several court cases away from industry admitting that sugar is addictive and deadly. By then the damages will be huge and before that we will have listen to years of "why didn't you just quit" or "sure, you didn't know sugar was bad" arguments. So General Mills doesn't have to pay anything.

To this end read Gary Taubes "the case against sugar". I read it, was horrified,but still eat cupcakes. What can I say, I was jonesing.

[Hera]

Originally Posted by Jmsmittyroad

I voted with Chemda on the poll because it wasn't that we didn't know smoking/sugar were bad, but the level has always been down played. My dad smoked for forty years and tried to quit more times than I can count. If wasn't until much later and after being sued did the tobacco company admit that they messed with nicotine levels and it was deadly.

hmm well, i don't know where or when you went to school, but again, in NJ in the early 1970s they had special school assemblies to let you know it caused everything from wrinkles to lung cancer. Maybe in subsequent decades they stopped educating kids about this??

[Jmsmittyroad]

Originally Posted by Hera

hmm well, i don't know where or when you went to school, but again, in NJ in the early 1970s they had special school assemblies to let you know it caused everything from wrinkles to lung cancer. Maybe in subsequent decades they stopped educating kids about this??

That was for our generation. For our parents it was promoted as cool and our grandparents were told it could help some medical issues. My grandfather was told to start smoking in the military because it would stop his nosebleeds. It took a huge legal effort to turn that around.

[Hera]

Originally Posted by Jmsmittyroad

That was for our generation. For our parents it was promoted as cool and our grandparents were told it could help some medical issues. My grandfather was told to start smoking in the military because it would stop his nosebleeds. It took a huge legal effort to turn that around.

The Greatest Generation! I think nowadays we're all more skeptical about both advertising and whatever the medical establishment tells us. And maybe bc Chemda didn't go to public school (? I don't think??) she never learned about this in the '90s.

[Jmsmittyroad]

Originally Posted by Hera

The Greatest Generation! I think nowadays we're all more skeptical about both advertising and whatever the medical establishment tells us. And maybe bc Chemda didn't go to public school (? I don't think??) she never learned about this in the '90s.

I do think that we as a culture are more skeptical, but not because we are more sophisticated. It is because we have been lied to by bullshit advertising like Apia posted and after enough people died and the companies were sued into oblivion the truth finally came out. I would be willing to bet that Chemda's private school did have some education program, but it was similar to the limp-wristed, corporate sponsored, bullshit that I heard in the public school. Mainly, because RJ Reynolds had poison to sell and all they would allow is "you better cut down" speeches, not "This is fucking you" speeches. That didn't come till later.

[Jmsmittyroad]

My bigger point was that the pattern we saw with nicotine and cigarettes we will get to see again with sugar in about 15 or 20 years.

there will be lawsuits and we will learn that the sugar levels in foods were increased to get people addicted and that sugar does far more damage than we were led to believe, and that companies knew about these problems for decades before laws to limit levels are even discussed.

[da_ticklah]

The cigarette companies were fucking liars so much so that laws were passed to stop their lies

Ask Your Dentist - Outrageous vintage cigarette ads - Pictures - CBS News


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