Re:Microplastics found in the placentas of human fetuses
by starkd on Tuesday December 22, 2020 @06:03PM
(#25512478)
Ofcourse. Any new technology or product will have negative repercussions. Just a question of the extent. But don't assume newer is necessarily is better. There's also a perverse incentive among litigation enthusiasts just to find harm a product does and then amplify it out of proportion. It's kind of a cottage industry. Asbestos was an incredibly efficient insulation. I don't think anything has matched it. Just not when its mishandled.
Re:Microplastics found in the placentas of human fetuses
by dusted on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @05:31AM
(#25516258)
Yes, that's the thing, a lot of people died of asbestos, but more people would likely have frozen or burned to death without it.. It's good that we're getting rid of it, because we now have the technology to replace almost all of its uses with sufficiently effective and less dangerous alternatives.
It does not mean that its use was a mistake, but it's continued use would be, as we have an intrinsic responsibility to always seek safer alternatives when we discover the negative effects-
Coal power definitely saved a lot of lives, and probably more than it killed, but it introduced new problems, not worse one, highly probably less-bad problems, but problems nevertheless, shouldn't mean that we ban coal tomorrow, but that we should (as we somewhat are) work toward fixing the new problems.
The same goes for all technologies, they generally save a lot of people from A but then causes B which is a new, less efficient source of death. This is one of the situations where we should strive to have our cake and eat it too. Hell, asbestos probably helped save more lives than it took, we just found something less terrible to replace it with.