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Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by sbehlasp on Thursday April 08, 2021 @12:55PM (#26741090)
Surprise to see that we are pointing and blaming one chemical only here. PFAS, a class of more than 4,000 different chemicals, is everywhere [https://on.natgeo.com/2Q2UtMS] food, water we drink and even in our blood. We don't even know when and how we are consuming it directly or indirectly. Do we have any kind of full proof study about all 4000 chemicals, that how these chemicals would be affecting our health! I think nature has already been polluted/damaged to an extent which is kind-a irreversible. Hoping for the better world.
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by yabones on Thursday April 08, 2021 @01:46PM (#26741664)
PFAS is going to be the asbestos of our generation, except it won't be so easy to get rid of this time around. It's more like the asbestos of every future generation until we find a way to reliably break it down.
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by Layke1123 on Thursday April 08, 2021 @04:47PM (#26743559)
That or it will be a natural form of selection for old age, increasing human longevity at the expense of temporary population reduction. Let's hope artificial gene therapy is within our lifetimes or hope we drew the golden ticket.
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by 542354234235 on Friday April 09, 2021 @10:04AM (#26750734)
If you have already had children and raised them to adulthood (Alzheimer’s first appears primarily in your mid 60s or later), what exactly is the selective pressure mechanism?
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by Layke1123 on Friday April 09, 2021 @01:30PM (#26753415)
Genetic sequencing. We will eliminate the embryos we don't want.
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by 542354234235 on Friday April 09, 2021 @01:43PM (#26753589)
>it will be a natural form of selection for old age, increasing human longevity

I don't think genetic sequencing falls into the category of "natural selection".

Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by Layke1123 on Saturday April 10, 2021 @12:41PM (#26762786)
Ok people not wanting to have kids because of a family history of Parkinson's disease.
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by sjg007 on Thursday April 08, 2021 @01:09PM (#26741254)
PFAS is on furniture, clothes, cooking ware, food containers, firefighting foam and so forth. The firefighting foam gets it into the water table as do badly managed dumps.

It's been detected in milk, eggs, water..

Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by ed25519FUUU on Thursday April 08, 2021 @01:12PM (#26741303)
I sometimes think back about our attitudes towards lead, mercury, and even radium[1], and I truly wonder how we survived as a specifies!

I am grateful that collectively things seem to be improving. We're learning more about diseases, their causes, and their treatments.

1. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/24/an-energy-drink-th...

Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by outworlder on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:34PM (#26742155)
Frankly, this could be the Great Filter.
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by jschwartzi on Thursday April 08, 2021 @04:40PM (#26743492)
This kind of thing is what eventually kills off Brewer's Yeast. The individual yeast cells keep making sugar into alcohol until the alcohol concentration is so great that they kill each other off.
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by jwdunne on Friday April 09, 2021 @02:20AM (#26747264)
You know what, that is a fascinating analogy and microcosmic explanation of the Great Filter. I’ve never thought of that before.
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by mycall on Thursday April 08, 2021 @09:43PM (#26745888)
No, that is Facebook right now :)
Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by Nasrudith on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:05PM (#26741861)
We don't even know how all of our bodily chemicals affect our health. It is because nature is inherently a messy and complex process. Unknowns are the default state and a fact of life.

Now consuming them may not be ideal but the fear of the unknown is overemphasized. We already know from pharmacology that higher effectiveness needs fewer data instances to prove from the strength of the effect. The more powerful something's effect not noticing it becomes increasingly improbable as patterns should become increasingly obvious in large numbers. Try not to notice plutonium toxicity.

The fact we aren't seeing more immediate effects from higher level of exposure suggests it is not catastrophic - may not be good but it is an implicit upper bound on harm based upon what we see cannot be possible. To give an absurd example we know PFAS does not cause people's heads to explode at current levels of exposure because there have been zero reports of people's heads exploding without a known cause.

Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by whatshisface on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:22PM (#26742654)
>there have been zero reports of people's heads exploding without a known cause.

There is a long list of common and unexplained medical problems like fibromyalgia awaiting an explanation like "that water you've been drinking is toxic." There is no shortage of illnesses that could potentially be caused by a problem like that.

Re:Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chem... by 542354234235 on Friday April 09, 2021 @10:09AM (#26750776)
>The fact we aren't seeing more immediate effects from higher level of exposure suggests it is not catastrophic

>Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding

I wouldn't exactly call exploding rates of a brain destroying incurable disease a good thing.