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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In fact, this tirade looks like a bunch of over-the-top descriptions meant to appeal to peoples' emotions and prejudices - that is, baseless fearmongering.
It is not my responsibility to educate you with every comment that I make. My comment was a response to the article, and it's absurdities.
If you are too lazy, or perhaps you just don't care enough to look the details of factory farming up for yourself, why are you willing to publicly denounce other people on the same topic?
To address the article directly: only factory farming has animals penned so tightly they can't even stand up. Only factory farming makes the air so foul that you still can't breath on the next farm over. Only factory farming requires the air in the barns to be completely turned over every 20 minutes to prevent the animals inside from suffocating on fumes from decomposing feces.