Allergy and Toxins: The Irony of Health Obcession

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by TruthSeeker, Jun 2, 2006.

  1. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    Half of the world population has proven you wrong. Take a look at India and China, just to start with.

    PS: yes, fucking is one of their talents...

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  3. Roman Banned Banned

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    It did. One of the problems with malaria is that it goes dormant for a bit, then comes out to attack your blood cells. For me it happened every october from 5th grade to 9th grade. I think I picked it up in Kalimantan, and totally ruined my Bali vacation. Fever, chills, nausea, followed by an ear or throat infection. Absolutely incapacitating. I really have no idea what it is, but every time I go back to the tropics, it's tropical fever all over again. Sometimes my temp. hovers at 99.9° or 100° for a week. Really uncomfortable.

    But I haven't had a real illness in ages. *knocks on wood*

    Malaria is a protists, related to giardia, which is another really terrible disease. Giardia lives in your gut until you medicate for it. Your ass can leak feces for a month.

    Interestingly, people with sickle cell anemia are practically immune to malaria, while those with only one allele for sickle cell anemia are resistant. Africans, to have a steady population, must have at the least, 4 kids, as 1 will be sickle cell free and die from malaria one wil die from anemia. Cool, huh?
     
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  5. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    That's why sickle cell is prevelant in Africa- it is actually "beneficial"...

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  7. Roman Banned Banned

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    Well, it's beneficial when you only have some of it.

    When ever a region gets improved healthcare, the population explodes, as there are entire generations of people that should have died. Anti-malarial medicine and the like in Africa helped contribute to the population explosion.

    When AIDS get cures (yeah, right), you can bet the population of Africa will quadruple. However, it's also those population explosions that drive social and indstrial change.
     
  8. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    Population explosions don't drive any kind of social improvement. Yes you need people to do labour, but what drives the growth is a combination of labour, capital and land...

    Anyways... we are getting kinda off-topic now...
     
  9. Roman Banned Banned

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    Japan didn't have much land. Nor did Britain (until they got all those nifty colonies that served as both markets and sources of raw material).

    Nothing happens without people. The two biggest factors on production are the cost of labor and the number of consumers. If you can produce cheaply for a large market, you're in business.
     
  10. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, but what if everyone is poor and stuck in poverty? Not good.
    I have the impression "thrid world" countries are crowded and poor because the population grew to quickly. Thanks to richer countries, they had a greater technological level at an earlier stage- that might have caused the sharp increase?
     
  11. Roman Banned Banned

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    And you'd be wrong, of course. More people generate more capital, which generates more opportunity for everyone. More people also mean someone can till the field while another person studies how to get a machine to till 10 times faster.

    More people means more brains, more hands, more everything. More people accelerates growth (so long as there aren't serious environmental, social, national limits, etc.)
     
  12. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    What about diminishing returns? Isn't there a point where popualtion hits an efficiency limit?

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    Ok, but what if the population grows, but the economy does not grow as much as the population? Then the per capita GDP decreases, which makes people more poor in average. In this case, the increasing population creates more problems then solutions because there are more people in poverty then there were before!

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  13. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    China is the second largest consumer of oil and has a booming economy.
    Among India's many domestic products: Computer engineers.

    Ethiopia's contribution to the world market? Flies and ring worm.

    Which brings me to:
    Then explain China.

    There is a reason why first on the list of any dicator is People. He needs mass- mass fuels industry, defense, and capital.
    Hitler knew this; he's the guy behind Lebensborn.

    However, the biggest mistake in thinking more people= industry is assuming these people- inlcuding their leaders- are transmutable.
    How many social reforms have been attempted in Haiti and for what? How many factories went up in weak attempts to industrialize this small island, only to be left behind rotting away in the sun because no funding was there to maintiain them?

    Aristide retained his Third World mentality in his presidency, as they all do.

    You're wasting your time shouting for change in a room full of deafmutes.

    You just, oh so sweetly, explained "Baby's Mama"
     
  14. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    gendanken,

    As I said to Roman, GDP per capita decreases as population increases, if GDP does not increase proportionally enough with the increase in the population. For the GDP per capita do increase, you need to have economic growth- not an increase in population. Check this out:

    GDP per capita= GDP / population

    Here is the hierarchy of importance: GDP, GDP per capita, GDP per income bracket.

    As inequality increases, the gap between GDP and GDP per income bracket becomes wider. For instance, China. China has a much higher GDP then it used to have many years ago. But the GDP per income bracket paints a much different picture. Why? Because of inequality. A great majority of chinese people still live in poverty. Only a few chinese people actually got much higher incomes. Because of the huge difference, those few ones moves the curve closer to themselves. They are what we call outliers in statistics. Because of those outliers, the data appears to show an increase in GDP. That increase is due to outliers in the cases of China and Japan. So as I said before, an increase in population does not mean an increase in economic growth. In fact, if the population increases too fast, it is harder to maintain the pace and keep the GDP per capita on track.

    Here's a nifty little tool for you to take a look at:
    http://www.gapminder.org

    Take a look at "world income distribution 2003" and comapre China, India and Japan. Notice the gaps...

    Japan actually did a great job at growing. But it wasn't the increase in population- it was other things such as investment in education that did the trick.
     
  15. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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  16. Roman Banned Banned

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    Like whoa, wealth inequality? Who cares.
     
  17. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    So, I was right after all!

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