FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
If you need to sterilize your hands, then you should use a separate product dedicated to that because chances are you are a doctor.
Not sterilizing your hands all the time is actually good (in most cases) because it allows your body to sample the latest and greatest baddies and keep immunity up-to-date.
You don't need to kill the bacteria. Just remove it.
I'm pretty sure the lipid-dissolving properties of soap kill bacteria by shredding their cell membranes. It's not effective against viruses, but neither is antibacterial soap.
I've heard this action is actually more important than the soap bit for the anti-bacterial properties. But soap helps remove things like grease and 'juice' from the meat really well and helps us be less lazy when doing so.
Un-ban [something] because it's not really harmful and it's about choice of what I do with my body
I never understood which someyhing to put in which category. Perhaps you can argue that no one gets any utility for the thing you want to ban since it's a fraud, but people are spending their money on that thing so surely they get some utility. Not really my place to say
The manufacturers also fall into a prisoner's dilemma and cannot avoid offering it if a number of buyers are not aware of or care about externalities. Only the government can pull them out together.
Should we allow smoking in most public places?
I'm a non smoker but people do love smoking, willing to sacrifice health and $10 a pack so yeah, I would say that's okay.
It's an interesting example you used because smoking is a vice enjoyed by many lower income individuals. Would you feel that day drinking ala brunch should be banned? I'm from NYC and I have to regularly dodge drunk young adults every Sunday. Surely there are plenty of negative side effects to those individuals and those around them.
Is it worth taking chances with multidrug resistance bacteria for this miniscule psychological benefit?
For smoking in public places, I believe that falls in the same category covered by the quote, "My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins."
People smoking in restaurants, malls, and other public places aren't just hurting their own health, but the health of those sharing that public space with their second-hand smoke. So no. Your right to slowly kill yourself with your addiction ends when you are in a public space and are slowly killing those around you.
> I'm from NYC and I have to regularly dodge drunk young adults every Sunday. Surely there are plenty of negative side effects to those individuals and those around them.
They are a harm to those around them. That's why being drunk in public is against the law and drunk tanks get filled to the brim every Friday and Saturday night. Your right to be drunk ends the moment you endanger people in public spaces.
Again, bacterial soaps fall under the same category. You want to use a product with absolutely no proven scientific benefit to yourself, but is scientifically proven to make bacteria more dangerous to those around you? Unacceptable, and since some companies and consumers are refusing to stop endangering public health, the law must step in to prevent your behavior from infringing on the rights of those around you to pursue happiness, which includes the pursuit of good health.
I'm actually glad you mentioned this because it's a very similar problem--a complete lack of market choice.
The big economic problem with smoking was the fact that smokers spend money--a LOT of money. Smokers spend so much more money than non-smokers that no business was ever willing to be non-smoking and consequently there was no choice.
This was similar with respect to anti-bacterial soaps. It was almost impossible to find one that wasn't anti-bacterial because the anti-bacterials sold so much better.
Side note: Ivory was one of the few that still produced a hand soap without an anti-bacterial. It's often very hard to find on a retail shelf.
There are also significant benefits to recreational drug use, especially alcohol.
The same is not true of antibacterial soaps.
Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise.
>You can argue that the benefits of drug use are actually a mirage since it's linked to so many other problems, health and social.
You could, but you'd be ignoring the health benefits of certain patterns of consumption.
What you can't do is argue that antibacterial soap has the same social and cultural significance as Chartreuse or Cognac, nor can you claim that there exists a mode of consumption for antibacterial soap that has net positive effects (outside of a hospital).
Yes, it's a trade-off. We're on the same page. The point is rather that one of the two categories (drugs) has a positive counterweight to its negative effects while the other does not.
That's a value judgement. I would argue it does have a positive counterweight as people spend money to buy the product. That's pretty much the purpose of a market. To tease out the value people put in certain items and to direct resources into said products
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/04/the_powe...
It's a feature, not a bug.
I don't get it. Don't you want to prevent epidemics of incurable diseases and enjoy a beer? I mean no disrespect but I don't understand what's so shocking or surprising about these laws.
A psychological one, sure. They perceive that they're getting a health benefit (whether or not they actually are), so the money seems worth it. But the evidence is that it doesn't actually get your hands cleaner than non-antibacterial soap and that it may contribute to creating stronger bacteria.
The FDA's judgement is that the downsides outweigh the upsides. I tend to agree.
Frankly, it's apples and oranges IMO.
When you use antibacterial soap, you hurt everyone in the world equally. You hurt me as much as you hurt yourself, but you also hurt 7 billion other people. That means antibacterial soaps cause 7 billion times more damage to others than to oneself on average, while the ratio is about 1 for alcohol.
So someone acting purely in self-interest will mediate their use of alcohol fairly effectively, while a self-interested antibacterial soap user won't mediate their use at all.
Antibacterial soaps just plain do not work. The exposure time average seconds when it needs minutes to do the job.
Triclosan has been linked with cancer. The ineffective usage makes bacteria more resistant. What is the upside? Corporate profit and marketing lies?
Representative 1: We've been following this antibacterial resistance case closely for a few years now. Every year, a greater number of my constituents have related to me the story of how they lost a loved-one due to MSRA - and staph infection, as I understand, isn't even the only thing that this, uhh, the resistance to bacteria dru--err- medications. So, as you know, we've asked you here today to better understand how we can plan to solve this looming crisis. What have you got for us?
FDA1: Well, generally speaking, we've been working with a number of the same antibiotics that have been in use for many decades now. Their effectiveness has been continuously diminishing since the first introduction of each antibiotic. The general consensus here at the FDA is, we need to encourage the development and mass production of multiple new drugs to combat the inevitable growing resistance.
REP2: And what is it that you mean by inevitable?
FDA2: If I may field this question - what my colleague is referring to here is the fact that long-term exposure to specific antibiotics necessarily results in resistance to the same.
REP3: So, you're talkin' about evolution here, right? Just so we're all on the same page.
(Indistinguishable snickering throughout the room)
FDA2: Ye-- That's one way to describe it.
REP2: So what exactly is it that you need from us to enact your plan?
FDA1: Well, that's why we came to you. You see, it's not a very lucrative business opportunity -- developing a new antibiotic. Our custo-- your constituents would have to buckle their belts a little, because we need at least $30 million more for our budget to be pumped into early research in the university system.
(The whole crowd erupts in laughter!)
REP1: Hahahaha! Tax reallocations in this political climate! Don't get me started... But we did tell you to give us your pie in the sky ideas first, so what else do you have for us today?
FDA3: The abuse of antibiotics in the livestock industry is not onl--
REP2: Oh no... We've been through this before. How else are we going to get chickens big enough to feed the world?
FDA1: Well, there's an other option too. We could stop using antibacterial soaps more than necessary in hospitals, which as you know, are the hotbeds of new infe--
REP1: Let me stop you right there. Do you even have any idea as to how much we spent on the last - washing your hands saves lives - campaign? If our const-- your patients knew that you were just washing your hands with regular soap, do yo-- no. Not even an option. We don't want to call you here again for this same issue next year.
FDA4: What if we just banned them for personal use? No one would be negatively affected, and it would appear to be a decisive action to solve the problem.
REP1: That does sound reasonable... Any objections from the committee?
REP4: No, I don't have any soap manufacturers in my state-- hahaaha
REP1: Then a voiced vote shall suffice. All those in favor
In the case of antibacterial soap, it's somewhat harmful: those antibacterial chemicals get in the water supply, and exert extra evolutionary pressure on bacteria, leading to increased chance of resistant bacteria.
If homeopathy was damaging to the environment, you're damn right we should outlaw it.
The whole purpose of the FDA is to evaluate these types of claims. They are doing their jobs properly.
Homeopathy stuff is actually clearly labeled not evaluated by fda etc. You could probably still sell anti-bacterial soap if it is clearly labeled "not recommended for daily use, may cause harm to consumer and environment", but what market are you going to sell it to, then? Consumers buy it because it advertises anti-bacterial prominently as though it was a plus, my wife buys it because of this (sometimes she doesn't believe me, arguing "hey all these companies sell it, it has to do something!", And she hates I'm usually right on this stuff, heh. )
The main thing with alternative medicine is that it is generally as harmless as water. Unless you are forcing it as the only treatment to your children or others, you aren't harming anyone else.
Antibacterial soap isn't in these categories. People truly think they are healthier for using the stuff - this is partially advertising and false claims. In addition, these things contribute to making the world unhealthier and a more unhealthy place by helping antibiotic resistance - general use does this. It is posing a grave general danger. This danger is the same reason antibiotics are prescription and we try not to prescribe them unnecessarily. It isn't that one will have immediate grave dangers themselves, but it is bad for humans in general.
"I prefer not to go to some government agency..." I think this is really key to your sentiment, and the solution to this isn't to eshew safety regulators, but work to make them more effective and honest and vote for folks (especially congress members) that share those sorts of interests. I don't think any of us have the time or energy to be able to parse out respectable information on each product to make sure it is safe, though we think we do. If you do, look around you. Do you think all of your neighbors do? All college students? I'm very doubtful on this - antibacterial soap is an example. We hear it causes grave dangers, but we buy it anyway. Advertising and culture at work, perhaps.
It is possible that within a decade or two, penicillin will be lose its usefulness, and we'll be back to the stage of history where cuts and scrapes could become life-threatening.
^ a related problem is the flushing of non-consumed, non-recreational antibiotic drugs, incidentally
[update] just after leaving this thread, I saw an article about a new comic book that is specifically about a post-antibiotic future, so here's a possibly more entertaining rundown: http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-horrifying-comic-book-future-where-...
It's not enough grounds because the cost of enforcement is so high that it is equal to or surpasses the cost of the drugs themselves. That isn't the case with antibiotic soap--it's not an addictive productive, so it's unlikely that there will be dealers slinging triclosan on street corners.
Antibiotic abuse could wind up affecting human civilization. It could make plague-level events possible. This is a whole different league, and it's ludicrous to turn this into some kind of libertarian talking point.
They also pay extra to buy shampoo with vitamins in it despite most of them knowing it does nothing. They just want an excuse to buy the more complex version of a banal product to exert some control over their banal lives.
In this case, the FDA can exert some back-pressure because of the significant risk to developing resistant bacteria against the soap constituents, which are needed in medical settings, so they are.
Unfortunately there isn't anything to do be done about rinsing vitamins down the shower drain. Not yet anyway.
Perhaps Monsanto could give them some pointers ;)
In this case, there is far more harm than good.
Sounds like the antibacterial soaps fall into this category. As I understand it, if a product makes a health or nutrition claim, then it falls under the purview of the FDA, and the FDA rule is that if you make a health claim, then it has to be proven effective.
The other reason people shouldn't be using harsh chemicals on their hands is because it damages the skin, and thus creates a better environment for bacterial contamination.
The CDC was saying this years ago. Here's one good article that summarises the evidence in 2001. http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/7/2/70-0225_article
> Issues regarding hand hygiene practices among health-care professionals have been widely discussed and may be even more complicated than those in the general public. Unless patient care involves invasive procedures or extensive contact with blood and body fluids, current guidelines recommend plain soap for handwashing (38,39); however, infection rates in adult or neonatal intensive care units or surgery may be further reduced when antiseptic products are used (40-42).
Education, not prohibition, is needed.
Prohibition of alcohol does create black markets and mafias, so an alternate solution is needed.
The substance banned takes hours to kill the bacteria (according to the article), so I would say it's marketed in a mis-leading way. I doubt many people actually buy the soap thinking a multi-hour exposure is needed.
The resistant bacteria can grow to a problem of global proportion.
EDIT: Some surgeons argue that having a beard can carry more bacteria into a surgery room, while others argue that shaving might make the surgeon more susceptible to infection by bacteria from the surgery room, since epitelial cells are removed by the razor blade.
Wouldn't that mean that after scrubbing the bacteria are no longer there?
How sure are you about this? There's usually some kind of timer (and, sometimes, an assistant) to ensure that you wash for the specified amount of time.
Also, I always figured that scrubbing was essentially a precaution in case the gloves ripped or snagged (which, being thin latex, is far from improbable).
They are alternatives for allergic patients (and surgeons), but they're a little thicker and a bit more expensive.
Then why were they allowed to market them in the first place? If safety was an issue, and it demonstrably is because that's one reason they're being pulled, then why did they not have to prove before marketing?
If soap manufacturers can get the same marketing benefit without the expense of including the chemicals, seems like they'd all jump at it.
In this specific case, the antibiotic agents started being added to soap decades ago. Of course we know a lot more about biology and health now than we did then. The FDA last year asked companies to prove they are safe for long-term use by the standards of 2015, and that is what they failed at. But obviously those standards were not available to guide a testing regime in the 1970s.
Don't tell that to the religiously pro-GMO crowd.
But you make excellent points, thanks. And I suppose what got the manufacturers in trouble wasn't so much their products as their claims.
At best, antibacterial soap is ineffective. At worst, it's contributing to resistance in some microbes.
Why would you think that changes anything? The bacteria don't care about our intentions. Artificial selection works the same regardless. From the link you were replying to:
[...] exposure to triclosan was associated with a high risk of
developing resistance and cross-resistance in Staphylococcus aureus
and Escherichia coli.
Do you think the bacteria magically lose their resistance to an antibiotic (or cross-resistance to a similar antibiotic biochemical mechanism)? Evolution doesn't care why a bacteria developed a mutation that produced a resistance to a particular chemical. All that matters is that they, as survivors, will pass on that mutation to future generations. Any resistant strain will have an advantage in the future, which includes resistance to any antibiotics that work similarly.
By the way, heredity isn't the only way a resistant trait can spread to future bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer[1] is a thing. Bacteria can spread the resistance gene among the current-generation.
[1] http://amrls.cvm.msu.edu/microbiology/molecular-basis-for-an... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer
That's my point. Antibaterials work an entirely different way than antibiotics. Triclosan resistance confers no resistance to beta-lactams.
Since the actual chemistry is over most people's heads, the "blue crystals" are where they invest all the magic that makes it work just like the ads claim it will.
Very very often human beings have to make decisions based on incomplete data. If it had turned out that antibiotics in soap saved lives what would we be saying if the industry that had waited years for iron clad proof before taking the relatively inexpensive step of putting it in?
Same thing there, it had probably just entered shared knowledge, it sounded sciency and natural at the same time, so why not add it to toothpaste? It must be good, right?
Completely worthless, pure marketing gimmick, yet people bought it.
Soap is pretty antibacterial by itself. ... and now I wonder if we'll next see a wave of soaps containing various reactive nanoparticles what whatever potentially not healthy stuff they'll use to address the fact that the public thinks it wants to buy something that is antibacterial.
Antibacterial doesn't really have a precise medical definition, but in practice they're dilute antiseptics. In many centuries of use, bacteria have not developed resistance to antiseptics. There's no danger of them developing resistance to these soaps either
...and even if they did, that wouldn't mean they were magically also resistant to some antibiotic.
So basically, the marketing people wanted something more than "just soap" so they used antiseptics and made up a nicer sounding word: Antibacterial. You have (and perhaps this was the intent of the marketing people) assumed this has something to do with antibiotics.
Remember, an autoclave or UV lamp work fine to keep stuff sterile, but they are not safe to put your hand in / under.
No bacteria, ever, is going to develop a resistance to 99% EtOH, or 10:1 dilute NaClO. Ever.
Many, many bacteria develop resistance to triclosan.
The FDA just banned the one that sucks.
>In many centuries of use, bacteria have not developed resistance to antiseptics. There's no danger of them developing resistance to these soaps either
This is not really true. In fact, the substance under question here, Triclosan, is a small 24-atom molecule so, in principle, there's no reason microbes couldn't develop resistance to it.
"TCS inhibits FabI, an enoyl-acyl carrier protein reductase (ENR). The FabI protein catalyzes the elongation cycle in the synthesis of fatty acids, an essential process for cell viability "[2]. Thus, one known mechanism of resistance is to alter the protein that TCS binds to:
"Mutation occurs whereby single or multiple amino acids are changed in the fabI gene, resulting in TCS-resistant FabI proteins"[2].
And it's not even just a matter of "well TCS is ineffective, so why not just leave it alone?". Triclosan is implicated in multi-drug cross resistance:
"In studies done on E. coli and P. aeruginosa, resistance to chloramphenicol and tetracycline increased 10-fold following TCS exposure"[2]. In addition, a survey of Acinetobacter baumanii (an increasingly common opportunistic pathogen found in hospital acquired infections) clinical isolates found that those that could resist low concentrations of TCS also exhibited "increased tolerance to amikacin, tetracycline, levofloxacin and imipenem."[2].
So in fact having TCS everywhere is actively harming our ability to use other effective antibiotics.
[1] McDonnell G, Russell AD. Antiseptics and Disinfectants: Activity, Action, and Resistance. Clinical Microbiology Reviews. 1999;12(1):147-179. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC88911/
[2] Carey DE, McNamara PJ. The impact of triclosan on the spread of antibiotic resistance in the environment. Frontiers in Microbiology. 2014;5:780. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2014.00780. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4295542/
But there is no direct evidence of adverse health effects on any humans caused by BPA.
For example from WebMD:
>The federal government is now funding new research into BPA risks. We don't know the results of these studies yet. Recommendations about BPA could change in the next few years.
>For now, there are no restrictions on the use of BPA in products. The Food and Drug Administration does recommend taking "reasonable steps" to reduce human exposure to BPA in the food supply. The FDA has also expressed support for manufacturers who have stopped using BPA in products for babies and for companies working to develop alternatives to the BPA in canned foods.
http://www.webmd.com/children/environmental-exposure-head2to...
Or the top .gov hit (for me):
>There are data showing that exposure to BPA, as well as other endocrine disrupting chemicals with estrogenic activity, may have e ects on obesity and diabetes. These data, while preliminary and only in animals, indicate the potential for endocrine disrupting agents to have e ects on other endocrine systems not yet fully examined.
https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/materials/endocrine_disrupt...
So in summary it seems that the FDA is acting appropriately, not out of the ordinary. They are studying the issue, but there's not yet documented harm.
However, I haven't seen relevant scientific documentation that would indicate that the FDA should act. If there is some documentation, there should be a lawsuit to force the FDA to act. There are plenty of interested watchdog groups that would fund something like that.
If you can provide that, I'm getting on the phone today to start lobbying.
I agree however, anti-bacterial soap is silly. Looks like a lot of people here agree. Looks like a market segment to me. Didn't need a gun, theft, or a jail cell to create it.
There have been a small number of laboratory studies that imply it might be possible with triclosan, but they used extremely low levels of triclosan, and real world studies have basically shown the opposite.
http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/consumer_sa... Page 30
"Furthermore, in most in vitro studies, resistance to triclosan has been measured as an increase in MIC. As mentioned in section 6.2 above, the measurement of resistance based on MIC only, might have little bearing on bacterial survival to concentrations found in situ."
"Ledder et al. (2006) investigated acquired high-level triclosan resistance in a number of distinct environmental isolates and reported that a relatively small number of strains showed a decrease in triclosan susceptibility (E. coli, Klebsiella oxytoca, Aranicola proteolyticus and S. maltophilia) while the susceptibility of the remaining 35 species remained unchanged. They concluded that repeated exposures to triclosan did not systematically produce high-level triclosan resistance in all bacteria. Furthermore, among the strains with decreased susceptibility, there was no change in antibiotic susceptibility or susceptibility to other biocides. Similarly, another study by the same group on repeated exposure of dental bacteria to triclosan resulted in the same conclusions"
"Cole et al. (2003) collected 1238 isolates from the homes of users and non-users of antibacterial product and were unable to demonstrate any cross-resistance to antibiotic and antibacterial agents in target bacteria. In addition, this study showed an increased prevalence of potential pathogens in the homes of non-users of antibacterial products. "
"With our current state of knowledge, it is generally accepted that antibiotic resistance in clinical isolates is not necessarily associated with resistance to biocides. "
"urthermore, the antibiotic susceptibility profile of the oral streptococci investigated did not change following the use of triclosan containing toothpaste. Aiello et al. (2004) did not find any statistical significance between elevated triclosan MICs and antibiotic susceptibility in bacterial isolates taken from the hands of individuals using antibacterial cleaning and hygiene products for a 1-year period."
"The authors did not observe any increase in triclosan MIC in these bacteria"
As far as I've read from this though, it doesn't apply to the use of actual antibiotics, which do cause strain resistance. That is the issue that I am definitely in support of, and it seems I wrongly correlated anti-bacterial soaps in that issue as a fact when it does not appear to be so.
And if "antibacterial" soap isn't better, and might be worse, then I'm all for restricting it.
Everyone saw the writing on the wall that a ban was coming.
If I'm never told that antibacterial soap can harm the environment, then I might just show up at the store, see that one seems to be "better" and grab that one.
And I shouldn't have to spend an hour researching every item I find on my grocery store shelf. If we've done enough studies on an ingredient to know it's harmful, I'd rather there just be a law to not allow that ingredient.
I'm highly skeptical that if antibacterial soap were banned, demand would drive a a black market. People are far more aware of and particular about their Shiraz and Saison (and the intoxicating effects thereof) than their Softsoap's antimicrobial properties.
Liver damage is a person harming themselves by their own choice. Drunk driving is a collection of specific instances of a person breaking the law and taking action which will cause direct harm to another. Alcohol as date rape is just a non sequitur designed to be incendiary. It only effects people who drink and, again, is just a person using alcohol to aid them in committing a crime.
Commonly available antibacterial hand soap hurts everyone even if you are using it reasonably, legally, and responsibly. The harm to the commons is directly proportional to the quantity of it that is used in the normal, reasonable way by everyone.
Alcohol is not great for "society" because it increases the likelihood people will make bad decisions, and can cause specific health problems for the people who choose to use it.
This is akin to emissions standards, which I assume you oppose as well?
Saying you are comparing apples and oranges wouldn't be accurate, because at least apples and oranges are both foods.
They're old now, but I think some of the best answers to this are found in the writings of Frederic Bastiat.[1]
This bit in particular is relevant:
------
What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.
------
But if you add in more pertinent details, I think we're just left begging the question. What if I sell parson A selling antibacterial soap to person B by misrepresenting the fact that it contains a chemical that will kill bacteria when, in fact, that chemical is ineffective as advertised. This sounds a bit like fraud to me--and it touches on an especially important sphere of life to boot--health and medicine--where fraud-like concerns are especially important.
Do I, as a third party, have the ability to intervene under these facts? I think there's a cogent case to be made that I do. And, at any rate, I know of no simple analysis that one could apply here to make answering the simplified interpersonal case any simpler than the government-regulation case that it is supposed to help us think about.
Of course, it should also be mentioned that there are perfectly good schools of political thought under which the powers of government are not merely the aggregated power of individuals. Here's a thought just to get the intuitions flowing: there might be things that we allow the government, but not individuals, to do because the government acts by way of a deliberative process that can produce more reliable or better justified decisions than we would trust any individual person to make. For example: you might think that it is never acceptable for one person to kill another, even in retribution for a crime, because individual actors can't be relied upon to evaluate guilt and innocence properly, or because their actions would not have the expressive value necessary to warrant such an act. The state, however, is able to organize behavior in a way that largely solves these problems, meaning that there may be cases where it is acceptable for the state to kill even though no individual person could morally have done so. (I actually oppose the death penalty, so I have other objections to this line of argument. But this seems like a potentially useful example nonetheless.)
Certainly such schools of thought exist, but I'd stop short of calling them "perfectly good." I think Bastiat makes the case pretty strongly that there's no moral basis for saying that a group can hold any innate authority beyond that which the individual members hold. And by "authority" I mean the ability to compel people who don't voluntarily consent to the governance of the group to do the group's will. Of course if a group of people voluntarily choose to delegate some decision making authority to a collective, that makes perfect sense.
The state, however, is able to organize behavior in a way that largely solves these problems, meaning that there may be cases where it is acceptable for the state to kill even though no individual person could morally have done so.
I have a hard time with that. How can merely aggregating a bunch of people together create a moral justification that doesn't exist otherwise? What's the basis for saying that this is so?
I tried to provide an explanation in my comment, but it must not have been very clear.
The answer will depend on one's reason for thinking that individual action was immoral. Often, an otherwise immoral act can nonetheless be justified through extrinsic circumstances. For example, assume that killing is generally wrong. But it can be justified if you have the proper level of confidence that the victim himself is a so-far-unpunished murderer and if killing him after a public trial in which his crime is exposed would send a morally important message. (I think these are fairly representative of the purported justifications for the death penalty.) But there is a problem: an individual acting alone is virtually never in a position to satisfy these criteria. It takes a lot of people acting together to satisfy them--a government.
But education is a much better option than regulation. Regulation is inflexible, and subject to enforcement by people who have the exact same set of flaws and bad judgements as the groups that we're trying to defend ourselves from.
You're right about this being a "schools of thought" difference. You have a good example, about "might we give the government powers to do things, because it could be better at it than we."
That's really the fundamental question, and I appreciate that you got to that core issue so quickly!
My thought (I'm not OP, but I think he and I might agree) is that since the fundamental weakness we're trying to fix is a part of human nature.
Some people will act against the interest of others, even while saying they are acting in their good.
So, the solution is not to give more power to one group (who's subject to the same weaknesses as any other group) but to make sure we avoid giving power to one group where they can have undue influence over others if they fall prey to those weaknesses of human nature.
I fully expect to have companies try to screw me. I fully expect the government to do the same, in some situations. I wish, however, that I could disregard the negative impact of the government as easily as I could the negative impact of the companies.
But I cannot, because one of those groups can override my preferences with its own.
The law is not a pooling of resources. It is a compact wherein everyone holds the same blade to everyone's throats, so that everyone will behave in a manner that benefits the whole, rather than out of pure self-interest. Thus, a government may lawfully do those things that individuals have given up as a condition of maintaining good standing in the cartel.
The enforcer needs to be exactly as monstrous as is required to discourage cartel defections.
As you might expect, this leads to a host of real and potential problems with governments, but those problems have a different root cause than the state acting outside the authority of natural law, and are practically insurmountable for quite different reasons.
Government derives its authority from being a better-than-random strategy in a massive, never-ending game wherein players are continually chosen at random to participate in a Prisoner's Dilemma. Government provides an incentive to consistently cooperate rather than defect. Other winning strategies may exist. Some of them may even produce better overall scores. We allow government to exist and direct certain aspects of our lives because, on average, it makes us richer in the long run. Or it makes enough of us richer that we are prepared to gamble, to try to be one of them.
One of the biggest problems is not being able to know for certain whether the government player is defecting against us in the metagame, even as we cooperate. How do we prove mathematically whether the state really is acting in the best interests of all of its people, treating each of them equally, or not?
So, when a portion of the population starts changing their mind on something, the FDA might determine that there's enough political will for a new regulation, and if they move quick, they can be seen as a progressive and helpful industry.
The FDA causes incalculable harm in other ways, mostly by prohibiting good things from coming to market.
For example, factory farming is incredibly harmful, but local alternatives are mostly illegal, for not complying with FDA regulations (which only approve factory farms). [0]
Another example: An amazing, cheap, reversible male birth control option called Vaselgel has been functioning in India for decades, and a few organizations have tried to bring it to the USA, only to be unable to afford the FDA regulatory hurdle. Male birth control is an amazing option for so many different groups, and prohibiting it has real costs on society. It's slated for human trials in 2017. [1]
By working against these interests, the FDA causes far more harm than it prevents. This soap antibiotics ban is (to my cynical view) an easy win for the agency, in an attempt to build good-will or trust in the market.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Want-Do-Illegal-Stories/dp...
I would buy hand soap without it, if it were for sale. But everyone seems to think it's safer, so all the manufacturers are encouraged to add it, and it's a negative feedback loop.
What is happening now that will get "fixed" in 38 years. This is great news, but what is being done to reduce this latency?
How about having over arching goals of separating people and chemicals, that all chemicals need approval before being introduced into the environment!
> The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act
https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-t...
Antibacterial soap is unhealthy and should be banned for health reasons.
Antibacterial soap is largely ineffective, so should be banned for false advertising reasons.
Antibacterial soap should not be banned.
Which one is right? Is there any science or ethical political philosophy to justify this executive action?
[0]: http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm378393.ht...
OCD people, and their kids, are a huge problem in society and should be dealt with, but this is not 'science based' public policy at all.
Its like asking someone to prove a negatve, which is absurd in many contexts. "why did something not happen" does not have a finite, knowable answer in the vast majority of contexts.
Also these aren't the same soaps used in hospitals. Hospital soaps are much harsher and use different chemicals.
Lets hope its just one of those shitty translations of 'real science' being lost in translation when subjected to a journalist-friendly press release.
Theres 40 years of data using humans. Nobody doubts that dial sope or other similar soaps is safe in any meaningful sense. The science in this argument is being lost.
If these were legitimate tests they would have been done years ago and there would not be the various exemptions in this policy declaration.
I will insert the caveat here that I'm not a fan of everyday use of anti-bacterials. I also don't doubt that using anti-bacterials and prbably more importantly anti-biotics and various endocrine influencing chemicals and plastics with loose regard for the environment has negative impacts on society.
I think kids should eat dirt, assuming it's clean dirt, etc. They are made to handle the stuff that nature thows at them.
If you're going to advocate change, don't you think it's important to understand historical and modern examples of the people you're going to kill?
Before you ask accusory questions, why not refine your own position and brush off the smugness?
I don't buy antibacterial soaps, but I'm concerned about this decision because it seems overreaching. I get the tragedy of the commons aspect, though, so am a bit unsure of that.
However, I agree with original position taken by one of the parent posters: there's a very politically dangerous position implicitly being supported in the US now, which is the default is that citizens are not competent to do anything, and that they have to show that they are, as opposed to the alternative, which is to assume that they are competent, and that the burden of proof should be to show that they aren't. What people are implicitly buying into, without meaning to seem hyperbolic, is a totalitarian state, where the default is lack of rights that you have to earn, rather than a default of rights that the state has to take away.
Sure, along time ago medicine was full of quack remedies, etc. But what do we have now? A corrupt system run by monopolies in all corners, and unaffordable by most citizens.
If people take nutritional supplements, that's their decision and their responsibility. If a supplement manufacturer adulterates their products, the problem is fraud, not the ability of the consumer to make the decision.
People do all sorts of stupid things. Preventing them from doing so is not the responsibility of the government.
I keep going back to the example of taxes, which is a good parallel. Imagine that the government, a year from now, mandates that no one can do their own taxes anymore, and that only individuals with a specific degree and license, requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars, and years of training, can do any taxes. What would people think of that? There would be an outcry, and legitimate concerns about corruption and collusion. But we are completely fine with the government telling us what to eat, and how to wash our hands, and what drugs we should be putting into our bodies, and what not.
The same government that classifies cannabis as a Schedule I substance, so dangerous that no one should possess it. Absolutely no problem with government regulation of health decisions. Totally trustworthy. (btw, I've never used cannabis either, so that's not my skin in the game)
If you disagree with me again, I am going to punch you, but it's not violence because I'm not doing it if you don't do it again ;)
...Yes?
If I want to manufacture/import and sell a car, I have to show it passes safety regulations.
If I want to open a restaurant, I have to obtain permits and show that food are stored and processed in an approved fashion.
If I want to build and sell a house, I have to prove that it won't collapse on itself, spontaneously catch fire, or electrocute its residents.
Every one of these points is, yes, enforced at gunpoint, because so many people have died in the past in gruesome, preventable accidents that we have collectively decided "Well, fuck it, we will make everyone prove what they are selling is safe, and we'll enforce it at gunpoint!"
That said, (hopefully) nobody arrests a pair of seven-year-olds for selling lemonade on the corner. You see, these gunpoints can be actually quite reasonable; they have centuries of experience.
Also, this may sound silly, but does "anti-bacterial" vs. "anti-septic" factor in here? Could soap just be made more caustic to achieve the same effect without drugs?
https://www.amazon.com/Kirks-Natural-Castile-Soap-Original/d...
No more soccer mom directed ads pumping BS about how good it is to have your kids live in a bacterial bubble
The same crappy thinking that brought us allergy epidemics
That's not going to stop. They're just going to switch the messaging to "All natural ...".
So they can order the removal of anti-bacterial agents because they haven't scientifically been proven beneficial and there are potentially unknown side effects. Err on the side of caution, that's a wise decision.
... yet they use terms like GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) for things like Roundup Ready crops which have been scientifically (allegedly, I haven't read and understood all the science, but it seems reasonably credible to the layman) proven to contain significantly increased doses of POISON in food on the supermarket shelves which (admittedly unproven but) highly suspiciously correlated skyrocketing food allergies.
I don't get it (genuinely). Why one application of a seemingly sane rule with unknown repercussions in one instance and a complete disregard for it in the other in the face of a huge amount of evidence that it is in fact unsafe?
Is this because antibacterial agents in soaps are not funded by Monsanto? (okay, I asked that facetiously, but still)
> but it seems reasonably credible to the layman
> proven to contain significantly increased doses of POISON in food on the supermarket shelves
I mean, basically, yeah. Firstly, there's no market-spanning hand sanitizer megacorp (megacorps make hand sanitizer, but there's lots of them all doing it). I'm not scientifically convinced that Monsanto's shit is bad, necessarily, but I do know that they fuckin' run shit along multiple axes in the agribusiness world. Monopoly + legally-ironclad yearly subscription and licensing generally equals abuse, on some level, in the tech sector, and permanently equating the Big Evil Corp Monsanto with the utopian-futurist promise of GMOs is awful, IMO.
Secondly, banning Roundup/Roundup-Ready stuff means Monsanto instantly loses tons of money, but banning anti-bacterials in hand sanitizer doesn't really make hand sanitizer work less well and probably won't result in much in the way of lost sales. After all, it's not like alcohol-based hand sanitizers aren't killing nearly everything on your hands already. People who buy a lot of hand sanitizer aren't going to _stop_, they just might be irritated about the loss of one of the 9s in the fractional part of the percent of 'bad things' killed. Triclosan et al are basically just the feature-add version of this [0].
Therefore, there's no need for hand-sanitizer-selling megacorps to protect their product by muddying issues of its safety, because the removal of one ingredient, important only because of the extra 9 on the label, doesn't change the product's value to customers or the megacorps. Banning (or even seriously investigating) Round-Up because of health concerns, real or imagined, would immediately harm Monsanto, which is a hueg important megacorp heavily reliant on the civilized world using its pesticide (and pesticide-compatible crops).
So its mechanism of action is entirely irrelevant to us animals. Maybe it's toxic in some other way, but that's been tested, to the point people are willing to drink the stuff.
Now, the surfactants it's normally formulated with, to get past waxy coatings and the like that plants protect themselves with are another matter altogether, but then again, there's a reason we avoid putting soap in our eyes, with or without triclosan....
When you buy cornstarch, you're buying cornstarch. When you're buying ethanol for fuel, you're buying ethanol for fuel.
People don't eat GM corn, they eat products that contain the products of GM corn, having gone through so much processing that it is ridiculous to think any residual roundup is going to be harmful.
There is just no huge amount of evidence that GM crops are harmful to people. There is evidence that things like Roundup Ready corn & insect-resistant corn are better for the environment, because in the first case they reduce tilling (think erosion as huge amounts of soil are disrupted) and in the second they reduce the need for conventional insecticides.
As for the correlation between food allergies, the timescale here is so long you could correlate it with anything. A particularly fitting comparison in this case would seem to be the internet, or perhaps devices shipping with Windows NT kernels. Most data sets I find show the rise starting around 1997, which would be fitting for food allergies and NT kernel adoption. (You might say that NT kernel adoption was much faster than the proliferation of GMOs - you'd be wrong)
A sane explanation that doesn't rely on a boogeyman is that parents aren't exposing their children to contaminants like they used to. There are medical products coming out to address this, but the consensus seems to be that letting kids play outside, not dousing them in Clorox every 5 minutes, and making them eat peanut butter,etc. early enough are likely to be effective.
See: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/4/12371552/aralyte-peanut-but...]
Finally, I'll leave with this note: anything you buy as a whole or minimally processed food will be essentially devoid of GMO food. You should be much more worried about the high amounts of sugar and sodium in those processed foods as added sugars are well known to be dangerous and unhealthy - the bonus is that if you avoid processed crap you'll also be avoiding GMOs.
They also harm your skin, that is protecting you from infection, so get your conclusions, because I don't have any study on it being healthier to use or not to use them.
How many smokers quit due to them?
I agree with the FDA ban, but I don't think smoking is the best way to make your point.
I would like to live in a world where you have to show that something is bad before it gets banned. Not just a feeling, or that it doesn't work, but solid evidence that it's bad, that is, harming people or animals or destroying the environment, etc.
In the EU it's the other way around.
I could be wrong but I believe that's the general gist of it.
It's hard to compare the EU to America just like that, especially since the EU is not a state, but you may be right. The EU makes incredibly arbitrary judgements and bans sometimes. Some European countries, however, fare much better when it comes to avoiding such blatant authoritarianism.
With supplements, the FDA pretty much lets things go until they start causing problems. DMAA was legal for a long time until people started having heart attacks. Melatonin, which is a straight-up hormone, is over-the-counter in the US, and it's by prescription only in Europe.
Now, if you're marketing something as a treatment for a disease, you have to have concrete data to back it up.
So it's very possible to have something that the FDA will let you sell as a supplement (i.e. there's no evidence that it's dangerous), but not make any claims about its efficacy (i.e. you can't say it will treat XYZ).
I experimented with nootropics at one point of my life (found them worthless, FYI), and it was funny how all of the labels just stated what it was, purity, and a blurb about the company selling it. There was no language whatsoever telling you what the supplement was for. Just a giant "PIRACETAM" label on the front.