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Comment by gravelc | Hacker News Reader

Using emotive terms like 'poisoner' to tar people trying to develop safer alternatives to current products is rather disengenuous.

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Which generation of chemist/scientist since the 1970s did not describe their work as developing “safer” poisons.

Which chemical company has not sold their product primarily with the “safer” headline?

Do you really believe it? Can you not just see that’s the umbrella justification under which all new generations of poison products are developed?

The safe poison is no poison.

Why are we so intent on killing things on the planet?

“Our new product the Silent Spring Spray 9000 sets safety totally aside to give the farmer total apocalypse over all six legged creatures!!!!” said no chemical company or poisons chemist since DDT.

Agriculture involves preferencing specific species over others. It's intellectually dishonest to think otherwise. Getting the balance right is what we should be striving for. I'd assume you take antibiotics - lot of death caused there. Why is that OK?

Antibiotics are used to treat a specific infection. You don't take a pill of antibiotics every morning with your coffee.[1]

Insecticides are usually applied pretty indiscriminately.

I think that's quite a difference.

[1] At least that's how they are supposed to be used. In agriculture (again agriculture, is this a pattern?) they are used indiscriminately in many parts of the world because it enables animals to be kept in insanely crowded conditions.

Exactly my point. A (properly designed) dsRNA only targets a single organism. It's not like an insecticide that kills everything, so is sprayed all the time. Other insects don't build up resistance, as it has no impact on them. If resistance builds up in the target insect, well, we're back where we started using toxic insecticides. Given the sequence is easy to change, resistance on a sequence basis at least is unlikely in the target itself.

People who give advise are advisors, people who kill are murderers, people who have kids are parents and people who produce or spray poisons are poinsoners. Using the word "poisoner" is not calling some names, it is simply using the correct word for the person that we are discussing.

Are vaccine and antibiotics producers poisoners? I guess we all are, and I can live with that.

It's these kinds of absolutes destroying discussion these days. They are trying to kill bugs. So that people can eat. They're succeeding, maybe too well. Calling them names won't make more food or fix the problem.

I have relations with my wife and we have children together. That makes it a true fact that I'm a motherf#@%er, yet using that label does not lead to productive discourse.

I think the correct and productive term to use is "parent", not motherf*@!#

I think the correct and productive term for someone who uses chemicals in furtherance of feeding the world is “farmer”.

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