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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

But if you have been committing crimes, then yes, you should be prosecuted, and if convicted have your takings confiscated and be locked up, like other criminals.

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Of course if you have committed an actual crime you should be prosecuted. For example, those Volkswagen people who effectively used fraud to fake emissions data committed an actual crime. On the other hand, selling a LEGAL product which millions or billions of people find useful even if it may have some downstream consequences is not a crime at all. And the examples you used of poisoning were sugar and trans fats. That’s hysterical nonsense.

Yet, trans fats are no longer permitted in food. Can you imagine any reason why? Once the consequences were known, by 1957, all use since has been in reckless disregard of terrible effects. Perhaps you have no experience of a relative killed by it.

Lead in paint and fuel is banned. Can you conceive why? Was the reason known of before the ban, or even before use? (Yes and yes.)

Sugar overconsumption is directly blamed for epidemic levels of type-II diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome. The crime is not selling it, but, as in the case of tobacco, contriving to get children addicted to it.

You can repeat "hysterical nonsense" all you like. Adopt it as your mantra. But it does not change the body count, or who acted recklessly to produce it.

Negligent homicide is literally in the lawbook, and no amount of frantically wishful chanting will erase it. All we need is for it to be acted on in good faith by those who are sworn to.

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