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Comment by firstfewshells | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what kind of an egregious organization the WHO is. First they let millions of people consume sugar alternatives for years, if not decades. Then they release a report saying those alternatives may lead to premature deaths. At this point, I feel like saying, F** it. I'm just gonna consume whatever the f** I feel like without ever reading about or listening to anything in the news.

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Your choice of language is interesting. Regarding the WHO, if they banned artificial sweeteners from the start would you have suppored this unilateral process? "They let" indicates that you beleive the WHO does or should include a degree of power over every-day life.

There exists an International Sweeters Association, that has been against these efforts since it's inception 35 years ago: https://www.sweeteners.org/latest-science-post/the-who-recom...

https://www.sweeteners.org/about-isa/

Which shouldn't be a surprise given the Sugar Association is 80 years old: https://www.sugar.org/about/history/

So sure, consume "whatever the f*: you feel like knowing that either way you will be receiving "sciene based" communications from interested parties supporting that behavior.

> "They let" indicates that you beleive the WHO does or should include a degree of power over every-day life.

You know what they mean. "Let" can be "let us carry on doing this without informing us better". Bad-faith nit-picking is detrimental to conversation.

It is quite sad that even in Hacker News are people lacking basic knowledge on how science works.

It's hard, because sometimes I'm told "The science is settled" then other times I'm told it's always changing.

"Settled" does not mean it cannot be tweaked by new information.

It is best explained by Isaac Asimov in his small essay "The Relativity of Wrong"[0].

[0]: https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

Oh we know how it works. Science was bought out by Big industry a long time ago and is as much of a religion as Christianity

I don't think this forum is suited to your kind of short sighted opinions. Life is more complicated than your black and white world view.

Except it’s not. Because that’s exactly what happened with sugar. Why are studies funded by Big Food 10x more likely to say sugar is ok? Coincidence, right? Science isn’t as objective as you think.

Were you paying attention to WHO guidelines in the first place?

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