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Comment by wredue | Hacker News Reader

The WHO does have a tendency to lean overly cautious.

But you have to remember that the FDA is not working for YOUR best interest either. When the FDA says that something is “safe”, what it actually means is “the economic impacts of this are probably negligible in a lifetime”. So if aspartame causes cancer after your career is over, then it’s safe according to the FDA.

The WHO isn’t under the same lobbying or economic pressures, and approach their statements from entirely different perspectives than the FDA.

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I mean, it's hard to even know where to grapple with such a polemic statement. But you mean to say that the FDA's mission is to ignore retirees? Retirees being the the most powerful voting block in the country, the top source of campaign contributions, and top recipient of government funds.

Even if I was conspiratorial minded, I would assume the conspiracy works the other way.

That's not what he means. He's referring to the FDA officials retiring, and thus no longer being responsible for any of their decisions on safety anymore, since they're at home relaxing if anything bad happens down the road.

A plain textual reading of the comment doesn't suggest that at all.

Maybe you're referring to a different thread?

Wouldn’t they be consuming FDA approved foods and drugs by people as unscrupulous and heartless as them though in this scenario?

Yeesh, these folk are people, I sincerely doubt “nothing bad’ll happen until I’m retired” is their general calculus.

The FDA has a history of being cautious as well. Perhaps even overly cautious.

> So if aspartame causes cancer after your career is over, then it’s safe according to the FDA.

I would love to see some kind of foundation for this, to explain where your beliefs about FDA processes are coming from.

Yes, because there's nothing wrong with anything they've greenlit before, like high fructose corn syrup.

It's sugar. They so far haven't been in the business of forcing food to be healthier, to my knowledge, and corn syrup isn't poison.

HFCS is very similar to sugar, from a diet and health perspective. The FDA’s mandate is food safety, not population health.

> So if aspartame causes cancer after your career is over, then it’s safe according to the FDA.

That is a big claim. It fits my priors. But is there any evidence for it?

From what I've seen, it appears that plastics/endocrine disruptors are evidence of this. BPA being a previous example [1], with most other plastics being a current example [2], including the "BPA free" replacements like BPS.

[1] https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/nrdc-fda-reach-settlemen...

[2] https://sdg.iisd.org/news/household-plastic-products-disrupt...

> “the economic impacts of this are probably negligible in a lifetime”

I mean, how else would you define "safe"? I have trouble imagining something both unsafe and has no ecconomic impact.

Not that I don’t disagree with the idea of being skeptical about agency motivations and transparency, but this seems like a literal conspiracy theory.

There are all kinds of things that cause or are linked cancer that pretty much have to be legal. Can the government entirely ban motor vehicles or delivery trucks? Would you have the government ban ice cream because obesity causes cancer?

Government agencies like the FDA have to deal with the complexities of the real world. Risk of death is involved with daily life, so they are often tasked with the analysis of risk.

The layperson doesn’t really like to hear that they’re just a number in a statistics database but it’s true.

40% of people get cancer in their lifetime. So if you have a chemical that increases cancer risk by an insignificant enough percentage, there’s a pretty understandable debate on whether banning something like that is an overreach or not. What are the benefits of the chemicals? What are the risks?

Actually banning fossil fuel cars from dense city centers has been proven to be healthier for the people living there. So yeah would be great if they could ban them everywhere.

I agree, but there's a reason that I specifically didn't add those qualifiers. I was talking about a complete ban on vehicles – delivery trucks, school buses, semi trucks, cars in rural areas, etc. They all have negative externalities and verifiably kill people, but they provide obvious benefits that we rely on.

The FDA is there to evaluate risks and decide when benefits outweigh risks.

Even if true, isn't economic impact just a proxy for human harm since the more working and healthy humans the better?

> The WHO does have a tendency to lean overly cautious

Not always. It took them far too long to acknowledge COVID-19 could be transmitted through the air.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7

That tells you about how much you should listen to their opinions on the causation of cancer, eh?

I mostly agree. Both agencies have their flaws (what doesn't?) but on the whole, I trust WHO more than the FDA.

Which isn't to say I'll always side with WHO over FDA when they disagree, of course.

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