Yet a drug—that people willingly and optionally take as opposed to this—must be proven NOT to create harm before it is allowed in the wild. Your argument sounds like it is in bad faith.
Pharmaceuticals play by a different set of rules than other chemicals because humans are particularly gullible when it comes to health claims. "Snake oil salesman" is a common term for a reason. We don't let big pharma make certain claims without ample test data for a whole host of obvious reasons.
In this context we were talking about punishing people for "harming" without having proven that they've really harmed at all. This would be more like locking up all the Chinese restaurant owners for using MSG.
Your argument sounds like it is in bad logic.
Can you please at least do a very basic amount of research before you take sides on this? Perhaps watch a documentary (e.g. the devil we know) or read at least 1 wikipedia article -- it was clear from the outset that workers at these factories were giving birth to children with birth-defects for example. [1]
These companies had engineers who were actively concerned about its health effects, circulating internal memos to that effect [1], but just because there wasn't a finalized published study are able to claim "well.... it's not proooooven technically for 100% sure to be bad for you in small doses..."
Of course small doses of anything can take a decade to be proven harmful to newborn children. These are now being linked to ADHD, that's something that takes years of very intentional research to find (because how old does a kid have to be to get that diagnosis).
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/05/425451/makers-pfas-forever...
I am not taking the side you think I am, you simply are reading things into what I said that aren’t there.
I am sure 3M did awful things. I am sure high levels of the stuff are dangerous, certain occupations were exposed to it at dangerous levels, the company willingly ignored that. I’m sure they deserve this fine. Fines of this magnitude hit corporations where they live in the way that jailing a COO cannot.
I just think “mass harm” is not proven. Perhaps some simply define that differently than I do, I don’t consider the relatively tiny amounts of factory workers impacted to be mass harm. Awful, sure. But the hysteria about this, and what I think most people are talking about when they use that term, is the level all of us are exposed to via drinking water, food packaging, etc. There’s simply no proof (or even solid evidence) of mass harm by that definition, just hysteria. Proof may arrive one day, I do not know. As you point out, it may take years or even decades. (Though it has been around nearly a century, and in large quantities for some time.)
The word “linked” is always common in bunk science. When you see that frequently on any topic, you can be sure there’s hysteria.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every chemical manufactured (they all can end up in water systems) to be clinically tested. Those chemicals are too important to modern life to yank them all. There are too many.
Well clearly it's been proven to the satisfaction of the court, whatever your "personal research" says.
It's also been proven to an independent science council:
The C8 Science Panel, which was funded by DuPont as part of a lawsuit settlement, conducted extensive epidemiological analysis on human health outcomes from exposure to PFOA, a type of PFAS. This panel, composed of independent scientists, found links to several health harms, including two types of cancer and pregnancy-related issues, after studying blood samples from nearly 70,000 residents in the mid-Ohio River Valley. This area was significantly exposed due to its proximity to a DuPont Teflon factory (EWG).
More papers come out every year finding stronger links. I wonder what your horse in this race is, my friend?
[1] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/science-pfas-rebuttal...
The FDA requires that drugs provably and consistently have an effect, and that side effects are generally well known and not excessively bad so as to outweigh the benefits.
Drugs without known side effects are the worst in the eyes of the FDA (except those with no redeeming properties whatsoever anyway), because it doesn’t allow for manageable prescribing.
If they were proven to be safe, they wouldn’t require a prescription and would be sold over the counter. Though even that bar isn’t really required, or St. John’s Wort, Tylenol, etc. wouldn’t be allowed to be sold.
This isn’t how we regulate chemicals in America. Perhaps it should be.
What sort of test suite would THAT look like?