Jon Richardson Quotes

See {642413} for the reaction of one of the major local newspapers.

The Ministry of Health had conducted inspections of Lebanese Restaurants, rarely done in the past, and found many with traces of human and animal feces in the food. Typically bribes would be paid to the inspectors but a new reform minister made honest inspections a high priority. Then when he made the results public and newspapers like this carried the message, most of the other government ministers were very upset as it held the country up to ridicule and greatly threatened the international reputation of the country for the finest food in the Middle East, and might further harm the Tourist business which their self-inflicted civil war had already damaged in the latter part of the 20th century and by the militarized standoff that had evolved since. See {642413} for the Health Minister’s statement triggering this headline.

At the height of the Spanish American War:. The publication that this quotation was taken from was distributed widely during the war. When the publisher attempted to mail the publication to military troops and leaders fighting abroad. The postmaster general refused to transmit the anti war material thought the mails. The furor that erupted over the censorship issue then assured a wide distribution of The Anti-Imperialist.

What is fascinating about this quotation is that each year in the United States millions of Americans get sick from contaminated food. Well over 100,000 need to be hospitalized, and over 3000 Americans die from food borne illness. Yet this Congressman from an agricultural state can make such an absurd statement. The US is better than most counties in terms of food safety, and is much improved over the last decades. However, it is certainly not COMPLETELY safe. Ideologically, he was trying to ward off calls for increased Federal Regulation of the Food System which he believed could not be as successful at making the system more safe as if the food industry engaged in self regulation. But it is common in modern politics to completely depart from the truth if the truth might create public and political pressure for legislation that the Congressman was ideologically opposed to. The end of reducing Federal Regulation for him justified a blatant untruth which misled the public who believed him. Worse, Americans have less trust in anything their legislators say as more and more are exposed making statements like this.

The fear of a nuclear accident is not based on the statistics or probability of death or injury. When a person chokes, it is only that person who may die. IF there is a nuclear power plant meltdown, millions of people can be injured or killed. It is the possible scale of the problem which makes most citizens fearful.

The CDC scientists track communicable diseases and are responsible for creating vaccines each year in time to limit the “flu season’ and other disease mortality and morbidity. In the government shutdown, they could not even volunteer to work in their own laboratories.

There was no Federal regulation of food and drink then. Fast buck whisky purveyors would include all kinds of ingredients and processes, safe and sanitary or not. Many Americans died or became very sick from eating tainted food then. Even bad whisky had killed many. TR chose whisky as his example, because Congress was filled with heavy drinkers and whisky was then the favorite Congressional drink. Roosevelt, with these tactics got the first federal food regulatory laws passed over enourmous opposition, not unlike the fight over Obamacare which would take place a century later.

A number of Americans believe that these and other elements of our civilization are dangerous to human health. Yet all the evidence, and there has been much on each of therse, has shown that there is no causal link between these and health problems. Yet there are people who claim that they observed bad things like autism developing after childhood vaccines. Some people have been diagnozed with cancer shortly after they began to eat a genitically modified food. Some people developed migrane headaches shortly after they started using a cell phone. The rumors travel and many people are concerned. Hoever, there are a number of children who are diagnozed with autism every year, Some of those had their diagnosis shortly after they had the recomended childhood vaccines. But it woud be impossible for out of 1,000 children who contracted autism in a given year to not have had their annual vaccines within 3 months from the time they had their shots, Actually about 250 of them would have that. Of all of the people who started using a cell phone for the first time, there will always be some who also have headaches after they started with cellphones. Epidemiologists can and have actually measures most of these things and either there is no causal relationship, or it is so slight as to not be serious enough to be a threat.