Health is not a game

Today I was looking for some info for work and I stumbled on a blog where they were talking about a molecule that happens to be an additive, it was a science blog so at first the comments were of scientists that knew what they were reading and what they were talking about, but afterwards the gibberish started. Lots of "mums" and other people started to post whatever they had heard about the topic, sometimes not even reading what the post said. It gave me a headache.

Usually I try not to comment on things I don't know, I might write about my view on some things but if I don't really know then I do say it, but I don't know why everyone feels qualified to talk about medicine and science, it surprises me because I don't even dare talking about my own field because I feel I don't know enough.

Basically people on that post was saying that the additives are toxic and that they make people ill. I'm not saying that all additives are innocuous, but even water is toxic at the right dose. I'm just saying that people needs to stop freaking out, that governments do control these things and that many of them expose themselves voluntarily to things that are going to kill them much faster (cigarettes, alcohol, etc). Also people tend to draw conclusions too fast linking things to diseases on the fly, if they actually knew how difficult is it to do and how time consuming and how many people you need on those studies...

Finally there was a comment that was something like "before there weren't all those illnesses like cancer or Alzheimer's". I don't really know where to start in here, I guess I should wonder when before was, was it in the 3rd century, in the 18th or in the 20th? Because one has to remember that before they hadn't the medical advances we have today so it was difficult to diagnose, also people tended to die young so some of these diseases didn't have time to appear, and finally some diseases were "unspeakable", mentally challenged people were locked away and no one died of cancer because it was a "bad illness".

Well I guess I made my point here, I don't know it infuriates me when people talk about something they don't know and are convinced they are right. I know scientific language is difficult and confusing and that, sometimes, we don't help because we start using terminology when talking to other people, but still I don't talk about computers or mobile phones because I don't know anything about them, I might say I like this or I like that, but I cannot say that some component is better than another one, the same should happen with people talking about science, but I guess that's how the internet works.