It has nothing to do with science really. I don't think "pro-raw-milk people" question safety benefits of pasteurization or doubt germ theory. It's only about people's lack of nuance, totalitarian ambitions and safetism. Some people just can't help but make decisions for other people because they think they are smarter and know better. Ban, ban, unsafe, ban, I know better. The idea that consuming raw milk is somehow "unscientific" is plain stupid and/or propaganda. All I want is to enjoy the taste of raw milk from time to time, I know how germs work, I'm not forcing anyone to drink it, but I'll be fine, please worry about yourself.
I would even appreciate government making sure that companies selling raw milk to me are taking additional (but reasonable) precautions. But anyone just trying to ban raw milk for being unsafe and "unscientific" is just stupid.
Not only that link is a paywall, but I just don't trust propaganda outlets like this. Over and over I've seen these twisting and misinterpreting people's opinions. Quick googling suggests that he does have some unconventional (borderline quackery?) opinions there, though lots of it seems like a typical smearing tactics. Nevertheless, if I need to support even a complete quack to defend my rights, so be it. I wish both sides were more reasonable, so we could slap some warning signs on raw milk bottles, ensure higher safety standards on raw milk producers, so I could enjoy my glass of raw milk in peace, but I guess it is never going to happen.
The WSJ is, if anything, editorially right-wing, and bypassing the paywall is trivial; https://archive.is/n4JZL.
Excerpts:
> “The ubiquity of pasteurization and vaccinations are only two of the many indicators of the domineering ascendancy of germ theory as the cornerstone of contemporary public health policy,” he wrote in the book. “A $1 trillion pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, pricks, potions and poisons and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology … fortifies the century-old predominance of germ theory.”
> As his political profile grew, Kennedy made his war on germ theory part of his public platform. As a presidential candidate in 2023, he promised to tell the National Institutes of Health to “give infectious disease a break for about eight years,” NBC reported. On a 2023 episode of Joe Rogan’s popular podcast, Kennedy said “it’s hard for an infectious disease to kill a healthy person with a rugged immune system”—an assertion that runs counter to modern medical consensus. When Rogan said that wasn’t true of the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed more than 50 million people globally, Kennedy replied: “Well, the Spanish flu was not a virus.”
I'm not sure how to share a society with people who think it's OK for the HHS Secretary to be a quack.
How many human lives are worth the cost for you to enjoy the taste of raw milk that has been distributed across state lines from time to time? If possible please answer both in terms of acceptable deaths, but also in terms of hospitalization cases that did not result in death.
If banning the sale of raw milk saves a life is it still stupid and unscientific? What if it saves 10,000? A million?
People act like these things are a personal attack on them and their freedoms. Like they happened in a vacuum. Like a bunch of bros got together in the 40s - 70s and thought to themselves, "how can we deny future raw milk aficionado dpc_01234 his druthers decades from now". Pay no mind to the thousands of lives that could be saved from terrible diseases like tuberculosis.
This type of thinking and commentary (propaganda?) just constantly being thrust into the world is not only ignorant but it's dangerous. Good luck to you and yours man, I hope the worst that happens to you from this willful lack or regard for both science and history is the inevitable food poisoning you'll get from blindly ignoring food safety because "germ milk yummy".
These people do not understand the level of testing that we do; the statistics of efficacy or safety. Perhaps we need to explain it better, but it is really quite complex to explain. There's a trope that if you cannot explain something in a simple way, that thing must not be true. If so I would like someone to explain quantum mechanics and relativity to a 10 year old. Good luck.
That's a really good way to put it. I'll add that in my experience with raw milk, while I can still taste the taste I also think fondly about the relationship I had with the farmer and even (once or twice) the help I got to give at the farm.
The biggest benefit of pasteurization is extending the shelf life, which is important in an industrialized economy. Dying due to consuming raw milk was not a problem, at least until milk had to be shipped long distances.
Not just distance, but time. If you try to keep milk around for any amount of time after milking the cow, you run risks like Bird Flus and TB and other disease contaminants.
Which is also why in the other direction cheese was invented for time stability of milk.
I've tried for 2-3 months and I had no problems with the editing model. My main issues were with the general UX (text moving around with diagnostics, balloon windows covering your input, etc). That's in addition to my other issues (you need to install it, it's not available everywhere, etc).
Does it now allow handling non-2xx responses in non-SSE actions? Refusing to support it (even as an opt-in) is what made me just look into using alpine + alpinejs instead. SSE in d* is awesome when you have a feature that needs it, but IMO d* completely over-emphasizes and wants you to use it for everything. If I was using d*, I would use it more often, sure. But most of my projects just need little html updates on a click of a button, that's all. I'm not going to change the whole architecture to tailor it to a 1% feature.
He is right, but also the fines need to be higher, especially for repeated violations.
Ever worked in a company where you need approval from 7 separate teams to land a simple change? Just can't get anything done, no matter how useful. This is a huge problem. People generally do not understand what serialized blocking does to performance.
On the other hand the fines cited in the article seem laughably low. I don't know how much ground water was discharged, and how big of a deal it is, but at certain pricetag even billionaires will say: well, it's cheaper to get a cistern and take that water to a water treatment facility or something.
Him being right, or wrong, is a bold call to make.
But all he's saying is he wants to run his company the way tech entrepreneurs have been for a while - "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission" which they like because it's favored toward them, and, by the time a regulator has caught up, they have made a pile of money, or lost it all and gone.
For a different perspective, it's the difference between the kind of (pro-innovation) restrictions imposed on automobile companies versus those (anti-innovation) ones imposed on aircraft companies:
1. For some reason it only talks in terms of the USA, there's a whole world of manufacturers that could have stepped up to create flying cars if the market was interested.
2. There was, for a very long time, a thing called a "microlight" which allowed people to own their own snap private air craft (although not generally VTOL)
I would even appreciate government making sure that companies selling raw milk to me are taking additional (but reasonable) precautions. But anyone just trying to ban raw milk for being unsafe and "unscientific" is just stupid.