> Wait a min. I don't remember smokers dropping dead left and right in all those times when almost everyone smoked..
Because the effect isn't very much pronounced. It's somewhat in the middle between eating rotten meat and using artificial sweeteners, in the sense that it really does damage health over long periods of time, which will result in worse life quality and quicker death of some fraction of smokers. Accordingly, scientists figured that out relatively quickly.
My whole point is that the difficulty for science to tie a cause to an effect is proportional to how strong impact that cause has. Saying that artificial sweeteners, or glyphosate, are clear carcinogens literally means the effect is strong and pronounced, which directly implies it's easy to find.
> Another one is the effects on lead in automobile fuels. Again people were not dropping dead. Despite the issues about it that we have since discovered
That was more subtle, but again, found relatively quickly.
> If you think pesticide residue cannot do much damage, take a look at Endosulfan tragedy in India.
I'm not saying that. We know Endosulfan is toxic. And it is being banned worldwide; the story you linked is about politics, not science.
Again, my point is only this heuristic: the health danger of a substance in mass use is roughly proportional to how easy it is to verify it. When you get to the point that the only indication of danger is that some mice might have had bad reaction to a substance, except the other studies show they didn't - when you have no sensible mechanism explaining the danger and only weak statistical correlation - at that point, costs of alternatives should outweigh any worry you should have. For example, the alternative to artificial sweetener is sugar, which is known to be much more dangerous to health. The alternative to roundup is pesticides known to be much more toxic. Etc.
>That was more subtle, but again, found relatively quickly.
Wait. What? How do you measure "relatively quickly"? As far as I know, we have been using it even after the problems were known.......
>The alternative to roundup is pesticides known to be much more toxic. Etc.
Any source for this claim that there are no, absolutely no safer alternatives? Also, is there any proof that a safer alternative is fundamentally impossible to make? Also, have we thought about using safer alternatives, and the hit in production that it might cause. Can we live with that?
Because the effect isn't very much pronounced. It's somewhat in the middle between eating rotten meat and using artificial sweeteners, in the sense that it really does damage health over long periods of time, which will result in worse life quality and quicker death of some fraction of smokers. Accordingly, scientists figured that out relatively quickly.
My whole point is that the difficulty for science to tie a cause to an effect is proportional to how strong impact that cause has. Saying that artificial sweeteners, or glyphosate, are clear carcinogens literally means the effect is strong and pronounced, which directly implies it's easy to find.
> Another one is the effects on lead in automobile fuels. Again people were not dropping dead. Despite the issues about it that we have since discovered
That was more subtle, but again, found relatively quickly.
> If you think pesticide residue cannot do much damage, take a look at Endosulfan tragedy in India.
I'm not saying that. We know Endosulfan is toxic. And it is being banned worldwide; the story you linked is about politics, not science.
Again, my point is only this heuristic: the health danger of a substance in mass use is roughly proportional to how easy it is to verify it. When you get to the point that the only indication of danger is that some mice might have had bad reaction to a substance, except the other studies show they didn't - when you have no sensible mechanism explaining the danger and only weak statistical correlation - at that point, costs of alternatives should outweigh any worry you should have. For example, the alternative to artificial sweetener is sugar, which is known to be much more dangerous to health. The alternative to roundup is pesticides known to be much more toxic. Etc.