> but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't proven there aren't harmful effects at low levels?
Erm...in health and safety related contexts. At least in countries that care about those things. When it comes to someone's life isn't that hard to assume that if something is considered it could even be dangerous or not enough is known to advise staying away from it, rather than way and find out until experiments have shown otherwise.
Seems like a no brainier to me. To put it another way, if you are a parent, do you want your child or wife to participate in a study where she told to go ahead and drink 15 glasses of wine while pregnant so 20 year from then they can publish a paper on it.
To put it yet another way, each person has only one life and if they are told it is ok to consume a substance because there is not evidence it is harmful but then oops it turns out it is, they don't get a do over. It is not like buying a car someone saying, wash it with this new acid substance and it rusts and has to be replaced. You can replace a car, you can't replace your body.
Moreover. It is considered unlikely that alcohol will help in the pregnancy case. It seems at best it won't have any effect and at worst it will have a detrimental effect. Again, seems like a pretty good reason for the advice to stay away from it for 9 months.
> We do it because we as a society love to control women, their behavior and their bodies, and pregnancy offers a great opportunity to exert that control.
See now I don't know if you are serious or sarcastic. That is a pretty ridiculous argument. Sure go ahead and tell your wife, friends and family to drink so they can liberate themselves from the shackles of the Western Anglo-Saxon While Male Dominated Society
> but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't proven there aren't harmful effects at low levels.
A specific 'health and safety' context where this exact issue comes up is actually with ionizing radiation (such as from nuclear reactors).
Humans (like most animals) actually have a remarkable ability to overcome low levels of radiation damage, by means such as genetic repair, programmed apotosis (essentially ASSERT()s in your own genetic code), and even roving patrols by your immune system that catch pre-cancerous cells.
The problem is that it is difficult to determine whether there is a real low-dose threshold, below which people do not suffer appreciable increase in health risk from radiation. Also, whether that threshold depends on the person, depends on prior exposure, depends on type of dose received, a combination of the above, etc.
The evidence leans heavily to there being a threshold much higher than the levels of radiation we'd ever encounter in day-to-day life (and possibly even there being a beneficial effect to low levels of radiation).
But our radiation health physicists (and UN health organizations) have tended to take a very conservative view and simply recommend that people minimize radiation exposure, at least until there is enough evidence to make very clear what a safe threshold level is.
Exactly. The rule is not "put on your seatbelt except when you don't plan to exceed 10mph and there are no obvious nearby hazards, or if the windows are open and you're near a body of water," the rule is "always wear a seat belt."
If American society would tolerate it, surely we'd have anti-drunk driving laws that allowed no higher BAC than naturally occurs due to metabolism.
Erm...in health and safety related contexts. At least in countries that care about those things. When it comes to someone's life isn't that hard to assume that if something is considered it could even be dangerous or not enough is known to advise staying away from it, rather than way and find out until experiments have shown otherwise.
Seems like a no brainier to me. To put it another way, if you are a parent, do you want your child or wife to participate in a study where she told to go ahead and drink 15 glasses of wine while pregnant so 20 year from then they can publish a paper on it.
To put it yet another way, each person has only one life and if they are told it is ok to consume a substance because there is not evidence it is harmful but then oops it turns out it is, they don't get a do over. It is not like buying a car someone saying, wash it with this new acid substance and it rusts and has to be replaced. You can replace a car, you can't replace your body.
Moreover. It is considered unlikely that alcohol will help in the pregnancy case. It seems at best it won't have any effect and at worst it will have a detrimental effect. Again, seems like a pretty good reason for the advice to stay away from it for 9 months.
> We do it because we as a society love to control women, their behavior and their bodies, and pregnancy offers a great opportunity to exert that control.
See now I don't know if you are serious or sarcastic. That is a pretty ridiculous argument. Sure go ahead and tell your wife, friends and family to drink so they can liberate themselves from the shackles of the Western Anglo-Saxon While Male Dominated Society