From: Gene McAloon 

Yours is the standard Republican-business rant:  Avoiding the loss of a
comparatively few lives is not worth the lowering of profits to private
enterprise.

Detroit was the exemplar of that rant when it all too often refused to
modify a part that was known to be prone to failure and contributed to
accidents. Detroit
didn't believe that saving a relative handful of lives was worth spending
millions on recalls . . . until public pressure forced the government to
consider criminal charges in such cases.

It is interesting that the only cost you mention is that to industry. You
confine yourself to that because the alternative, public cost through
government
regulation, is unacceptable because government regulation is unacceptable. 
Yet the cost to government is minimal either as a percentage of spending or
on a per
capita basis.  Yet you don't even mention it.

Another interesting aspect of your rant is that you have no objections to
government spending millions on research at long as long as that is paid by
taxpayers, but costs to the taxpayer through government regulation is
unacceptable because regulation of private enterprise is unthinkable to
business
interests.

There is indeed rant here, although it isn't necessarily yours; it is that
of Republican-business origins and it is much older than you are. You are
simply mindlessly repeating it.

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 23:44:33 -0800, Randall Parker
 wrote:

>Gene McAloon wrote:
>> There is a scandal involved here, but it has nothing to do with a cover-up.
The
>> scandal is that conservative administrations are ideologically opposed to
>> government regulation of private industry.
>
>Blah Blah. Standard rant. I roll my eyes. Let us just have a knee-jerk
reaction.
>
>>Even where public health is involved,
>> it is expected that industry should regulate itself.  Industry regulates
itself
>> minimally on a cost/benefit basis. Therefore there is never enough
regulation to
>> satisfy the public interest.
>
>Never enough regulation? Who is is defining the public interest? You? Look,
>regulations have costs. The costs can be made so high that the net effect on
the
>public is detrimental. Just sticking industry with a lot of costs may be
emotionally
>satisfying to you. But I see no point in doing so unless there is a benefit
>commensurate with the costs.
>
>Where's the big prion epidemic? One case per million happens and those cases
are
>viewed as spontaneous and caused by human proteins randomly changing into a
disease
>state. What is the Bush Administration supposed to do, regulate Brownian
Motion?
>
>>Even when meat processing plants or slaughter
>> houses are repeatedly cited for violations on the basis of what little
>> government inspection does take place, the fines if imposed at all are
minimal
>> and prosecutions rare. All this has been the story since the Reagan years.
>
>Gene,
>
>Where's the threat? Even Prusiner can't say that the standard mad cow prions
(not the
>new variant prions that caused problems in the UK) can cause a disease in
humans.
>Read all my other posts on the subject. The more I read the less concerned I
became.
>The spontaneous CJD is a far bigger threat to humans in the United States than
>cow-borne prions. Prions themselves are such a small threat that they are
scarcely
>worth talking about.
>
>It makes more sense to treat prion disease as something that should have
research
>money spent to develop treatments rather than as something to pursue with
regulated
>expenditures by industry. The benefit would be greater if the same amount of
money
>was spent on research for treatments rather than on testing.

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