Good. It's pointless to disinfect and reinfect your hands so many times in a day. Soap should be used to make lipids and other grime water-soluble. That's it.
If you need to sterilize your hands, then you should use a separate product dedicated to that because chances are you are a doctor.
Not sterilizing your hands all the time is actually good (in most cases) because it allows your body to sample the latest and greatest baddies and keep immunity up-to-date.
> Not sterilizing your hands all the time is actually good (in most cases) because it allows your body to sample the latest and greatest baddies and keep immunity up-to-date.
The other reason people shouldn't be using harsh chemicals on their hands is because it damages the skin, and thus creates a better environment for bacterial contamination.
> Issues regarding hand hygiene practices among health-care professionals have been widely discussed and may be even more complicated than those in the general public. Unless patient care involves invasive procedures or extensive contact with blood and body fluids, current guidelines recommend plain soap for handwashing (38,39); however, infection rates in adult or neonatal intensive care units or surgery may be further reduced when antiseptic products are used (40-42).
Un-ban [something] because it's not really harmful and it's about choice of what I do with my body
I never understood which someyhing to put in which category. Perhaps you can argue that no one gets any utility for the thing you want to ban since it's a fraud, but people are spending their money on that thing so surely they get some utility. Not really my place to say
I think the first category is "ban something if it's ineffective and there's a tragedy of the commons from using it". Antibacterial soaps are probably not any more effective than regular soaps, but they might contribute to bacterial immunity (to antibacterials).
Surely there is some negative effects to any recreational drug use, especially alcohol. Theres always a trade off , I just think that the bar to making something illegal should be higher.
There is likely negative externality to other people from its widespread use (more bacterial resistance), and the benefit is at most a placebo effect. Many users may not even care that much--it's just another optional checkbox at little extra cost.
The manufacturers also fall into a prisoner's dilemma and cannot avoid offering it if a number of buyers are not aware of or care about externalities. Only the government can pull them out together.
I'm actually glad you mentioned this because it's a very similar problem--a complete lack of market choice.
The big economic problem with smoking was the fact that smokers spend money--a LOT of money. Smokers spend so much more money than non-smokers that no business was ever willing to be non-smoking and consequently there was no choice.
This was similar with respect to anti-bacterial soaps. It was almost impossible to find one that wasn't anti-bacterial because the anti-bacterials sold so much better.
Side note: Ivory was one of the few that still produced a hand soap without an anti-bacterial. It's often very hard to find on a retail shelf.
I'm a non smoker but people do love smoking, willing to sacrifice health and $10 a pack so yeah, I would say that's okay.
It's an interesting example you used because smoking is a vice enjoyed by many lower income individuals. Would you feel that day drinking ala brunch should be banned? I'm from NYC and I have to regularly dodge drunk young adults every Sunday. Surely there are plenty of negative side effects to those individuals and those around them.
> I'm a non smoker but people do love smoking, willing to sacrifice health and $10 a pack so yeah, I would say that's okay.
For smoking in public places, I believe that falls in the same category covered by the quote, "My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins."
People smoking in restaurants, malls, and other public places aren't just hurting their own health, but the health of those sharing that public space with their second-hand smoke. So no. Your right to slowly kill yourself with your addiction ends when you are in a public space and are slowly killing those around you.
> I'm from NYC and I have to regularly dodge drunk young adults every Sunday. Surely there are plenty of negative side effects to those individuals and those around them.
They are a harm to those around them. That's why being drunk in public is against the law and drunk tanks get filled to the brim every Friday and Saturday night. Your right to be drunk ends the moment you endanger people in public spaces.
Again, bacterial soaps fall under the same category. You want to use a product with absolutely no proven scientific benefit to yourself, but is scientifically proven to make bacteria more dangerous to those around you? Unacceptable, and since some companies and consumers are refusing to stop endangering public health, the law must step in to prevent your behavior from infringing on the rights of those around you to pursue happiness, which includes the pursuit of good health.
>Errr, you do know that the FDA (I think it was that part of the Federal government) had to re-define scientific "truth" to come up with that general effect?
The usual data massaging wasn't enough, like ignoring 19 of the 30 existing studies as of then, so they changed the confidence level required from the standard 95% to 90%. Look up commentary on their 1993 "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders" for more details.
Scene: FDA officials appearance at the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (Subcommittee on Health)
Representative 1: We've been following this antibacterial resistance case closely for a few years now. Every year, a greater number of my constituents have related to me the story of how they lost a loved-one due to MSRA - and staph infection, as I understand, isn't even the only thing that this, uhh, the resistance to bacteria dru--err- medications. So, as you know, we've asked you here today to better understand how we can plan to solve this looming crisis. What have you got for us?
FDA1: Well, generally speaking, we've been working with a number of the same antibiotics that have been in use for many decades now. Their effectiveness has been continuously diminishing since the first introduction of each antibiotic. The general consensus here at the FDA is, we need to encourage the development and mass production of multiple new drugs to combat the inevitable growing resistance.
REP2: And what is it that you mean by inevitable?
FDA2: If I may field this question - what my colleague is referring to here is the fact that long-term exposure to specific antibiotics necessarily results in resistance to the same.
REP3: So, you're talkin' about evolution here, right? Just so we're all on the same page.
(Indistinguishable snickering throughout the room)
FDA2: Ye-- That's one way to describe it.
REP2: So what exactly is it that you need from us to enact your plan?
FDA1: Well, that's why we came to you. You see, it's not a very lucrative business opportunity -- developing a new antibiotic. Our custo-- your constituents would have to buckle their belts a little, because we need at least $30 million more for our budget to be pumped into early research in the university system.
(The whole crowd erupts in laughter!)
REP1: Hahahaha! Tax reallocations in this political climate! Don't get me started... But we did tell you to give us your pie in the sky ideas first, so what else do you have for us today?
FDA3: The abuse of antibiotics in the livestock industry is not onl--
REP2: Oh no... We've been through this before. How else are we going to get chickens big enough to feed the world?
FDA1: Well, there's an other option too. We could stop using antibacterial soaps more than necessary in hospitals, which as you know, are the hotbeds of new infe--
REP1: Let me stop you right there. Do you even have any idea as to how much we spent on the last - washing your hands saves lives - campaign? If our const-- your patients knew that you were just washing your hands with regular soap, do yo-- no. Not even an option. We don't want to call you here again for this same issue next year.
FDA4: What if we just banned them for personal use? No one would be negatively affected, and it would appear to be a decisive action to solve the problem.
REP1: That does sound reasonable... Any objections from the committee?
REP4: No, I don't have any soap manufacturers in my state-- hahaaha
REP1: Then a voiced vote shall suffice. All those in favor
Depends on whether one is thinking like a mountain or willing to be blind past the horizon of his or her own lifetime. Sometimes negative effects compound with time or, as jcrites noted, the negative effects of two people doing a thing is greater than 2x one person doing it.
Except that, unlike anti-bacterial soap, alcohol is quite effective at what it does. For a proper analogy, imagine that alcohol tasted like water and didn't really affect your mental state, but still had some harmful effect when used by large groups. Maybe now it seems more reasonable to ban?
But people spend millions on this product every year? Surely they get some benefit. You can argue that the benefits of drug use are actually a mirage since it's linked to so many other problems, health and social.
>But people spend millions on this product every year? Surely they get some benefit.
Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise.
>You can argue that the benefits of drug use are actually a mirage since it's linked to so many other problems, health and social.
You could, but you'd be ignoring the health benefits of certain patterns of consumption.
What you can't do is argue that antibacterial soap has the same social and cultural significance as Chartreuse or Cognac, nor can you claim that there exists a mode of consumption for antibacterial soap that has net positive effects (outside of a hospital).
Yes, it's a trade-off. We're on the same page. The point is rather that one of the two categories (drugs) has a positive counterweight to its negative effects while the other does not.
> The point is rather that one of the two categories (drugs) has a positive counterweight to its negative effects while the other does not.
That's a value judgement. I would argue it does have a positive counterweight as people spend money to buy the product. That's pretty much the purpose of a market. To tease out the value people put in certain items and to direct resources into said products
Not sure if you are serious, but markets don't work in the face of incomplete information, a state exacerbated by misleading advertising around antibacterial and germicidal products. Arguing that the market knows more than scientists about triclosan is...bizarre.
Markets and prices exist precisely due to imperfect information. Do you know all the resources that go into making a product? Probably not. This is pretty basic economics:
Yes, it was meant as a value judgement, and this brings us back to the original point: the reason we as a society ban antibacterial soap and not Elijah Craig is because we value the latter for cultural and social reasons. This value judgement is reflected in our laws.
It's a feature, not a bug.
I don't get it. Don't you want to prevent epidemics of incurable diseases and enjoy a beer? I mean no disrespect but I don't understand what's so shocking or surprising about these laws.
People also spend millions every year on a regulatory apparatus to help identify and address tragedies of the commons and other threats that each person, individually, would be ill-equipped to address on their own.
> But people spend millions on this product every year? Surely they get some benefit
A psychological one, sure. They perceive that they're getting a health benefit (whether or not they actually are), so the money seems worth it. But the evidence is that it doesn't actually get your hands cleaner than non-antibacterial soap and that it may contribute to creating stronger bacteria.
The FDA's judgement is that the downsides outweigh the upsides. I tend to agree.
Equating these two markets is a little unfair. One major thing is that if they banned recreational drugs people would be mad and would still want to use them where if they ban antibacterial soap no one is going to care. I think that's why drugs get a warning label and soap just gets banned, they could mandate a large warning label on antibacterial soap but that just seems strange to me and would probably lead to the same outcome as banning them anyway.
More precisely When a drunk driver crashes their car, the total damage they're likely to cause to others is about equal to the total damage they'll cause to themselves. Sometimes they'll hit a family car and kill 3 people, more often they'll run into a tree and kill only themselves. It comes out pretty similarly if you look at other harm caused by alcohol.
When you use antibacterial soap, you hurt everyone in the world equally. You hurt me as much as you hurt yourself, but you also hurt 7 billion other people. That means antibacterial soaps cause 7 billion times more damage to others than to oneself on average, while the ratio is about 1 for alcohol.
So someone acting purely in self-interest will mediate their use of alcohol fairly effectively, while a self-interested antibacterial soap user won't mediate their use at all.
In the case of antibacterial soap, it's somewhat harmful: those antibacterial chemicals get in the water supply, and exert extra evolutionary pressure on bacteria, leading to increased chance of resistant bacteria.
Some people enjoy using the product for whatever reason and spend their money on these products. Should we just ignore those preferences? Why are we so quick to disregard those preferences in some cases and not in others, such as recreational drug use?
Not sure how it works in the country in which you reside, but homeopathy and ineffective alternative "medicines" are pretty much legal in the US. I would prefer not to go to some government agency to determine whether I can use a product unless it has grave dangers. I don't think antibacterial soap passes this bar. You could disagree
Anti-bacterial is marketed as "better", but is actually worse. If cocaine was legal, you still wouldn't be able to advertise its properties falsely.
Homeopathy stuff is actually clearly labeled not evaluated by fda etc. You could probably still sell anti-bacterial soap if it is clearly labeled "not recommended for daily use, may cause harm to consumer and environment", but what market are you going to sell it to, then? Consumers buy it because it advertises anti-bacterial prominently as though it was a plus, my wife buys it because of this (sometimes she doesn't believe me, arguing "hey all these companies sell it, it has to do something!", And she hates I'm usually right on this stuff, heh. )
Antibiotic resistance has the potential to throw society back to times where people died regularly from a variety of bacterial infections, I think it's one of the most important issues today.
Homeopathic "drugs" are sold in pharmacies in the us to an extent. It isn't a problems so long as they are clearly lableled and the contents actually reflect labeling (zicam got in trouble for containing active ingredients). Most times, they can't say they cure or help, and at most can say, "may help with X". Heck, these are even legal to sell in Norway, and we don't have a lot of the supplements available (melatonin is prescription).
The main thing with alternative medicine is that it is generally as harmless as water. Unless you are forcing it as the only treatment to your children or others, you aren't harming anyone else.
Antibacterial soap isn't in these categories. People truly think they are healthier for using the stuff - this is partially advertising and false claims. In addition, these things contribute to making the world unhealthier and a more unhealthy place by helping antibiotic resistance - general use does this. It is posing a grave general danger. This danger is the same reason antibiotics are prescription and we try not to prescribe them unnecessarily. It isn't that one will have immediate grave dangers themselves, but it is bad for humans in general.
"I prefer not to go to some government agency..." I think this is really key to your sentiment, and the solution to this isn't to eshew safety regulators, but work to make them more effective and honest and vote for folks (especially congress members) that share those sorts of interests. I don't think any of us have the time or energy to be able to parse out respectable information on each product to make sure it is safe, though we think we do. If you do, look around you. Do you think all of your neighbors do? All college students? I'm very doubtful on this - antibacterial soap is an example. We hear it causes grave dangers, but we buy it anyway. Advertising and culture at work, perhaps.
Because unlike recreational drugs^, antibacterials re-enter the water supply, change the biology of your neighbors and farm animals, and cause existing strains of bacteria to become more antibiotic-resistant.
It is possible that within a decade or two, penicillin will be lose its usefulness, and we'll be back to the stage of history where cuts and scrapes could become life-threatening.
^ a related problem is the flushing of non-consumed, non-recreational antibiotic drugs, incidentally
Some would equally argue that use of recreational drugs is harmful to the user, harms relationships and undermines society in a lot of respects. These things can all be true but it's not necessarily enough grounds to use the power and resources of the state to actively ban a substance.
> it's not necessarily enough grounds to use the power and resources of the state to actively ban a substance
It's not enough grounds because the cost of enforcement is so high that it is equal to or surpasses the cost of the drugs themselves. That isn't the case with antibiotic soap--it's not an addictive productive, so it's unlikely that there will be dealers slinging triclosan on street corners.
One could argue that recreational drugs harm families and communities, sure. Maybe even nations, if you are talking about drug enforcement.
Antibiotic abuse could wind up affecting human civilization. It could make plague-level events possible. This is a whole different league, and it's ludicrous to turn this into some kind of libertarian talking point.
They also pay extra to buy shampoo with vitamins in it despite most of them knowing it does nothing. They just want an excuse to buy the more complex version of a banal product to exert some control over their banal lives.
In this case, the FDA can exert some back-pressure because of the significant risk to developing resistant bacteria against the soap constituents, which are needed in medical settings, so they are.
Unfortunately there isn't anything to do be done about rinsing vitamins down the shower drain. Not yet anyway.
People (in mass) are generally stupid and public good is something that needs to be carefully maintained. Much of our regulation is around maintaining a balance between freedom for an individual against the safety and peace for everyone.
The soap is clearly on the "ban" side. But there is an intermediary category of "Ban the publicity of [something] because it's dishonest, don't ban [something] because it's about choice".
Sounds like the antibacterial soaps fall into this category. As I understand it, if a product makes a health or nutrition claim, then it falls under the purview of the FDA, and the FDA rule is that if you make a health claim, then it has to be proven effective.
Soap is a remarkably good antibacterial as well. Im on mobile but will try to look up refs for this later. I used to work in this area and a colleague was an expert on antibacterial properties of detergents.
> You don't need to kill the bacteria. Just remove it.
I'm pretty sure the lipid-dissolving properties of soap kill bacteria by shredding their cell membranes. It's not effective against viruses, but neither is antibacterial soap.
Are they, though? I suspect most butcher shops and restaurants are using antibacterial soap at this point. I go out of my way to try to buy non-antibacterial soap and it's often impossible to find. I imagine most businesses just order whatever's the first thing they see in the catalog/web site, and it's probably antibacterial because that's what most people think they want at home.
It is actually more important to wash your hands properly than it is to use antibacterial soap. This is why most restaurants and medical facilities teach folks how to do it - and why some places install timers on their sinks. Basically, you need to lather for 10-15 seconds, making sure to get between the fingers, top part of the wrist, and your fingernails.
I've heard this action is actually more important than the soap bit for the anti-bacterial properties. But soap helps remove things like grease and 'juice' from the meat really well and helps us be less lazy when doing so.
Well, if you're cooking, the bacteria on the raw meat and whatever you added with your hands get cooked. Most skin bacteria probably don't do too well in the mouth and stomach anyways.
Cross contamination is almost always the concern here. Handle raw -> prepping vegetables for a salad, for instance. Or handling chicken then almost anything else.
After traveling on the subway and picking up various germs should one make sure to put their hands in their mouth and eyes to sample the "latest and greatest"?
It depends, right? Prohibition of anti-bacterial usage in soap is unlikely to create black markets and mafias. Therefore prohibition is an effective solution.
Prohibition of alcohol does create black markets and mafias, so an alternate solution is needed.
Alcohol's effect is limited in scope. It affects the individual, affects the immediate surroundings, and perhaps their family. It cannot affect some one in another country.
The resistant bacteria can grow to a problem of global proportion.
Alcoholic drinks sold in a package come with warning labels. I've seen reports 1-2 drinks a day may improve longevity, but I doubt it would be acceptable to label every beer as "youth potion", you have to limit intake for possible benefit. For the soap, to receive a benefit also requires more than the label indicated.
The substance banned takes hours to kill the bacteria (according to the article), so I would say it's marketed in a mis-leading way. I doubt many people actually buy the soap thinking a multi-hour exposure is needed.
We have no evidence that surgeons scrubbing before donning gloves makes sense either. In fact, there's an undergraduate experiment where people scrub for up to 3-4 minutes and swab after every 10 seconds and plate the swab. The plates actually show more colony-forming units until about 3 minutes, which is much longer than most surgeons scrub. Which suggests that the scrubbing actually liberates bacteria found at the margin of the stratum corneum.
EDIT: Some surgeons argue that having a beard can carry more bacteria into a surgery room, while others argue that shaving might make the surgeon more susceptible to infection by bacteria from the surgery room, since epitelial cells are removed by the razor blade.
The experiment I described is done in undergrad bio labs, I honestly can't find a paper a paper on it. Anyone with an interest: there's a paper that could easily be published!
How sure are you about this? There's usually some kind of timer (and, sometimes, an assistant) to ensure that you wash for the specified amount of time.
Also, I always figured that scrubbing was essentially a precaution in case the gloves ripped or snagged (which, being thin latex, is far from improbable).
The "exam" gloves that doctors and dentists wear are typically nitrile, but I think most surgical gloves are still latex. I know ours are. The surgical gloves are longer, have cuffs, and come in a lot more sizes.
They are alternatives for allergic patients (and surgeons), but they're a little thicker and a bit more expensive.
> Companies will no longer be able to market antibacterial washes with these ingredients because manufacturers did not demonstrate that the ingredients are both safe for long-term daily use ...
Then why were they allowed to market them in the first place? If safety was an issue, and it demonstrably is because that's one reason they're being pulled, then why did they not have to prove before marketing?
You can't prove something is safe, because there might always be future knowledge that you don't yet know. A sticker that repels tigers will seem safe until the day you are actually attacked by a tiger. But only one attack is needed to disprove the premise that stickers keep tigers away.
In this specific case, the antibiotic agents started being added to soap decades ago. Of course we know a lot more about biology and health now than we did then. The FDA last year asked companies to prove they are safe for long-term use by the standards of 2015, and that is what they failed at. But obviously those standards were not available to guide a testing regime in the 1970s.
You mean to say the scientific consensus at this point, which is that they are indeed safe. It's silly to refer to people who believe in scientific rigor as "religious".
No, I know exactly what I meant to say. I'm not saying that GMOs are unsafe. They probably are safe. I'm just saying that there is always the possibility that some issue could be found with a specific GMO, just like any other product in existence. But there are some out there that for some reason think it is impossible. Those are the ones I labeled as "religious".
You're probably seeing a disproportionate backlash to the religious anti-GMO crowd. I'm not sure why, but people get equally stupid when they are defensive.
This is a great idea. The terms literally apply to all soaps, so let them all use it. Then, additionally, if they are adding the chemical require it be listed prominently in the front label. See how fast the market reacts.
Really happy about this - literally just ranted to my partner this week about how we should ban antibacterial soap. It has no place outside of a hospital, and is only contributing to the problems we're facing.
But we don't use the antibacterials in soaps as therapeutic agents to treat infections. So if a bacteria becomes resistant to triclosan, it has no impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics.
> we don't use the antibacterials in soaps as therapeutic agents to treat infections
Why would you think that changes anything? The bacteria don't care about our intentions. Artificial selection works the same regardless. From the link you were replying to:
[...] exposure to triclosan was associated with a high risk of
developing resistance and cross-resistance in Staphylococcus aureus
and Escherichia coli.
> if a bacteria becomes resistant to triclosan, it has no impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics.
Do you think the bacteria magically lose their resistance to an antibiotic (or cross-resistance to a similar antibiotic biochemical mechanism)? Evolution doesn't care why a bacteria developed a mutation that produced a resistance to a particular chemical. All that matters is that they, as survivors, will pass on that mutation to future generations. Any resistant strain will have an advantage in the future, which includes resistance to any antibiotics that work similarly.
By the way, heredity isn't the only way a resistant trait can spread to future bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer[1] is a thing. Bacteria can spread the resistance gene among the current-generation.
Is there any reason why these companies would include a seemingly ineffective element into their product other than being able to say "antibacterial" on the label? It couldn't possibly have been CHEAPER to add them to soaps when it became the new meta, so it'd be interesting if marketing was the sole reason for it.
For the same reason it was effective for marketing: It wasn't immediately obvious _to anyone_ that the additives were ineffective.
Very very often human beings have to make decisions based on incomplete data. If it had turned out that antibiotics in soap saved lives what would we be saying if the industry that had waited years for iron clad proof before taking the relatively inexpensive step of putting it in?
Marketing to consumer misinformation is common. And once one company does it, others need to follow, because the cost of educating the consumer far out ways the cost of just following a trend.
As the article mentions, triclosan can be effective in a completely different setting. It reminds me of another recent study that showed phenylephrine HCL gets metabolised too quickly to do any good when taken orally, even though it's very effective as a nasal spray. Many people switched to it when pseudoephedrine HCL/Sudafed went behind the counter, but the pills literally don't do anything they say they do.
It's called "blue crystals" in marketing jargon, after literal blue crystals and other pointless things. Anything that can be used for market differentiation or that creates a "health aura" effect can boost sales.
I think it's from laundry detergent. People will pay more for a white powder with useless colored crystals in it than they would for the plain white powder. Psychologically, the implication is that the crystals are some sort of secret sauce that makes the powder work better, or is responsible for all the brand-linked advertising claims.
Since the actual chemistry is over most people's heads, the "blue crystals" are where they invest all the magic that makes it work just like the ads claim it will.
At the time, a lot of people were regularly using laundry bluing as a whitening agent along with soap (not another detergent agent, real, honest-to-goodness soap, like Sunlight Soap or Ivory Snow); it was difficult to tell those people that a more effective detergent, by itself, could accomplish what soap and bluing together had been doing. Thus blue crystals in detergent.
I wonder if the public policy intent of this regulation could have been met by permitting soaps to label themselves as antibacterial without containing any of the prohibited compounds (or even lie about containing them).
Soap is pretty antibacterial by itself. ... and now I wonder if we'll next see a wave of soaps containing various reactive nanoparticles what whatever potentially not healthy stuff they'll use to address the fact that the public thinks it wants to buy something that is antibacterial.
I saw some funny old ads from the 50s for toothpaste and mouthwash WITH CHLOROPHYLL!
Same thing there, it had probably just entered shared knowledge, it sounded sciency and natural at the same time, so why not add it to toothpaste? It must be good, right?
Completely worthless, pure marketing gimmick, yet people bought it.
The same reason why we see sugar with label "carbon free" and water with label "no GMO". Marketing. Yes, it gets old with time and they have to look for the next gimmick. But if that brings them some income in the meantime, that's what they do.
I'm not thinking of anything, it's an actual registered trademark. Of course, they meant "carbon neutral", as in "carbon dioxide emissions neutral", but that's not what it said on the label. It said "carbon free". Yes, I studies chemistry in school and know that carbon-free sugar is water :) But people who are the target audience of this marketing gimmick don't really seem to be bothered with it.
Someone elsewhere made the point that if there was any financial (or practical, since better soap = more money) benefit to the companies from keeping these chemicals in, you can bet they would have lobbied like hell to protect their ingredient list.
You have a common misconception. Antibacterial soaps don't cause bacterial resistance. Antibiotics do, but that's because antibiotics must selectively kill bacteria while inside the human body and without harming human cells.
Antibacterial doesn't really have a precise medical definition, but in practice they're dilute antiseptics. In many centuries of use, bacteria have not developed resistance to antiseptics. There's no danger of them developing resistance to these soaps either
...and even if they did, that wouldn't mean they were magically also resistant to some antibiotic.
So basically, the marketing people wanted something more than "just soap" so they used antiseptics and made up a nicer sounding word: Antibacterial. You have (and perhaps this was the intent of the marketing people) assumed this has something to do with antibiotics.
Antibacterial soaps end up in very dilute concentrations and are used dramatically more than they used to. Sure, these soaps don't use Antibiotics, but having a wide range of Antibacterial substances that continue to work and can be applied to your skin is very useful.
Remember, an autoclave or UV lamp work fine to keep stuff sterile, but they are not safe to put your hand in / under.
To quote from a review article[1]: "Antiseptics are biocides or products that destroy or inhibit the growth of microorganisms in or on living tissue". So antibiotics are a type of antiseptic.
>In many centuries of use, bacteria have not developed resistance to antiseptics. There's no danger of them developing resistance to these soaps either
This is not really true. In fact, the substance under question here, Triclosan, is a small 24-atom molecule so, in principle, there's no reason microbes couldn't develop resistance to it.
"TCS inhibits FabI, an enoyl-acyl carrier protein reductase (ENR). The FabI protein catalyzes the elongation cycle in the synthesis of fatty acids, an essential process for cell viability "[2]. Thus, one known mechanism of resistance is to alter the protein that TCS binds to:
"Mutation occurs whereby single or multiple amino acids are changed in the fabI gene, resulting in TCS-resistant FabI proteins"[2].
And it's not even just a matter of "well TCS is ineffective, so why not just leave it alone?". Triclosan is implicated in multi-drug cross resistance:
"In studies done on E. coli and P. aeruginosa, resistance to chloramphenicol and tetracycline increased 10-fold following TCS exposure"[2]. In addition, a survey of Acinetobacter baumanii (an increasingly common opportunistic pathogen found in hospital acquired infections) clinical isolates found that those that could resist low concentrations of TCS also exhibited "increased tolerance to amikacin, tetracycline, levofloxacin and imipenem."[2].
So in fact having TCS everywhere is actively harming our ability to use other effective antibiotics.
[2] Carey DE, McNamara PJ. The impact of triclosan on the spread of antibiotic resistance in the environment. Frontiers in Microbiology. 2014;5:780. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2014.00780. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4295542/
Yup that would probably be one of the big thing in the whole antibiotic crisis and just making sure the farm environment is good once you can't rely on just flooding them with antibiotic and keep them alive.
Flooding them with antibiotics isn't just to "keep them alive." It makes them grow bigger (i.e. more meat to sell means more money). This is a big part of the resistance to ending the practice too.
Finally! . No more Triclosan and other dangerous stuff. I stopped using antibacterial soap a while ago. Switched to Method and have been using that brand for all my cleaning needs. Triclosan is also present in facial cleansing stuff and lots of other products like toothpaste etc. Scary stuff.
What about hand sanitizers? Should we not be using those as well or is limited usage (say keeping a bottle in the car for use before you scarf down a McDouble) ok?
Hand sanitizers are generally alcohol-based. The scientific consensus is that bacteria can't evolve resistance to alcohol any more than they can evolve resistance to (say) chlorine bleach. We just can't use it internally in effective concentrations, because at such concentrations it's also poisinous to the patient.
Hand sanitizers that are just alcohol should be fine if they're high enough concentration but there's sort of a skin damage / actually-killing-bacteria trade off there.
I've been spraying my hands off with 70% ethanol in labs for the past ~10 years. So, FWIW, a lot of people with phds in microbiology do that (to protect themselves and their experiments from themselves).
I use hand sanitizers, but only when there is no alternative, that is when there is no water/soap, or when the washroom is unusable (read: no paper towels).
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers work differently. Instead of having some lasting effect on your skin to not only kill bacteria and keep it off, alcohol-based sanitizers simply kill the stuff on your hands at the time. In general, I haven't come across anything that says it is bad or has the lasting effects of the anti-bacterial soaps.
I too am interested in this documentation. I'm aware of concerns going back over more than a decade, when somebody stopped me in the grocery store to warn me about the BPA in plastic liners in a can of crushed tomatoes. Since then I've kept an eye on the situation. This has turned up plenty of concerns, and a lot of "folk" documentation of harm.
However, I haven't seen relevant scientific documentation that would indicate that the FDA should act. If there is some documentation, there should be a lawsuit to force the FDA to act. There are plenty of interested watchdog groups that would fund something like that.
If you can provide that, I'm getting on the phone today to start lobbying.
Documented harm? Come on, stop making things up. There are hints at correlations between BPA exposure and adverse health effects. There are animal studies with extremely high doses.
But there is no direct evidence of adverse health effects on any humans caused by BPA.
I don't see why you're getting downvoted. He made a claim without evidence. I've also been unable to locate studies documenting an observed risk to humans.
I took the last part of his statement and entered it into Google, "adverse health effects on any humans caused by BPA.". The results are interesting. Search the results page for ".gov" sites.
Yes, and the reliable sources contradict what he's said. Which makes me think that solipsism was not out of line to call him out for making stuff up.
For example from WebMD:
>The federal government is now funding new research into BPA risks. We don't know the results of these studies yet. Recommendations about BPA could change in the next few years.
>For now, there are no restrictions on the use of BPA in products. The Food and Drug Administration does recommend taking "reasonable steps" to reduce human exposure to BPA in the food supply. The FDA has also expressed support for manufacturers who have stopped using BPA in products for babies and for companies working to develop alternatives to the BPA in canned foods.
>There are data showing that exposure to BPA,
as well as other endocrine disrupting chemicals with estrogenic activity, may have e ects on obesity and diabetes. These data, while preliminary and only in animals, indicate the potential for endocrine disrupting agents to have e ects on other endocrine systems not yet fully examined.
So in summary it seems that the FDA is acting appropriately, not out of the ordinary. They are studying the issue, but there's not yet documented harm.
I guess I'm weird; I have no idea why the government has the ability to dictate what is and isn't in the soap that I choose to buy.
I agree however, anti-bacterial soap is silly. Looks like a lot of people here agree. Looks like a market segment to me. Didn't need a gun, theft, or a jail cell to create it.
"I have no idea why" seems like a good place to start doing some research. In short (and as mentioned elsewhere in this thread), "the soap you choose to buy" may affect the ecosystem we live in. In particular, the bacteria that may infect us. When products on the market cause a public health concern, it is absolutely within the purview of government to regulate said products.
What about all the pain caused by alcohol? From liver damage to its use as a date rape drug to drunk driving. The liver damage is personal, so that might get a pass, but the rest hurts people who don't choose to drink. Is there evidence showing antibacterial soap does more harm than alcoholic drinks?
This analogy is not a good one. None of the alcohol-related effects fall into "tragedy of the commons" territory the way creating antibiotic-resistant super germs does.
Liver damage is a person harming themselves by their own choice. Drunk driving is a collection of specific instances of a person breaking the law and taking action which will cause direct harm to another. Alcohol as date rape is just a non sequitur designed to be incendiary. It only effects people who drink and, again, is just a person using alcohol to aid them in committing a crime.
Commonly available antibacterial hand soap hurts everyone even if you are using it reasonably, legally, and responsibly. The harm to the commons is directly proportional to the quantity of it that is used in the normal, reasonable way by everyone.
Alcohol is not great for "society" because it increases the likelihood people will make bad decisions, and can cause specific health problems for the people who choose to use it.
This is akin to emissions standards, which I assume you oppose as well?
Saying you are comparing apples and oranges wouldn't be accurate, because at least apples and oranges are both foods.
Well, with alcohol, we tried (and largely for the reasons you mentioned). On net, the effects caused by the abolition of alcohol (and probably other drugs) were arguably worse than the effects caused by its existence. In particular, demand for (and use of) alcohol didn't disappear, and thus black markets + organized crime thrive, which cause problems worse than the original problem.
I'm highly skeptical that if antibacterial soap were banned, demand would drive a a black market. People are far more aware of and particular about their Shiraz and Saison (and the intoxicating effects thereof) than their Softsoap's antimicrobial properties.
Alcohol is completely irrelevant in relation to this issue. You don't not fix things just to stay superficially consistent. What you're proposing would be like refusing to fix a particular bug because there's another bug report open that is considered (for whatever reason) not as important.
It contributes to antibacterial resistance, which is a shared good. It's a case of the tragedy of the commons, which the free market is incapable of moderating on its own. This is exactly the kind of thing the government should be doing.
actually that's kind of not true. There's a throwaway line in the article where manufacturers have already started the process of removing the antibacterial compounds, before FDA guidance came in, because it seems like the market itself has already started to reflect the scientific wisdom; as in: People aren't that stupid. (Or maybe they're buying into the whole probiotic fad?)
You missed the part where the FDA lit a fire under the industry's ass in 2013 to prove antibacterial soap have value over non antibacterial soap and gave them a year timeline.
Everyone saw the writing on the wall that a ban was coming.
maybe it's the groups that I run in, but I know several people among my friends (with an admittedly small sample size since I don't often accompany them on shopping trips) who specifically avoid antibacterial soap, myself included.
You're a founder of a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit science research organization. I think it's safe to say it's the groups you run in. By contrast, my parents and family in the Midwest have no clue about it. Antibacterial means cleaner, right?
I wouldn't really call it stupidity, more like lack of information.
If I'm never told that antibacterial soap can harm the environment, then I might just show up at the store, see that one seems to be "better" and grab that one.
And I shouldn't have to spend an hour researching every item I find on my grocery store shelf. If we've done enough studies on an ingredient to know it's harmful, I'd rather there just be a law to not allow that ingredient.
You're correct. Most regulation is a lagging indicator of where the market is already going. If they tried to regulate something in a way that no one wanted to follow, no one would follow it, and they'd be ignored.
So, when a portion of the population starts changing their mind on something, the FDA might determine that there's enough political will for a new regulation, and if they move quick, they can be seen as a progressive and helpful industry.
The FDA causes incalculable harm in other ways, mostly by prohibiting good things from coming to market.
For example, factory farming is incredibly harmful, but local alternatives are mostly illegal, for not complying with FDA regulations (which only approve factory farms). [0]
Another example: An amazing, cheap, reversible male birth control option called Vaselgel has been functioning in India for decades, and a few organizations have tried to bring it to the USA, only to be unable to afford the FDA regulatory hurdle. Male birth control is an amazing option for so many different groups, and prohibiting it has real costs on society. It's slated for human trials in 2017. [1]
By working against these interests, the FDA causes far more harm than it prevents. This soap antibiotics ban is (to my cynical view) an easy win for the agency, in an attempt to build good-will or trust in the market.
Well, the big one is that it's a joint effort as a society to not continually strengthen bacteria by selecting for strains that are resistant to these antimicrobials.
Not debating that. I agree. I guess I just think there is a more morally justifiable way to go about it than edict. Again, this non-antibacterial soap belief doesn't seem like one that needs force to spread.
That's true I suppose, laws are a lot harder to redact than to enact, so we should take care not to over-legislate. That being said, I think it's still an applicable scenario in this case due to the potentially society scale threat. In many other smaller-scale scenarios, I would tend to agree with your stance on it.
I think the main problem is we haven't seen bacteria develop a resistance to antiseptics, so it's a fear based on a what if that seems unlikely based on hundreds of years of antispetic use.
There have been a small number of laboratory studies that imply it might be possible with triclosan, but they used extremely low levels of triclosan, and real world studies have basically shown the opposite.
"Furthermore, in most in vitro studies, resistance to triclosan has been measured as an increase in MIC. As mentioned in section 6.2 above, the measurement of resistance based on MIC only, might have little bearing on bacterial survival to concentrations found in situ."
"Ledder et al. (2006) investigated acquired high-level triclosan resistance in a number of distinct environmental isolates and reported that a relatively small number of strains showed a decrease in triclosan susceptibility (E. coli, Klebsiella oxytoca, Aranicola proteolyticus and S. maltophilia) while the susceptibility of the remaining 35 species remained unchanged. They concluded that repeated exposures to triclosan did not systematically produce high-level triclosan resistance in all bacteria. Furthermore, among the strains with decreased susceptibility, there was no change in antibiotic susceptibility or susceptibility to other biocides. Similarly, another study by the same group on repeated exposure of dental bacteria to triclosan resulted in the same conclusions"
"Cole et al. (2003) collected 1238 isolates from the homes of users and non-users of antibacterial product and were unable to demonstrate any cross-resistance to antibiotic and antibacterial agents in target bacteria. In addition, this study showed an increased prevalence of potential pathogens in the homes of non-users of antibacterial products. "
"With our current state of knowledge, it is generally accepted that antibiotic resistance in clinical isolates is not necessarily associated with resistance to biocides. "
"urthermore, the antibiotic susceptibility profile of the oral streptococci investigated did not change following the use of triclosan containing toothpaste. Aiello et al. (2004) did not find any statistical significance between elevated triclosan MICs and antibiotic susceptibility in bacterial isolates taken from the hands of individuals using antibacterial cleaning and hygiene products for a 1-year period."
"The authors did not observe any increase in triclosan MIC in these bacteria"
Hmm. Yeah, it does read from this analysis that it seems to be more of a fear rather than a confirmed fact. At this point they may be just being overly cautious I suppose. From the abstract they seem to rule out a lot of the posed threats and leave the rest as "Have not been accurately studied".
As far as I've read from this though, it doesn't apply to the use of actual antibiotics, which do cause strain resistance. That is the issue that I am definitely in support of, and it seems I wrongly correlated anti-bacterial soaps in that issue as a fact when it does not appear to be so.
The FDA must regulate the contents of some consumable goods; can you provide a better model of governance than the current one which dictates where the line is to what the FDA can or cannot regulate? Or even a more philosophical explanation as to why we should instinctively distrust the current model without any examination into its basis, as seems to be your implication?
I'm not saying the FDA is all bad, but there are a lot of people that are dying that would like to try certain drugs that could save them but they can't.
My issue was that I can't find non-anti-bacterial hand soap at my local grocery store. The only option would be bar soap, and I hate those. They get all slimy on the bottom between uses, and it's gross and inconvenient.
I would buy hand soap without it, if it were for sale. But everyone seems to think it's safer, so all the manufacturers are encouraged to add it, and it's a negative feedback loop.
That can be said for a lot of things. I'd say the gov is right in this case to listen to the Scientists advising them. If there was a secret agenda behind this I'd say they'd be encouraging people to use anti-bacterial soap because of all the concerns already raised by people in this thread.
You're not weird, in fact, you're thinking about a very interesting question. What is "government" or "law"? From whence does it derive its "authority"? What is a valid application of this thing called "government" or "State"?
They're old now, but I think some of the best answers to this are found in the writings of Frederic Bastiat.[1]
This bit in particular is relevant:
------
What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.
The problem with Bastiat's analysis is that civilization is a cartel, and government is our cartel enforcer. We have thus delegated power to the state that we have not retained for ourselves. If we did retain those powers, the cartel could not function, and we would be forced to revert to Nash equilibrium strategies rather than maximized outcomes.
The law is not a pooling of resources. It is a compact wherein everyone holds the same blade to everyone's throats, so that everyone will behave in a manner that benefits the whole, rather than out of pure self-interest. Thus, a government may lawfully do those things that individuals have given up as a condition of maintaining good standing in the cartel.
The enforcer needs to be exactly as monstrous as is required to discourage cartel defections.
As you might expect, this leads to a host of real and potential problems with governments, but those problems have a different root cause than the state acting outside the authority of natural law, and are practically insurmountable for quite different reasons.
Government derives its authority from being a better-than-random strategy in a massive, never-ending game wherein players are continually chosen at random to participate in a Prisoner's Dilemma. Government provides an incentive to consistently cooperate rather than defect. Other winning strategies may exist. Some of them may even produce better overall scores. We allow government to exist and direct certain aspects of our lives because, on average, it makes us richer in the long run. Or it makes enough of us richer that we are prepared to gamble, to try to be one of them.
One of the biggest problems is not being able to know for certain whether the government player is defecting against us in the metagame, even as we cooperate. How do we prove mathematically whether the state really is acting in the best interests of all of its people, treating each of them equally, or not?
I've always found it remarkable that people find this at all illuminating. I take it the applicability of that passage is supposed to go something like this: I, as a third party bystander, would not have the right to intervene(by force, if necessary) and stop person A from selling person B antibacterial soap. I suppose I get that intuition.
But if you add in more pertinent details, I think we're just left begging the question. What if I sell parson A selling antibacterial soap to person B by misrepresenting the fact that it contains a chemical that will kill bacteria when, in fact, that chemical is ineffective as advertised. This sounds a bit like fraud to me--and it touches on an especially important sphere of life to boot--health and medicine--where fraud-like concerns are especially important.
Do I, as a third party, have the ability to intervene under these facts? I think there's a cogent case to be made that I do. And, at any rate, I know of no simple analysis that one could apply here to make answering the simplified interpersonal case any simpler than the government-regulation case that it is supposed to help us think about.
Of course, it should also be mentioned that there are perfectly good schools of political thought under which the powers of government are not merely the aggregated power of individuals. Here's a thought just to get the intuitions flowing: there might be things that we allow the government, but not individuals, to do because the government acts by way of a deliberative process that can produce more reliable or better justified decisions than we would trust any individual person to make. For example: you might think that it is never acceptable for one person to kill another, even in retribution for a crime, because individual actors can't be relied upon to evaluate guilt and innocence properly, or because their actions would not have the expressive value necessary to warrant such an act. The state, however, is able to organize behavior in a way that largely solves these problems, meaning that there may be cases where it is acceptable for the state to kill even though no individual person could morally have done so. (I actually oppose the death penalty, so I have other objections to this line of argument. But this seems like a potentially useful example nonetheless.)
You're right that if fraud is being committed, you should not be a passive observer.
But education is a much better option than regulation. Regulation is inflexible, and subject to enforcement by people who have the exact same set of flaws and bad judgements as the groups that we're trying to defend ourselves from.
You're right about this being a "schools of thought" difference. You have a good example, about "might we give the government powers to do things, because it could be better at it than we."
That's really the fundamental question, and I appreciate that you got to that core issue so quickly!
My thought (I'm not OP, but I think he and I might agree) is that since the fundamental weakness we're trying to fix is a part of human nature.
Some people will act against the interest of others, even while saying they are acting in their good.
So, the solution is not to give more power to one group (who's subject to the same weaknesses as any other group) but to make sure we avoid giving power to one group where they can have undue influence over others if they fall prey to those weaknesses of human nature.
I fully expect to have companies try to screw me. I fully expect the government to do the same, in some situations. I wish, however, that I could disregard the negative impact of the government as easily as I could the negative impact of the companies.
But I cannot, because one of those groups can override my preferences with its own.
Of course, it should also be mentioned that there are perfectly good schools of political thought under which the powers of government are not merely the aggregated power of individuals.
Certainly such schools of thought exist, but I'd stop short of calling them "perfectly good." I think Bastiat makes the case pretty strongly that there's no moral basis for saying that a group can hold any innate authority beyond that which the individual members hold. And by "authority" I mean the ability to compel people who don't voluntarily consent to the governance of the group to do the group's will. Of course if a group of people voluntarily choose to delegate some decision making authority to a collective, that makes perfect sense.
The state, however, is able to organize behavior in a way that largely solves these problems, meaning that there may be cases where it is acceptable for the state to kill even though no individual person could morally have done so.
I have a hard time with that. How can merely aggregating a bunch of people together create a moral justification that doesn't exist otherwise? What's the basis for saying that this is so?
> I have a hard time with that. How can merely aggregating a bunch of people together create a moral justification that doesn't exist otherwise? What's the basis for saying that this is so?
I tried to provide an explanation in my comment, but it must not have been very clear.
The answer will depend on one's reason for thinking that individual action was immoral. Often, an otherwise immoral act can nonetheless be justified through extrinsic circumstances. For example, assume that killing is generally wrong. But it can be justified if you have the proper level of confidence that the victim himself is a so-far-unpunished murderer and if killing him after a public trial in which his crime is exposed would send a morally important message. (I think these are fairly representative of the purported justifications for the death penalty.) But there is a problem: an individual acting alone is virtually never in a position to satisfy these criteria. It takes a lot of people acting together to satisfy them--a government.
You are not weird. The FDA holds enormous power, dictating what substances we may use and what we may not use. A desire for self-determination is only natural.
It's explained pretty well in the article. Basically the FDA said in 2013 'show us that these chemicals are effective and safe for daily long term use' and companies didn't do it. So there's little to no support for the effectiveness and there may be some long term exposure issues from animal studies.
Isn't this a straw man? These products are used in hostpitals everyday. Nobody doubts they are 'safe'in any meaningful sense. Otherwise they would need to be banned outright.
OCD people, and their kids, are a huge problem in society and should be dealt with, but this is not 'science based' public policy at all.
Its like asking someone to prove a negatve, which is absurd in many contexts. "why did something not happen" does not have a finite, knowable answer in the vast majority of contexts.
Not a straw man at all. Effectiveness should be simple to show and for safety they're not asking for perfect proof of safety just that it doesn't cause long term effects which is done a lot with animal studies. Hundreds of products go through FDA safety testing it's not some impossible test.
Also these aren't the same soaps used in hospitals. Hospital soaps are much harsher and use different chemicals.
"they're not asking for perfect proof of safety just that it doesn't cause long term effects which is done a lot with animal studies"
Lets hope its just one of those shitty translations of 'real science' being lost in translation when subjected to a journalist-friendly press release.
Theres 40 years of data using humans. Nobody doubts that dial sope or other similar soaps is safe in any meaningful sense. The science in this argument is being lost.
If these were legitimate tests they would have been done years ago and there would not be the various exemptions in this policy declaration.
I will insert the caveat here that I'm not a fan of everyday use of anti-bacterials. I also don't doubt that using anti-bacterials and prbably more importantly anti-biotics and various endocrine influencing chemicals and plastics with loose regard for the environment has negative impacts on society.
I think kids should eat dirt, assuming it's clean dirt, etc. They are made to handle the stuff that nature thows at them.
It's not necessarily unhealthy to an individual person, it's the effect that it has on the surviving bacteria. These soaps are dangerous to society as a whole because they become less effective the more widespread their usage is [0]. Thus, we don't need to use them for every single thing we get on our hands that we want off, we're not in mortal peril of those germs.
What? That is an incredibly strange notion. So by default, everything should be banned, and it should only be legal if you can show it's safe? That is not how it works. A ban is an authoritarian action that has to be enforced at gunpoint, always keep that in mind. It is not only a very extreme stance to take, it is a violent one. A ban should only apply on things that are shown to be bad and harmful.
> So by default, everything should be banned, and it should only be legal if you can show it's safe?
...Yes?
If I want to manufacture/import and sell a car, I have to show it passes safety regulations.
If I want to open a restaurant, I have to obtain permits and show that food are stored and processed in an approved fashion.
If I want to build and sell a house, I have to prove that it won't collapse on itself, spontaneously catch fire, or electrocute its residents.
Every one of these points is, yes, enforced at gunpoint, because so many people have died in the past in gruesome, preventable accidents that we have collectively decided "Well, fuck it, we will make everyone prove what they are selling is safe, and we'll enforce it at gunpoint!"
That said, (hopefully) nobody arrests a pair of seven-year-olds for selling lemonade on the corner. You see, these gunpoints can be actually quite reasonable; they have centuries of experience.
The reason that we've had so many people hurt by nutritional supplements is that they're allowed to add anything until it's proven to be unsafe. In the medical field, which has strict rules today, it was the era of dangerous and ineffective "patent medicine" that caused our existing policies to be created.
If you're going to advocate change, don't you think it's important to understand historical and modern examples of the people you're going to kill?
My position is that the FDA's role should be strictly limited to testing products for labeling fraud (i.e., that ingredients are as they appear on the labeling) and maybe doing tests and releasing those results to the public so consumers can make informed decisions. They should have no regulatory authority beyond those things.
I don't buy antibacterial soaps, but I'm concerned about this decision because it seems overreaching. I get the tragedy of the commons aspect, though, so am a bit unsure of that.
However, I agree with original position taken by one of the parent posters: there's a very politically dangerous position implicitly being supported in the US now, which is the default is that citizens are not competent to do anything, and that they have to show that they are, as opposed to the alternative, which is to assume that they are competent, and that the burden of proof should be to show that they aren't. What people are implicitly buying into, without meaning to seem hyperbolic, is a totalitarian state, where the default is lack of rights that you have to earn, rather than a default of rights that the state has to take away.
Sure, along time ago medicine was full of quack remedies, etc. But what do we have now? A corrupt system run by monopolies in all corners, and unaffordable by most citizens.
If people take nutritional supplements, that's their decision and their responsibility. If a supplement manufacturer adulterates their products, the problem is fraud, not the ability of the consumer to make the decision.
People do all sorts of stupid things. Preventing them from doing so is not the responsibility of the government.
I keep going back to the example of taxes, which is a good parallel. Imagine that the government, a year from now, mandates that no one can do their own taxes anymore, and that only individuals with a specific degree and license, requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars, and years of training, can do any taxes. What would people think of that? There would be an outcry, and legitimate concerns about corruption and collusion. But we are completely fine with the government telling us what to eat, and how to wash our hands, and what drugs we should be putting into our bodies, and what not.
The same government that classifies cannabis as a Schedule I substance, so dangerous that no one should possess it. Absolutely no problem with government regulation of health decisions. Totally trustworthy. (btw, I've never used cannabis either, so that's not my skin in the game)
I am certain that the FDA, with its ban on certain substances, has caused more deaths and misery than it has ever prevented. Not to mention financial losses.
Before you ask accusory questions, why not refine your own position and brush off the smugness?
Uhh... Pretty much the entire war on drugs? I am surprised you even had to ask. There is much more though, as you can find in this comment, for example:
Okay, what happens if I try to sell you random substances and the authorities dispatch police officers to stop me and I do not comply because I want to exercise my right to trade with you? I can tell you. Violence.
If you disagree with me again, I am going to punch you, but it's not violence because I'm not doing it if you don't do it again ;)
So you don't deny that enforcing a ban requires violence, thus a ban is an extreme and violent stance to take and only makes sense if there is evidence that harm can be prevented, which was my initial statement.
It's thinking like this that leads to disasters like Flint. How many people have to die or get injured before we start caring in America? Apparently way too many for most of the stupid idiots in this country to count to.
Also, this may sound silly, but does "anti-bacterial" vs. "anti-septic" factor in here? Could soap just be made more caustic to achieve the same effect without drugs?
Interesting I knew that this was all marketing from previous reading but I had trouble finding a soap that didn't say anti-bacterial that was cheaper so I just went with it
So they can order the removal of anti-bacterial agents because they haven't scientifically been proven beneficial and there are potentially unknown side effects. Err on the side of caution, that's a wise decision.
... yet they use terms like GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) for things like Roundup Ready crops which have been scientifically (allegedly, I haven't read and understood all the science, but it seems reasonably credible to the layman) proven to contain significantly increased doses of POISON in food on the supermarket shelves which (admittedly unproven but) highly suspiciously correlated skyrocketing food allergies.
I don't get it (genuinely). Why one application of a seemingly sane rule with unknown repercussions in one instance and a complete disregard for it in the other in the face of a huge amount of evidence that it is in fact unsafe?
Is this because antibacterial agents in soaps are not funded by Monsanto? (okay, I asked that facetiously, but still)
>Is this because antibacterial agents in soaps are not funded by Monsanto? (okay, I asked that facetiously, but still)
I mean, basically, yeah. Firstly, there's no market-spanning hand sanitizer megacorp (megacorps make hand sanitizer, but there's lots of them all doing it). I'm not scientifically convinced that Monsanto's shit is bad, necessarily, but I do know that they fuckin' run shit along multiple axes in the agribusiness world. Monopoly + legally-ironclad yearly subscription and licensing generally equals abuse, on some level, in the tech sector, and permanently equating the Big Evil Corp Monsanto with the utopian-futurist promise of GMOs is awful, IMO.
Secondly, banning Roundup/Roundup-Ready stuff means Monsanto instantly loses tons of money, but banning anti-bacterials in hand sanitizer doesn't really make hand sanitizer work less well and probably won't result in much in the way of lost sales. After all, it's not like alcohol-based hand sanitizers aren't killing nearly everything on your hands already. People who buy a lot of hand sanitizer aren't going to _stop_, they just might be irritated about the loss of one of the 9s in the fractional part of the percent of 'bad things' killed. Triclosan et al are basically just the feature-add version of this [0].
Therefore, there's no need for hand-sanitizer-selling megacorps to protect their product by muddying issues of its safety, because the removal of one ingredient, important only because of the extra 9 on the label, doesn't change the product's value to customers or the megacorps. Banning (or even seriously investigating) Round-Up because of health concerns, real or imagined, would immediately harm Monsanto, which is a hueg important megacorp heavily reliant on the civilized world using its pesticide (and pesticide-compatible crops).
I'm not defending Roundup at all, but the kicker here is the antibacterial chemicals don't do anything. If they did prove more effective in cleaning hands, I'd guess the FDA would probably look the other way on the side effects.
The crops that contain Roundup Ready traits (and several other traits including b.t. toxin for insect resistance) are not eaten raw - they are heavily processed.
When you buy cornstarch, you're buying cornstarch. When you're buying ethanol for fuel, you're buying ethanol for fuel.
People don't eat GM corn, they eat products that contain the products of GM corn, having gone through so much processing that it is ridiculous to think any residual roundup is going to be harmful.
There is just no huge amount of evidence that GM crops are harmful to people. There is evidence that things like Roundup Ready corn & insect-resistant corn are better for the environment, because in the first case they reduce tilling (think erosion as huge amounts of soil are disrupted) and in the second they reduce the need for conventional insecticides.
As for the correlation between food allergies, the timescale here is so long you could correlate it with anything. A particularly fitting comparison in this case would seem to be the internet, or perhaps devices shipping with Windows NT kernels. Most data sets I find show the rise starting around 1997, which would be fitting for food allergies and NT kernel adoption. (You might say that NT kernel adoption was much faster than the proliferation of GMOs - you'd be wrong)
A sane explanation that doesn't rely on a boogeyman is that parents aren't exposing their children to contaminants like they used to. There are medical products coming out to address this, but the consensus seems to be that letting kids play outside, not dousing them in Clorox every 5 minutes, and making them eat peanut butter,etc. early enough are likely to be effective.
Finally, I'll leave with this note: anything you buy as a whole or minimally processed food will be essentially devoid of GMO food. You should be much more worried about the high amounts of sugar and sodium in those processed foods as added sugars are well known to be dangerous and unhealthy - the bonus is that if you avoid processed crap you'll also be avoiding GMOs.
Haha I like the comparison between the uptick of food allergies and the uptick of adoption of the NT Kernel. I thought this was considered GRAS, despite much evidence to the contrary :D
If only I had 10 minutes to study the science of every last thing I don't understand... I'd be getting younger by the article. There's only so much time in a day to devote to so much activity while I'm waiting for code to compile.
But Roundup actually works and works really well. There is no proof that food allergies are related. Anti-bacterial soap isn't proven to work better than regular soap and we have legitimate concerns about anti-bacterial resistance.
Also, Roundup has some big advantages in inherent safety. It's a competitive inhibitor of an enzyme that's necessary to synthesize aromatic amino acids like L-tryptophan ... and only plants can do this, we animals have to get ours from plants, or animals that eat plants, or animals that eat....
So its mechanism of action is entirely irrelevant to us animals. Maybe it's toxic in some other way, but that's been tested, to the point people are willing to drink the stuff.
Now, the surfactants it's normally formulated with, to get past waxy coatings and the like that plants protect themselves with are another matter altogether, but then again, there's a reason we avoid putting soap in our eyes, with or without triclosan....
23 3rd party Ad site's cookies were blocked (unless my count was off). :-) Glad the FDA wised up, anti-bacterial soap was causing skin rashes for us in my personal opinion.
They also harm your skin, that is protecting you from infection, so get your conclusions, because I don't have any study on it being healthier to use or not to use them.
I feel like a ban is heavy handed. If the government came out with an educational campaign that informed consumers of the dangers of our collective usage of antibacterial soaps and general ineffectiveness I think that would be enough to prevent their widespread usage.
Smoking rates may be declining due to public smoking bans limiting the number of places one is even allowed to smoke. At some point, quitting makes more sense than planning ones day around designated smoking areas.
I don't know that that's true; there's nothing that would stop the antibacterial soap companies putting out advertisements that explained why the government is wrong, similar to what happened with vitamin supplements in the 90s.
I use antibacterial soap once in a while when I get really bad body Oder and it seems to make it go away. Regular soap hasn't been effective when this happens.
I would investigate some home remedy. Not too strong. You got to be careful with the herbal stuff, they can do a number on your hormones if not carefully used.
I love how the FDA shifts the burden of proof to the product makers. You now have to prove that your product works. It's not the state that has to prove that your product is harmful to ban it. I can't agree with this order, but it's just another case of classic FDA behaviour.
I would like to live in a world where you have to show that something is bad before it gets banned. Not just a feeling, or that it doesn't work, but solid evidence that it's bad, that is, harming people or animals or destroying the environment, etc.
It's already proven that it's harmful. In the same that that overprescribing antibiotics is harmful. It artificially selects for bacteria resistant to these chemicals, which makes them less effective. So the ball was back in the maker's court, either show that this product is worth the risk or shut up and deal with the ban.
Isn't that what the USA basically does? That's why things are often banned in the EU before America, because the FDA (or whatever) normally has to prove it's bad before it gets pulled.
In the EU it's the other way around.
I could be wrong but I believe that's the general gist of it.
The FDA has tiers of regulation. Things like "supplements" are loosely regulated, while "pharmaceuticals" are much more highly regulated.
With supplements, the FDA pretty much lets things go until they start causing problems. DMAA was legal for a long time until people started having heart attacks. Melatonin, which is a straight-up hormone, is over-the-counter in the US, and it's by prescription only in Europe.
Now, if you're marketing something as a treatment for a disease, you have to have concrete data to back it up.
So it's very possible to have something that the FDA will let you sell as a supplement (i.e. there's no evidence that it's dangerous), but not make any claims about its efficacy (i.e. you can't say it will treat XYZ).
I experimented with nootropics at one point of my life (found them worthless, FYI), and it was funny how all of the labels just stated what it was, purity, and a blurb about the company selling it. There was no language whatsoever telling you what the supplement was for. Just a giant "PIRACETAM" label on the front.
That there are worse offenders of the principle that you have to show something to be harmful before you ban it doesn't make the behaviour of the FDA better.
It's hard to compare the EU to America just like that, especially since the EU is not a state, but you may be right. The EU makes incredibly arbitrary judgements and bans sometimes. Some European countries, however, fare much better when it comes to avoiding such blatant authoritarianism.
If you need to sterilize your hands, then you should use a separate product dedicated to that because chances are you are a doctor.
Not sterilizing your hands all the time is actually good (in most cases) because it allows your body to sample the latest and greatest baddies and keep immunity up-to-date.