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Friday, January 04, 2013

Lead and Crime

Everybody knows that violent crime is down in cities because lots of swinging dick mayors barked about getting tougher and tougher and tougher beating up brown bad guys and zero tolerating kids with spray cans and building more jails than schools. Everybody knows that nothing so simple as good government regulation of lead emissions (tied in multiplying studies to increased violence, diminished IQ, higher incidence of ADHD) from tailpipes thronging city streets could have anything to do with anything.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aldous Huxley in his "Brave New World" described a fictional caste system based on intentionally creating low capacity worker humans by poisoning them as embryos in test tubes. We are getting the same result now with mere environmental pollution which the wealthy can afford to escape, for the time being anyway...an our current economic paradigm has increasingly little use for old fashioned human laborers...

Dale Carrico said...

It is of course unnecessary (and implausible) to propose an elite-incumbent conspiracy to engineer tendencies to violence and insensitivity in urban populations via lead emissions, one need only assume laziness, corruption, and greed. And I have news for the wealthy -- gated communities don't keep out pollution, pandemics, greenhouse storms, or, beyond a certain point, mass instability exacerbated by inequity.

Anonymous said...

The UN sterilized approx. 70 million women in Africa in the 1960's and 1970's with a polio vaccine that "accidentally" contained antibodies against human ovaries in it.

Dale Carrico said...

our current economic paradigm has increasingly little use for old fashioned human laborers

To the contrary, the need remains the same, but the exploitation of labor is shunted from attention onto distant shores, over "illegalized" populations, and behind shiny screens of techno-hype.

Anonymous said...

Automation even in China is causing mass unemployment. There won't be any sweatshop labor in as little as 5 years. It is all being automated right now, not in the 'future' - these advanced assembly robots and warehouse robots are here and selling like hotcakes. Foxcon, Inc. in China is about to replace sometime next year over 1,000,000 factory workers with robots.

Anonymous said...

This is not the first time UNICEF has been embroiled in a controversy over sterilizing agents in vaccines. LifeSiteNews.com reported that in 1995, the Catholic Women's League of the Philippines won a court order halting a UNICEF anti-tetanus program because the vaccine had been laced with B-hCG, which when given in a vaccine permanently causes women to be unable to sustain a pregnancy. The Supreme Court of the Philippines found the surreptitious sterilization program had already vaccinated three million women, aged 12 to 45. B-hCG-laced vaccine was also found in at least four other developing countries.

Dale Carrico said...

There won't be any sweatshop labor in as little as 5 years.

...or as many years as never. Wealth conentration via automation concomitant with the lack or diminishment of organized labor is, of course, a real and urgent issue. Hyperbolic prophetic utterance of the futurological kind provide little clarity or help.

Anonymous said...

Not the "future", it is real and Now.

Everyone’s favorite Taiwanese consumer electronics manufacturer Foxconn has announced that it will increase its robot workforce 100 fold in the next three years. Foxconn, which is responsible for the manufacture of Apple’s iPad among other devices, currently employs over 1.2 million people but only 10,000 robots. By 2014, Foxconn plans to make that 1 million robots. The company’s founder Terry Gou broke the news during a “company dance party” this past Friday, saying that the new ‘bots would help reduce rising labor costs and increase efficiency.

Aside from its affiliation with Apple, Foxconn has mostly made headlines over its treatment of employees, and a rash of suicides amongst its workers. The company also famously operates a company-owned community, drawing inevitable comparisons to American coal towns.

Dale Carrico said...

I cannot think you are proposing UNICEF was collaborating with plutocrats to pump lead emissions via tailpipes to whomp up berserker rage in US cities? The Moot is very interesting these days.

Anonymous said...

You proposed that, I said nothing of the sort. You possess a real if peculiar set of paranoid ideas and a penchant for putting words into other's mouths in a sly and casual manner.

Dale Carrico said...

Not the "future", it is real and Now.

Your claim was that sweatshop labor would be fully automated in half a decade. That is implausible in the extreme, and it is certainly not "real and Now." I take wealth concentration abetted by automation very seriously, too seriously to countenance the derailment of discussions on the topic by futurological or otherwise hyperbolic framings. Needless to say, were dislocations caused by automation ameliorated by social democracy and general welfare such automation would not be a bad thing, hence what matters here is political organizing more than technical innovation, so-called, in any case.

Anonymous said...

Lead Linked to Male Infertility
First Clues That Even Low Lead Levels Harm Sperm
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WebMD Health News
Feb. 6, 2003 -- Lead may be behind up to a fifth of unexplained male infertility cases, according to a new study. For the first time, researchers say they've found evidence that even low-level lead exposure from household contaminants may damage sperm and contribute to male infertility.

In light of these findings, researchers say fertility specialists should consider lead measurements when evaluating male partners from couples with unexplained infertility. They also recommend public health and safety officials reevaluate current environmental exposure limits for lead.

The study, published in the February issue of Human Reproduction, examined lead levels and sperm function in semen collected from the male partners of 140 women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment for the first time. Researchers found lead levels varied widely among the men and there was a significant association between high lead levels and low fertilization rates, which accounted for about a fifth of the variation in successful IVF rates.

Researchers Susan Benoff, MD, director of the Fertility Research laboratories at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Research Institute in Manhasset, New York, and colleagues say laboratory tests showed that high lead levels interfered with both the ability of the sperm to bind to the egg and to fertilize the egg.

To fertilize an egg, sperm must first successfully bind to the egg and then induce a reaction that allows it to pass through the egg's coating for fertilization. But the study found that sperm that came from semen with higher lead levels were unable to bind to the egg properly or stimulate the reaction necessary to pass through the egg's coating.

To confirm the association between high lead levels and low fertilization rates, researchers exposed healthy sperm to increasing doses of lead to see what would happen, and they got the same results. In other experiments they found that elevated levels of lead in the testes of rats lead to the death of sperm.

Dale Carrico said...

My peculiar paranoia and casual slyness are well known. By the way, you seem smart.

Anonymous said...

China is not going to do anything but truck the unemployed to rural areas where there is nothing for them to do. This is what they do, not welfare, not retraining. Those who resist will find themselves working in Chinese slave labor camps, with a high chance of short life span and no hope of release. 2014 is not the 'hyperbolic future' is a scant number of months from NOW, with a technology that exists and is being widely deployed. 90% of electronics manufacturing will be automated away inside 5 years, cold, hard fact there.

Dale Carrico said...

Egg and Sperm? My word, you remind me of notorious Moot-Troll John Howard. You should comment over on his blog for a while, you can make a new friend.

Anonymous said...

Reproduction may not be a high priority to you, Dale. But do try to have a bit of sympathy for the heterosexual dept. of the human race, they make lovely new Fags too!

Dale Carrico said...

Oh, I do pity the poor heterosexual males, believe me I do.

jollyspaniard said...

What's with the vaccine conspiracy comments on Amor Mundi lately? This might be the start of a new drinking game.

Dale Carrico said...

Is THAT why I'm drunk?

jollyspaniard said...

It also happens to be friday which also correlates.

Athena Andreadis said...

"Antibodies to human ovaries"

"B-hCG when given in a vaccine permanently causes women to be unable to sustain a pregnancy"

This is woo crap gone extra gaga.

Dale Carrico said...

This Moot has provoked a new round of reflection on the necessity of more stringent moderation policies, I must admit.

Dale Carrico said...

"Anonymous," I'm really enjoying deleting your long-form arias and attacks now. Authoritarianism, yum!

jollyspaniard said...

Actually Athena it's only par for the course in wooville. High level woosters talk about their own laws of physics.