The Consensus’ Fallibility - The UN was wrong about HIV and Science was wrong about Stem Cells

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The Consensus’ Fallibility - The UN was wrong about HIV and Science was wrong about Stem Cells

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Why couldn’t they be wrong about global warming as well?

Embryonic stem cells were going to turn out to be a panacea just a
mere three years ago. That was when John Edwards, the man who made his
money off of channeling dead fetuses as a trial lawyer, told the
American people that if he and John Kerry were elected to the White
House people like Christopher Reeve would get up out of that chair and
walk again. They would walk again.

The point that the shady VP candidate and current presidential
candidate was trying to make was that embryonic stem cells can be made
into any other type of human cell that they want. Embryonic stem cells
are basically clean slates where doctors and researchers can figure out
cures for humanity’s worse diseases. Like Mr Edwards said, it can make
the paralyzed walk again.

One catch though. Embryonic stem cells come from embryos and those
embryos need to die for this research to go on. Killing hundreds of the
unborn to possibly find the cure for a myriad of other diseases that
could save untold millions in the future is the essence of an ethical
dilemma. Personally, there’s no way I would allow this type of research
to go on because it does require the death of the unborn, which I’m
morally against. It was a tough call and, thankfully, that tough call
is possibly being made a heck of a lot easier.

According to Forbes,
researchers have figured out how to make skin cells act like embryonic
stem cells. There still needs to be a lot of work done to see if this
could ever be feasible but this is promising nonetheless. Still, even
if turning skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells works there is
absolutely no certainty that this will lead to a plethora of cures
whereas adult stem cells have already been used effectively.

Science was wrong about embryonic stem cells being the only option.
Granted, this is an extremely complex issue and to understand for
myself what all goes into this would probably take up most of my
lifetime. But science got it wrong. A much easier task, like accurately
measuring the number of HIV affected people, can’t be screwed up so
easily. Could it?

Well, if you’re the UN then anything is possible - well any screw up is possible that is.



They overstated the number of people living with HIV by 20%.
Instead of 39.5 million with the horrific virus it is probably more
likely 33.2 million. Still horrible, but significantly less so. (I seem
to remember that they also significantly overstated population levels
in their previous studies as well but since I can’t find that story
anymore we’ll just forget I wrote this sentence.)

Figuring out the number of people living infected with HIV is no small feat but it seems imminently manageable for the global organization that is tasked to come up with numbers like that.

But the UN got it wrong. Science got it wrong with stem cells. Both
consensus viewpoints are now standing on shaky ground. Shouldn’t we
also be worried about other consensus opinions?

I think so.

Take global warming, for example. It is significantly more complex
then embryonic stem cells and requires the gathering of significantly
more data then required to find out how many people infected with HIV
there are. But everyone, at least the “smart people,” think that this
time there is no room for challenges to the theory of man made climate
change.

Science regularly gets it wrong. That’s no knock on scientists but
their job seems to be get it wrong 999 times to get it right once. A
million different things could have gone wrong with the studies, with
the models, with the gathering of data, with anything really. What if
they were gathering the wrong data?

And we’re suppose to radically change our economy so that we can
maybe change something we really don’t know all that much about? At
least when our ancestors sacrificed a cow to the gods to make their
crops succeed they weren’t committing economic suicide. We’re being
asked to sacrifice every cow because they fart too much.

It is human nature to get things wrong. There’s no shame in that. There
is shame in being fooled every time by the same people over and over
again. Stop being fooled, question the consensus and look into the data
for yourself. Read books by people who don’t believe global warming is
happening. Find out all the information you can. Because if we don’t
question the consensus now we’re going to seriously pay for it later. BigT