[ExI] good bexarotene article

[The Avantguardian]

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>From: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
>To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> 
>Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 5:45 AM
>Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article
>
>
>2012/2/11 spike <spike66 at att.net>
>
>It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having fired one’s weapon.
 
The Star Trek story reminds me of the true life story of Louis Pasteur and the invention of rabies vaccine:
 
http://www.angelfire.com/al/aloysius/rabies.html
 
The writer leaves out many details including the fact that Pasteur administered the vaccine to the boy himself even though he was a chemist and not trained in medicine. This is all the more amazing because Pasteur *had* a physician in his employ named Emile Roux who was trained in medicine. But Roux refused to give the boy an untested vaccine on ethical grounds. He even lodged a formal protest against his boss for "playing God". Lucky for Pasteur and all of mankind that the chemist was right and the physician wrong.
 
So what happened here? A distraught mother begged a man to save her son. The man risked his career in an attempt to save the boy. The result? That man became remembered as one of the greatest men in history. Pasteur went on to become one the founding fathers of microbiology and disproved the spontaneous generation of life, fleshed out germ theory, saved the French wine industry from an invasive yeast species by inventing "pasteurization", and discovered the entire concept of stereo-chemistry and optical polarization-rotation which give rise to "left handed" and "right handed" organic molecules.
 
>This is not really what dominant ideologies dictate, which is the essence itself of neoLuddisme, humanism, environmentalism, providentialism, etc.
>
>Whenever a risk exists, doing nothing is morally superior to doing something ("meddling with nature, providence, the divine plan, the... market, etc."). 
>
>Somebody dies, or some disaster happens, too bad, but the important thing is that it is not your fault, and that you have not attempted to play God.
 
Attempt to play God? Seriously? Most people are too afraid to color outside the lines to even think of playing God. Baaaaaaaaah! Little do they know they play God unintentionally for their children all time.
 
Maybe fewer prayers would go unaswered, if more people were willing to play God.
 
 
 
Stuart LaForge


"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson