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In a final ruling announced Friday, the Food and Drug Administration is pulling from the market a wide range of antimicrobial soaps after manufacturers failed to show that the soaps are both safe and more effective than plain soap. The federal flushing applies to any hand soap or antiseptic wash product that has one or more of 19 specific chemicals in them, including the common triclosan (found in antibacterial hand soap) and triclocarbon (found in bar soaps). Manufacturers will have one year to either reformulate their products or pull them from the market entirely.
[...] The ruling does not affect alcohol-based hand sanitizers or wipes, which the agency is reviewing separately. It also does not affect antiseptic products used in healthcare settings.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 03 2016, @09:17AM
That which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.
Yeah, we washed our hands when we thought of it. I hit on that in my original post. And, we dealt with germs, bacteria, and viruses, just as every human and every human-like creature has done since before we climbed down from the trees. We develop resistance to common diseases, unless they kill us. That is how life is - did you read the story about Tasmanian devils developing resistance to their face cancer? Life evolves and grows, or it ends.
It sucks for those who succumb, but they can take some comfort knowing that we all succumb to something in the end.
(Score: 3, Touché) by mhajicek on Saturday September 03 2016, @02:39PM
That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, unless it makes you weaker. I used to work in machine shops where at least one machinist never washed his hands after using the bathroom. I got sick at least once a month. Now I run a shop at a medical device company where people have a more sophisticated understanding of hygiene, and I am far healthier.
With your viewpoint I suggest you engage cheap prostitutes without protection, or at least lick shopping cart handles at Walmart.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Saturday September 03 2016, @03:34PM
If your understanding of why you were getting sick is a lack of handwashing, then clearly the place you're working doesn't have anymore sophistication in terms of beliefs about handwashing. I wish germ theory would die, it's an outmoded and dangerous world view.
It's a superstition that's been around for ages and causes a lot more harm than good. Unless you were coming down with a monthly case of ecoli or other food poisoning, I doubt very much that anybody's hygiene is to blame for your getting sick. More likely, there was something else in the environment causing it or it was just a coincidence. Flushing the toilet is going to expose you to more bacteria than you'd get via somebody's dirty hands touching something that you subsequently touch.
If you're getting sick that many times during the year, that implies that there's something that you're doing wrong, not what other people are doing wrong. Even if nobody else is washing their hands, a person with a healthy immune system wouldn't be getting sick that frequently.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday September 03 2016, @08:22PM
The germ theory of disease is correct, and provably correct. It's not complete. You can't have a workable theory of disease without the germ theory, but you also need to understand the immune system, allergies, the differences between fungi, bacteria, viruses, and prions, etc.
.
Just because something is too complicated to explain fully in a general education class doesn't mean it's wrong.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday September 03 2016, @11:28PM
As far as medicine goes, microbes don't cause diseases, microbes in places they shouldn't be an in proportions they shouldn't be can cause disease. And that's not the current germ theory that the medical establishment is working with.
If we abuse the term some sufficiently, we can come to the conclusion you have. But, at some point, you do have to just admit that the current theory is so woefully insufficient that it's going to kill us all. How many people are going to need to die from MRSA and other antibiotic resistant microbes before the theory gets yanked in favor of something that's a bit more effective?
Not to mention unnecessary amputations when antibiotics don't work or liver disease from harsh chemicals being used in a misguided attempt to kill bacteria?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday September 04 2016, @02:00AM
microbes don't cause diseases, microbes in places they shouldn't be an in proportions they shouldn't be can cause disease.
That's got a bunch of ill-defined conditions in it. I can give them values that make it work correctly, but those look like unstable states. In particular, it's almost(?) never true that one or two microbes of whatever kind in whatever place will cause a disease, but if they like the environment they won't stop at one or two, and populations of even usually harmless microbes can cause diseases. And what constitutes "a lot" varies with the kind of microbe, IIRC the classic example of this is cholera. Wikipedia says "About 100 million bacteria must typically be ingested to cause cholera in a normal healthy adult."
It's also true that most microbes appear harmless, but even symbiotes can be deadly when their populations run out of check.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 04 2016, @03:06AM
Life is an unstable state.
(Score: 2) by danomac on Saturday September 03 2016, @06:32PM
Since doing this, I haven't been sick at work - it's been almost ten years now. If you keep your own hands and face clean the chances of you catching something is a lot lower.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday September 03 2016, @05:57PM
That which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.
Yeah, we washed our hands when we thought of it. I hit on that in my original post. And, we dealt with germs, bacteria, and viruses, just as every human and every human-like creature has done since before we climbed down from the trees. We develop resistance to common diseases, unless they kill us. That is how life is - did you read the story about Tasmanian devils developing resistance to their face cancer? Life evolves and grows, or it ends.
While I'd mostly say this is a useful attitude, it needs to be tempered by a few situations where handwashing is essential in normal life: (1) after using the restroom (especially "number 2"), (2) before cooking or during food prep after handling potentially contaminated foods (e.g., raw meats), and (3) when trying not to spread a serious illness (e.g., when you're infected and might come in contact with someone, or when you have been in contact with someone infected, etc.).
Everyday "dirt and grime" like kids get on their hands playing in the mud are unlikely to cause problems. But science has shown us that there are certain targeted places which germs can use as major avenues for transmission. Before modern hygiene, foodborne illness caused huge amounts of problems, and human waste was a major vector for disease spreading. Even today, there are a multitude of outbreaks of serious illness caused each year in countries with decent sanitation when people don't wash hands during food prep or after using the bathroom. A lot of these diseases aren't the sort of thing you "develop resistance" to -- they were often the cause of major plagues or widespread illnesses for thousands of years of human history.
Basically, I concur that everyday "dirt and grime" is useful for developing a healthy immune system. But rather than emphasizing "cleanliness" for the sake of appearance (your hands "look clean"), we should still be sure to emphasize to our kids when particular situations occur where it's truly important to wash hands, not for the dirt, but for the unseen microorganisms we're really trying to target.