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The 5 Most Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scares of All Time
cracked.com — Fear is our national pastime. These news stories were our World Series.
- Submitted:
- 45 days ago, made popular 45 days ago
- Submitter:
DifferentWay
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Cracked has you click through 5 pages to read this story.
Stop selling out to the advertising dollar guys. -
I wish the entire internet was one big page.
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I don't care what cracked says, DDT isn't good at all.
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whats annoying is some days all the funny is brought to you on one page and then some days some short arse article is spread over 5....consistency.....meaning one big page!
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Seriously, what's up with making me click my mouse four times!?!? Sure it was their funniest article in a month, but the fact that I had to click my mouse after reading an entry totally ruined that. Come to think of it, I'm going to have to click my mouse to post this comment. DAMNIT! It's a huge internet wide conspiracy! I'd type more but I'm quaking with rage over here.
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Excellent thumbnail choice.
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Thanks to this article, I no longer fear DDT, asbestos, and most importantly, robot attacks.
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i can't believe they forgot about tobacco...
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"The only problem with DDT is that insects mutate really quickly because there are so many of them. It doesn't take long for insects to mutate an immunity to DDT, thus, you'd have to keep using more and more of it. Some insects, like flies, have even mutated the ability to use DDT as a food source. So DDT is effective initially, but given a little bit of time, all insects will become immune to it, rendering it useless."
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They left out SARS, madcow, and avian flu.
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I realize Cracked is comedy, but this list is pretty bogus.
In several of the cases, the loss of life was mitigated because we took measures to do so. Evacuating Three Mile Island, getting the kids out of the schools, discontinuing the use of DDT. Also, the effects of these "disasters" would have been long term, not immediate.
Many people exposed to radiation in Chernobyl didn't show effects until they had kids with birth defects (I have family in Poland, and many Poles believe birth defects *there* have increased because of Chernobyl). Asbestos causes cancer, it's not an immediate killer. The children would start developing trouble in the 30s/40s/50s due to exposure. And DDT actually effected animals. One particular bird was driven nearly extinct because the DDT caused it to lay eggs with shells too thin to protect the embryo.
Yeah, it's Cracked, and I'm probably taking this far more seriously than it was meant. But there it is.
-Pie -
What about MRSA in schools?
Sure, it should be addressed and the public educated, but there's no reason there has to be a newspaper article every time there's a new case diagnosed. -
You have no idea what an overhyped health scare is until you read about Edwina Curry and her whole egg fiasco : http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/d ...
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how about trans fats
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I dunno... They acted like the Avian Flu could wipe out that planet at one point... I remember turning on TV and they were talking about how it would only take one person in the US to get it, and the whole nation would be in peril.
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No mention of Anthrax, aka the Free Day Off for Federal Workers? Talk about ***** terror-mongering.
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3 mile island really was unfortunate. It was one of the main reasons nuclear power plants aren't used today. It is proven that there is much less waste from a nuclear power plant then there is from gas. A human in his entire life time uses about a test tube amount versus the hundreds or thousands of gallons of gas.
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Build nuclear power plants
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This article failed to include all the sensational stories that show up on digg every 10 minutes.
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Dugg for Hooters.
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I enjoy Cracked but the article was dumb. Just because something doesn't kill doesn't mean it's danger is unwarranted. Some things have long term effects that may lead to illness, genetic damage, birth defects etc.
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#6. The time Catherine Zeta-Jones chipped a nail, And it took nearly five seconds before Michael Douglas said "Are You OK Honey"
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I was expecting to see Y2K :( The loss of life from that would have been brutal!
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So where are Iraq's WMDs?
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a baseball analogy? on digg?
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How is the MMR jab not on this list.
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Dugg for title reminding me of current gov't fear-mongering
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#6 Butter is bad for you.
Butter in fact is great for you. It is a fat needed by your body to grow muscle, brain function, and over all health. -
Let me add the Canadian SAR scare to that list.
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Dugg for finally someone addressing the nations robot attack problem.
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And don't forget about ***** punching. Studies show that females are almost entirely immune to this phenomenon.
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Two items missing.
1. SARS
2. Bird Flu -
SARS, Avian Flu, Global Warming, and basically 90 percent of all "scares". But yeah, I guess those are good for TOP 5.
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Y2K?
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Dugg for being on Cracked, Digg's gay lover in the hostile internet takeover campaign.
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1) global warming
oh wait, HEALTH scares -
Buried for being from Cracked.com.
Have to irrationally hate them now because they're always on the front page. -
I used to love the smell of DDT...
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anyone have a source for the information on mosquitoes???
i want to check that out. i'm curious if those are real stats or something the author pulled from his/her butt -
"Within five days, the Governor had ordered the evacuation of all children and pregnant women (***** you, dad!)"
Yeah, seriously. Why do fathers (and men in general) constantly get tossed under the bus during emergency situations? Can someone explain this? Why are women and children lumped together? Are they still both considered helpless? -
How long will it take Global Warming to make this list?
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Zombies man, where are the zombies? Every year the media hypes zombie movies. In years past, these movies were campy, with slow and stupid zombies that left everyone feeling, "I could kick their collective asses without dying!" But recently, zombies have gotten quick, vicious and bloody, and most of the movies end with the hero dying... might be a cure, but it's not a big hope as the survivors are isolated, with minimal technology.
How come Zombies aren't on this List!!?!! News media hypes these other things all the time. Water is bad for you. Cell Phones can cause cancer, etc. But lets be honest, news "reporting" is mostly boring, and very simple. But the real media (i.e., movies and made-for-television shows) gives us a much more in-depth look a the dangers. And they show the emotion, tell the story, and when our hero/heroine dies, we cry and just know, "We couldn't have done any better, so therefore we would be dead in this situation too!" So how is that NOT way more frightening?
My Top 5 Most Over-hyped Threats
1. Zombies (caused by all sorts of things)
2. Government Conspiracy/Project that goes wrong
3. Aliens
4. Psychopathic killers
5. Dues Ex Machina (where anything high-tech turns on us) -
All of these things killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy.
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I generally agree with most things on cracked, but the reason people lost their ***** over 3 Mile Island was because how close they came to having a full-fledged meltdown. It's not what happened, it's what almost happened.
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They forgot Margarine. Sure they would've had to make it 6 pages long, but it would've been worth it.
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I think someone at digg accidentally stuck the cracked rss feed in to the "auto promote to front page" box - I don't even need to subscribe there anymore - everything they write hits the front page in a matter of hours. Truly amazing and truly horrifying consider so many of their stories contain utterly false information.
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luckily, most of us had little change or consequences due to these events... what put the fear of God in me -- mixing Pop rocks and carbonated soda!
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I love Cracked.com articles. They are the funniest and most informative that I know of.
I just had to have issue with two of their articles:
Artificial Sweeteners: I'll admit that Sweet-n-Low was overhyped as a threat when it killed a rat after twenty years of floating in it. But Nutrasweet -- that stuff breaks down into some bad garbage and you should learn what "phenol" is. No, it doesn't kill you, but it puts holes in your brain.
DDT: I love crack too, but that doesn't make me want to use it like you do, you wonderful cracked writers. It's still in the food chain, causing genetic damage. Again, the test for things being bad shouldn't just be if they kill you. -
West Nile, Avian Flu, and SARS
Total combined worldwide deaths: less than 1200
Avian Flu - 236
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/cou ...
SARS - 774
http://www.who.int/csr/sars/country/table2004_04_2 ...
West Nile - < 100
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nile_virus -
Yeah almost
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What about the great bird/monkey/sars/west nest scare that sold a lot of antibiotics for Rumsfelds big pharma company?
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