TED Community » Stefan H. Farr

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• +2

  A reply on Conversation: Debate: Do vaccines work or are they just another money making tool in a trillion dollar industry?

  Nov 14 2012: Hi Roberto,
  
  I did read the conversations, but I thought I add my point of view as well.
  
  The aluminum and the sort that you are referring to are so called adjuvants. They are intended to boost the immune response because only if there is an immune response to the vaccine will the vaccine do its job (train the immune system to respond to certain markers found in certain pathogens). Unoforunately not all markers are easy to recognize, and so not all vaccines work as easily as smallpox vaccine. HIV, Ebola, Malaria and other horrible sickneses still have no cure and no vaccines because of this very reason. That is why people try different techniques like vaccines augmented to give hightened immune response.
  
  For scientists this is a challange, a way to affirm themselves, for farmaceutical companies a business opportunity and for people who live with these pathogens on a daily basis it represents a great deal of hope.
  
  Unfortunately, medical science is not an exact scienct, what works on paper not always works in lab and what works in lab not always works in the field. People are different, they react differently to various external factors. It is hard work and sometimes it goes wrong.
  
  But the payoff is high. If the smallpox vaccine hadn't been invented, smallpox would probably kill tens of millions of people each year. Flu kills approximately 500 thousand people each year because we only have a partial vaccine for it. Malaria kills even more each year. Maybe 50 years from now, people will look back and say: "This year 500 thousand people didn't die because we have a defence against flu".
  
  Some people do have adverse reaction to vaccines, it is a proven fact, what we don't know is how many of those would have an even worse reaction to the actual disease? These are questions impossible to respond and the are highly subjective. Vaccines do have the potential to cause harm, but they also have a vastly superior potential to prevent it.
• +3

  A comment on Conversation: Debate: Do vaccines work or are they just another money making tool in a trillion dollar industry?

  Nov 14 2012: Is there any proof that vaccines work? There actually is, a great deal of it, but let me give you just a few:
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox. This highly contagious diseases has has killed millions and millons of people along the history. Once caught, there is no cure, one either fights if of or one dies. Various strains have different mortality rate but in general they move around 30% (In every 100 sick people 30 will die). Thanks to vaccination howerver, this disease was erradicated so not a single person dies in our days out of the 7 billion potential candidates that exist out there.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio. This one can cause horrible growth defects and paralises, but thanks to vacciences, nobody has it nowadays in the developped world. It could actually be eradicated too, if we would have the discipline and will to do it.
  
  And finally: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies. One can only catch this if an animal with rabies bites you (dog, cat, bat, etc) but if you do cacth it, you better pray to God that vaccines are available before the symptoms occur, because once they do the mortality rate is 99% and the and the way to go is not pretty. With vaccination however, the success of curing is almost 100% (it mostly depends on how early the treatment starts).
  
  Vaccines do work. There are countless other examples, some less impressive, but they are there. People doubt vaccines because there is a commercial aspect to them, but this is the capitalistic way of living. We don't trust it, we don't like it? let's change it. Let's donate money to science and to scientist so that they don't have to work for farmaceutical companies but to NGO's, because they are the people who actually develop the vaccines and whatever their motivation (helping people, fame) their success rate is measured in the success of the vaccines, so you can rest assured that their goal is to make them work.

• A reply on Conversation: Why do we NOT invest effectively in the poor and marginalized so they can participate in the global economy?

  Oct 31 2012: By 'altruistic gesture' I meant to invest in the poor and marginalized not for high return but at the expense of their wealth.
  
  For the other question, it is important to understand that our economy was not modeled after a zero-sum game. It has developed on its own a lot earlier than the models were discovered but it happens that it closely resembles a zero-sum game and so this is a good model for the economy. To make an analogy, water does not freeze because we invented temperature, WE developed this measurement system to describe ITS behavior.
  
  That being said, We print money for various, usually wrong reasons:
  - sometimes to compensate for deficit, this usually creates inflation, because new money enters the market, money that does not have coverage (coverage according to current value systems, ex gold in the national treasury)
  - wealthy powerful countries sometimes print money to pay the debt to other countries after they took a loan. Personally I think this is totally immoral and devastating to the economy globally.
  
  There are other reasons too, but it really comes down to the fact that money is printed when it cannot be acquired the legitimate way (save for the initial printing stage and the refreshing of bills on the market) and this almost always negatively impacts the economic environment, exactly because the system is not designed to handle such a process.

• A comment on Conversation: Why do we NOT invest effectively in the poor and marginalized so they can participate in the global economy?

  Oct 31 2012: ... continuation from the previous post ...
  
  So which wealthy country do you think is ready to concede to such an altruistic gesture? I think none. It would probably be the most unpopular political measurement a party could ever take: "If you elect us, we promise to give your money and jobs to the guys in the other country. We know you'll be poor, but you be noble :)". Sorry but I could not resist.... It is impossible, unfortunately, under current economic models.
  
  The other solution would be to consider updating our economic models, which in my opinion is the right course of action, but not at all easier. If we considered human beings and the skills and knowledge they poses as economic values and could somehow model this into our current economy, for example: print money when a person is born and give it to the person (not physically but use it for it's education and upbringing), print money when a person graduates university and again, somehow make that person beneficiary of that sum, what you suggest could be possible. The hundreds of millions of people that live int those poor countries would suddenly worth a lot of money (they would be value in by themselves) which I personally think they actually are, of course in the beginning due to lack of education they could not be assigned a lot of value (sorry for being prejudicious but the reality is that our economy requires a lot of skills to be competitive) but still it would be a start and a path for progress which could gradually accumulate. Of course such a measurement has many implications and is not as easy as I put it but it would be a way out of the current status quo.

• A comment on Conversation: Why do we NOT invest effectively in the poor and marginalized so they can participate in the global economy?

  Oct 31 2012: Hi RH,
  
  Excellent point. This topic ties very nicely into another discussion: http://www.ted.com/conversations/14360/debate_our_culture_isn_t_ada.html, in fact, doing what you suggest here would be a gigantic leap in our cultural evolution, but I think the matter you brought up is one of the most difficult problems to solve:
  
  Our economy is modeled very closely around what in game theory is called a "zero-sum game" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game). In such a game the sum of all the participants' gains is exactly equal to the sum of all the participants' loses. Simply put, if one gains 10 dollars, a total of 10 dollars are lost by the other participants in the game. So given this economic model, what you are suggesting, although really cool and I am for it, is totally impossible.
  
  In order to bring those poor countries to a higher economic level, those countries need to export goods, to acquire trade suprlus (money enters the country). However, in order for them to be able to export, some other country needs to import those goods, which translates into trade defficit (money leaves the country). So as the country that exports gets richer the other countries get a little poorer therefore in this current economy every country struggles to export. Everything depends on it. Lones don't work either, because if you calculate it over the entire lifetime of the loan, it actually equates an process of import (money comes in, it is being used, meney goes back to to lender with interest). So no matter how much we shuffle it and turn it on its head, when we consider the closed system (the entire world) the end result must be zero.
• +3

  A comment on Conversation: What is an example of a random genetic mutation in humans that has proven to be beneficial?

  Oct 19 2012: Casey is right, we are in fact a string of beneficial genetic mutations, so there are litelally billions of such mutations along the histroy of humans forming. It is how we formed.But if we were to exemplify some that took place recently, as in after we became what we are today, here is a cool one:
  
  During the black plague, there was subset of the population that presented a genetic mutation that rendered their T cells immune to the plague because they lack the gateway that permits the plague to invade the cell. So basically they can be injected with live culture and the plague will simply die inside them, because it cannot attack the very specic cells it attacks in general population. Interestingly enough, because the plague attacks the same cells as HIV does, these people and their descendents who were lucky enough to inherit the mutation are also immune to HIV. They will never get it, even if they are injected directly with a high dose of the the virus.

• A reply on Conversation: Debate: Our culture isn't adapting to our rapidly progressing technology.

  Oct 17 2012: It is in my profile. I tried to add my blog when I opened the conversation, but it was censored out. I've been told many attempt to hijack conversation with spam. Although this was not my intention I will respect the rules and not post it here. I am a big believer in rules, even though they are some times uncomfortable. TED's policy is that they allow links in your profile, please refer to my blog there.
  
  Thanks.

• A reply on Conversation: Can we change, can we live without money?

  Oct 16 2012: I am not a victim, I am sorry you sensed that in my reply. I am actually doing ok, in this materialist world. That does not stop me from seeing that things are not alright.
  
  You say people are not focusing on material wealth? Everything is about material wealth. People work, cheat, steal, even kill for it. And I am talking literally not figuratively.
  
  On my last trip to Budapest, I happened to sit on the tram exactly where the ticket puncher was positioned. A person climbed on the next stop and positioned himself closely to the puncher. I found him to be uncomfortably close to me so I couldn't help but look at his actions. From the way he was holding a ticket in his hand that he was not going to punch it, unless the controllers climbed aboard. This would not be so interesting to this topic, but then his phone rang and he picked out a brand new iPhone from his pocket. Even if I give this guy the benefit of the doubt and say that the poor guy is hitching a free ride because he cannot afford to pay for it, I have to place him in the "poor bastard" category who will spend his last dime to pay for an expensive gadget so that he could present himself as having more than he actually has.
  
  This guy is not alone, the vast majority of people are like that. I am sorry but I have to radically contradict you: their heads might be empty, as in they don't focus on anything, but they sure focus on at least on thing: having more and being able to show it.

• A reply on Conversation: Can we change, can we live without money?

  Oct 16 2012: I personally don't but we as a society do. "We", the society is not necessarily all of us, it is the majority, in this case an overwhelming majority. Me and a few others that think differently must conform to this majority and compromise a great deal of what we believe because the paradigm shift is so great that otherwise we would be squashed out of existence. What we can do is small steps, which I do, talk to people, find other like me or similar believes and when we will be many than we can take ever greater steps. And if we are successful, maybe not me but generations down the road, the majority will adopt the model and the world changes. I really cannot know which is the correct way to go, but what I know is that what it is today is wrong.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Can we change, can we live without money?

  Oct 15 2012: We see everything around us in terms of property. The more we own, the more we are. "I own therefore I am". We place almost no value on virtues like integrity, empathy, open mindedness, discipline, reliability, etc. Sadly, in this world of us, humans are disposable, property is not. Money however is only necessary as a means to transact property. You can't grow or acquire your inner values by means of money. If we learn to value those things over property, money will become obsolete. Until then the answer is no, we cannot live without money.