dickie, you should hope that you don't get ill, mate. Or if you do, that you leave your luddite tendencies at the hospital gate.

>>The babies you refer to who are born with "genetic" defects are often deformed in some way from exposure to the very chemicals that science has provided<<

"Often". Useful word. What about the ones whose defects have nothing to do with chemicals, dickie? Don't they deserve a community that tries to discover cures?

And how come it is suddenly their own fault that babies are born deformed because of "exposure to the very chemicals that science has provided"? Don't they also deserve a fair go?

>>Remember the use of chloroform to anaethetise patients?...Except scientists omitted to advise that chloroform is a particularly dangerous carcinogen. <<

Remember also the many lives it saved during the sixty-odd years it was in use. Not to mention the fact that it was only in the 1990s that it was labelled "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen", not even in your "particularly dangerous" category.

>>Cancers have increased along with scientific developments<<

As has human longevity. Your point is... what?

>>Some science initiatives have been wonderfully beneficial to humans, others horrendous!<<

Some leaders have been wonderfully beneficial to their citizens, others horrendous. What would you prescribe to ensure we only are led by the good guys and avoid the bad eggs? How would you also apply this to medicine?

Your exhortation to "take things easy, proceed with caution, and not get too excited about the offers on hand" sounds like the words of a smug, holier-than-thou individual with a belief in their own immortality.

But I'm sure you are not really like that, are you?

No Pericles....I'm "not really like that" but simply a little better informed than you.

Chloroform is a proven carcinogen in animals, causing liver and kidney cancer, nervous system and cardiac conditions and is fetotoxic.

The fact that scientists endorsed the continuing use of chloroform for over 100 years before confirming its toxicicity to humans, animals and the environment, is of some concern.

In addition, due to the lack of extensive research on the hazards of chloroform it is still classified as a "probable" carcinogen to humans though it is confirmed that exposure can cause brain, digestive, eye, kidney, liver and skin diseases, hence my description as " "particularly dangerous."

Clearly you didn't know the chemical name for chloroform which happens to be trichloromethane. This may have prevented you from shooting off your mouth and attacking the messenger.

The remainder of your post lacks any substance and is not worth responding to.

The insinuation in your post, dickie, is that "they should have known".

>>Remember the use of chloroform to anaethetise patients? Ah now that was a breakthrough, wasn't it? Except scientists omitted to advise that chloroform is a particularly dangerous carcinogen<<

Except that they didn't bleedin' well know, did they?

And if you propose that science needs to wait more than a hundred years before releasing a new treatment into the world, just on the off-chance it might eventually be discovered to increase risk, then heaven help us all.

>>The remainder of your post lacks any substance and is not worth responding to<<

Of course. Totally beneath your dignity.

But just to humour me, can you please justify, even in the smallest degree your statement that "Cancers have increased along with scientific developments"

Are you suggesting that scientific developments actually cause cancer?

Do you have even the remotest scintilla of evidence to support this theory?

Or is it just emotional verbiage, like "a particularly dangerous carcinogen".

Just wondering.

Dickie,it is not just the chemicals that cause genetic deviations that I'm talking about,but the natural genetic diversity that produces these dysfunctional aberations that may or may not cope with environmental change.My point is that natural evolution is painfully slow,cruel and inefficient.Human intelligence can engineer more intelligent beings that can cope with the new sophistocated world we have created for ourselves.

Unless we confront our shortcomings,we will go the way of the dinosaurs in a fraction of the time for which they existed.

Religions talk about the body being just an appendage of a greater self,but act as if our mortal being is everything and absolutely sacred.There is a serious hyprocracy here.George Pell is quite happy for deformed/disabled people to be born and suffer unimaginable misery,yet not let science relieve an agony that cannot possibly be experienced,unless you've been there.

Life is basically about now,and no one in authority has the right to tell us suffering is good because it benefits their ideological,imaginery world of self indulgent trips of power.

Runner the assertion that god exists is the essence of arrogance because it is the expectation that the god believers fantasy be imposed on all others and the reality of others is meaningless.

God is irrelevant to this debate because god is nothing other than the superstitious articulation of the ego. Pells primary agenda is to use superstition to weild power over the lives of individuals. Pellk is clergy , the business of clergy is to convince you snake oil will cure your short comings. Pells pro-suffering stance highlights that god of the bible is ignorant of nature, god simply would not know the real world if he tripped over it, the god of the bible himself believes in myth. Pells income and personal power is in direct competition with medicine. Pell knows that his charms and occult spells (prayer) do not work , especially with serious illness. God has no power to regrow teeth, regrow hair, turn melenomas or regrow organs and limbs. Pells god is imputant in the face of scientific progress of understanding. Like all understandings of nature before it Stem cell research threatens to unmask the mythology behind Pells superstition. Knowledge is creeping foward to expose religious beliefs as psychological dysfunction. Perhaps with stem cell technologies we can repair the part of the brain which suffers the delusions of superstitionism and create a more peaceful and loving society.

God is the clay , it is man that made god.

Has anybody ever listened to the news programs, where the scientists have found a new cure for this & that, then finishing up saying it could be 5 years away before it might come on the market? THIS IS THE SHAM!! and a lot of BS! It becomes only a news item, because they are looking for funding for these projects! (at the taxpayers expense off course)
In the meantime we are being steered away from using natural products worldwide.see: http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/us/summit07/index.html
HELLOOO anybody awake enough to connect the dots?