With a grain of salt
It is easy to visualize
300 people; you have seen this many people at a party and want to save them.
The proposed law may
save 300 people from fire by exposing 300 million people to various toxic
chemicals in mattresses.
It is harder to
visualize 300 million people.
If we compare people to
grains of table salt,
84 pounds of salt is 300
million grains.
There are 1.2 million
grains of table salt in one cup
One teaspoon of salt
contains 25,000 grains.
300 grains is about 1/100
of a teaspoon. Less than what you would get with a single shake of a
saltshaker.
While every life is
important, is it wise to expose 300 million people to even negligible risk
to save a very few?
Even our best science,
which has not been applied to this issue, has been proven wrong in the past.
If we guess wrong we will
kill millions of people.
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