Biomedicine, "natural" medicine and the commodity

well i'd ask her what how she defines "natural" then tell her to stop engaging in unnatural acts like sticking her head up her ass.

seriously what nonsense, perhaps she migt wanna dose herself with 1000mg of opium and see if natural drug can't do any harm.

She was arguing that humans were essentially parasitic? Jeez.

Would she say that 'natural' medicines like rhino horn and tiger's whiskers are totally fine for the environment too?

Perhaps she was just generalising from her own situation as a student.

You might also try pointing out the whole smallpox thing, the various pandemics and plagues that wiped out large sections of humanity, the STDs, disfiguring illnesses, birth defects, shorter life spans, poisonous food, water, dangerous/disfiguring/life-shortening working conditions before we developed alternative ways to deal with them...

Yeah technology and medical treatments, what a pile of shit

Oh yeah not to mention the bloodletting to remove sin, amputation without anasthetic, and other 'natural' ways of deaing with these problems.

So basically just your bog-standard primitivist then. I think you know what the general consensus is on those.

Get her to register on libcom. We haven't had a primmo for a while.

Please.

Surely not in Introductory Thought?

sign her up! please!

So such people are being spontaneously generated at the grassroots of student life?

I thought the populations of dim primmoes were limited to shrinking ecological niches in Brighton and Leeds (and a single breeding pair in captivity in London )

Maybe she just needs to come on here and have the corners knocked off a bit. After all, most technolgocial and scientific developments have increased human misery, but that statement is meaninless without a class analysis.

thanks laz now i can go bakc to thinking you talk complete and utter balls.

Fancy defending that statement?

In a class society, most major developments per se are in the interest of the ruling class. QED.

To take two characteristic developments, the introduction of more specialised agriculture, and the development of more mechanised industry, all greatly worsened people's conditions.

Popular action has contantly meant that we've resisted such developments and made life a bit more bearable, but that's despite the sci/tech movements, rather than because of them. In the longer term we've managed to bargain a slightly better deal than the cholera infested slums that industriallisation packed us into at first. hwoever, just because our living standards are now better isn't an argument that the ruling class developments were positive.

After all, living standards in parts of India and Africa are higher now than 500 years ago, but that's not an argument for European colonisation.

Phew! Felt my primitivism slipping just then

tenous, simplistic bollocks laz- you are just showing your bias.

I mean, you could argue that raising the average age of mortality by 30 years means that capital lowers the average cost of training workers as it doesn't have to replace them so often. Laz test: is this in the interest of the ruling class? Yes. Therefore this increases human misery. QED.

okay so your bascially saying that technological development reflects nothing more than the extension of bourgeois domination.

what complete and utter shite.

Well cobblers, bullshit and fucksticks to both of you

Capitalism didn't 'raise the average age of mortality', it introduced more productive and market-oriented measures of agriculture that resulted in worse conditions for most people. Clean water and access to food raised life expectancy in the latter part of the 19th century, and for most of the industrial revolution both of those were in short and diminishing supply.

Come on, throw me a hard one, I'm just playing with you so far (yawns).

so clean water came about how?

not pipes? not a vast infastructure?

Who said capitalism raised the life expectancy? Don't shift the goalposts. I'm replying directly to your baseless assertion that

You put forward a scenario, I rebutted it.

As for clean water, the vast infrastructure was only needed because of the mass forced immigration into cities. Those tech developments that are 'beneficial' are only usually so because they're papering over problems caused by previous capital developments.

Eit: I've got to work now. Feel free to pile up a huge thread of swearing for me to read next time I need a break.

well thats a profound point.

If only we never had bad things happen, eh?

If only that bitch hadn't made him eat that apple!

we'd have been better off if apes had never come from the trees

Youse are no fun any more

To argue over this point we either need a quantitative analysis, showing that more tech has been good or bad. This is unlikely, so instead we're better off arguing about the inherant dynamics of tech/sci developments, and what characterisitics they exhibet.

You cocks

BTW I'm going over to the Irish language thread, it's much more fun 8)

what inherent dynamics?

technology is a wider concept than what is actually implemented under capital. Sure don't we have thousands of types of technology not being implemented because of the logic of capitalism?

Well, what I've said is that the tech/sci developments that have been implemented have mostly been harmful; I'd say that this reflects certain inherant tendencies in technology. You might say that there is some, sumbmerged possible 'technology' that would emerge and be much better, but I'd like to see what you base that on. In general, when conducting equal relations and building society at the grassroots people don't tend to develop much in the way of 'technology'.

And not certain tendencies inherent in the system that utilises this technology?

It's meaningless to talk about 'this technology' outside of the context in which its been created. The scientific developments that have been put into practise are overwhelmingly those whoch have served to increase control and exploitation. Hero invented the steam engine thousands of years before Stephenson, but without a coal industry that had coal mines that needed draining, this 'technology' was forgotten. When it was rolled, out, it was to increase profitability, based on the needs of the ruling class, rather than because it was simply 'developed'.

History has no inherant direction (one for revol there )

laz your fucking mental, and your logic is so one dimensional it is scary.

How about thinking a bit more dialetically (i've always wanted to say that!).