[zug_zug]

I don't think it's remotely inevitable. I think that's an outrageous mindset.

Think of it like an engineer. We try to test products before deploying them to production (e.g. make all of humanity ingest it). If our tests are wrong some significant portion of the time, or if being wrong is much more damaging than we realized, then absolutely it's time to start the conversation of "How do we get better test coverage?"

I bet if you put some paltry amount of money, say 100B (compare this to a bailout) into devising tests around the long-term safety of various chemicals some creative solutions would come up. For example, off the top of my head, if reproductive health is a concern, perhaps do a study where some animal that reproduces frequently is exposed to it for 10+ generations. We can validate if this is a viable way of testing by taking some known endocrine-disruptors and validating this test catches them effectively.

For whatever reason, some people don't seem to see engineering chemicals that are safe for humanity to be a worthy enterprise, but I think it's as important as any tech company and we should make the financial incentives to reflect that and get the right minds on this problem.

[mensetmanusman]

Those tests exist already, but no ethical tests can determine the full truth.

Also, tests where minute traces of anything, like coffee, are purified to extreme amounts and injected into animals to cause cancer only add confusion, especially when California considers adding cancer warnings to coffee.

[zug_zug]

> Those tests exist already

Do you actually know which tests the EPA runs and if so could you cite your source?

> no ethical tests can determine the full truth.

That's an all-or-nothing fallacy.

Also you didn't respond to the core of my remark, which is about increasing the financial incentives by an order of magnitude. Lastly I take your complaint about coffee as support my argument that the current testing mechanisms are likely too simple.

[robocat]

> fallacy

No. Ethical tests cannot determine the full truth - that is just a simple fact.

How can anything be tested on on enough humans ethically? We can use animal models to detect some negatives. But if animal tests show a substance is "safe", doubt would still remain until tested on humans. It is normal that humanity creates new technology without knowing the future impact. Some people think that we shouldn't introduce new technology since we can't afford the risks. But technology has ethically positive outcomes - not only negative risk. Doing nothing has risks too.

[autoexec]

I guess that it's a fallacy because we don't need to determine the "full truth", just as much of it as we can if doing so would prevent mass poisonings.

[thereisnospork]

I'm sorry but that is nothing but a gross oversimplification of the topic.

There is neither lack of effort nor lack of incentive for human-analog testing ( which would lead to curing cancer, weightloss, hairloss, vaccines, etc. etc. etc.). You can't just write unit tests for the real world. Please do some reading before you try and hand-wave away a whole field as trivial.