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EPIDEMICS

                                             January 04, 2013


http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

   "Karl Smith, a professor of public economics
   and government at the University of North
   Carolina-Chapel Hill, has a good rule of thumb         LEAD_DOWN
   for categorizing epidemics: If it spreads along
   lines of communication, he says, the cause is
   information. Think Bieber Fever. If it travels
   along major transportation routes, the cause is
   microbial. Think influenza. If it spreads out
   like a fan, the cause is an insect. Think
   malaria. But if it's everywhere, all at once--
   as both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s
   and the fall of crime in the '90s seemed to
   be-- the cause is a molecule."

That's not bad, but doesn't he mean a widely-marketed product?

The market-place is potentially destructive because
of it's capability to encourage fads that spread
fast, before any evidence of problems can show up.



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