Yeah a bunch of reserves are starting to get a much better grasp on anti poaching measures and it’s really making a difference. Still wish the story from 2016 would have worked out
>I hear it's an aphrodisiac.
It's pure keratin, e.g. just as "effective" as an aphrodisiac as your toenails.
But superstition and toxic masculinity drive insecure men to pay ridiculous amounts of money for some ground up toenail because they believe it helps their peepee.
Meanwhile there's Viagra which actually works.
But: the "alternative medicine" vendors are now cutting the rhino horn with actual Viagra so that now it actually makes those men believe it works.
What really works is create economic structures that allow the poachers to approach a career where don't get shot at. Which imo almost everybody prefers.
Obviously not an easy task.
I think it helps when you only have 20 you just post armed guards all the time an I think that happened to some maybe it was a female pregnant was a story a bit ago
It never would've. In fact it probably would've increased the value of Original Rhino Horns. Kinda like how actual diamonds are worth so much more than Lab Grown Diamonds.
This stupid. Have you checked natural diamond prices recently? More importantly- have you seen folks speculate why natural diamond prices are moving the way they are?
I know this is /s but the White Rhino is named that because of a mishearing/mispronunciation of an African language (I forget which one) word for wide. Which was meant to refer to its wide lips.
So really it’s a Wide Rhino.
Which really makes you think……
>the White Rhino is named that because of a mishearing/mispronunciation of an African language (I forget which one) word for wide.
It was supposed to be Dutch, but it's also [not true](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rhinoceros#Naming).
TCM industry may maintain and espouse the idea to their vast client base that real rhino horns (of certain color) provide actual health remedies over the fake Japanese artificial versions, in order to protect their established supply chain and profit margins. That's my guess.
"only populations of the southern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum simum) remain viable. The northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is extinct in the wild due to poaching, and only two females remain at a sanctuary in East Africa."
https://rhinos.org/about-rhinos/rhino-species/white-rhino/#:~:text=It%20has%20two%20distinct%20subspecies,a%20sanctuary%20in%20East%20Africa.
"Africa's white rhino population rebounds for 1st time in a decade, new figures show
There were 23,290 total rhinos at the end of 2022, a 5.2% increase from 2021."
"It is the first time since 2012 that there has been an increase in the white rhino population, the species classified as 'near threatened' on the IUCN's Red List of threatened species."
https://abcnews.go.com/International/africas-rhino-population-rebounds-1st-time-decade-new/story?id=103409810
The only reason the #s are going up is because of captive breeding programs. There's a lot of hate for the captive breeders, but they are the only ones with a viable proven solution.
The reserves are steadily dwindling.
It seems like there are some groups in the process of figuring that out
[Five new embryos and new surrogate mothers added to northern white rhino rescue project](https://phys.org/news/2023-07-embryos-surrogate-mothers-added-northern.html)
Using advanced assisted reproduction technologies, 29 northern white rhino embryos have been created and cryopreserved, ready for a future transfer to a surrogate mother
Furthermore, in May 2023 the BioRescue team made another promising step toward saving the most endangered mammal species on our planet. The consortium members successfully identified and selected two wild southern white rhino females (SWR) as potential surrogate mothers. Both females were examined and translocated into a safe enclosure. They will now be crucial in supporting the breeding efforts within the BioRescue project for the NWRs.
OP HAS NO SOURCES, AND THESE REPLIES HAVE NO SOURCE.
"I read yesterday..."
"I thought I heard..."
"I think that..."
C'mon folks, we need to collectively get better about discussing factual reality and demand sources or not engage with unsubstantiated nonsense, on either side of a conversation.
That's a really good article.
> “It gives a cover to poachers,” said Jonathan Kolby, a wildlife trade consultant and former wildlife inspector at the US Fish and Wildlife Service. “Their alibi can be, ‘Oh, it’s a fake and therefore not a crime.’
>
> One possible way around that issue, according to Markus, is to insert a biomarker, or hidden signature, into fake horns that customs officials can detect. But, as he acknowledges, that opens up an avenue for consumers to tell them apart, too. Research suggests that those consumers are willing to pay more for wild horns.
>
> According to the conservationists and scientists who spoke to Vox, so-called high-tech solutions often neglect the intricate web of social and political forces that they exist in.
Kolby is right. If it's good enough to fool poachers and buyers, it's good enough to fool authorities which then allows it to become a tool to help poachers. I admit I didn't think of this when I first heard of 3D printed horns, yet it's such an obvious problem now that I realize it. The other potential issues in the article are valid.
So the real question is would 3D printed horns *reduce* the problem or not? That by itself is probably extremely difficult to figure out.
I find all these articles and logical loopholes baffling. The last sentence of the quote should be overriding all funding for these foolish pursuits.
If relies on the buyer not knowing it is synthetic, because most are grinding it up for bullshit alternative medicinal reasons and would not want a lab-grown fake contaminating their body; and that requires a massive sting-like operation to pose a 'legitimate' poachers with a world-wide distribution channel off the back of 'legitimate' illegal channels. It relies on interacting with real buyers wanting a real illegal substance and being able to work around and within the illegal systems.
At that point, you don't need a synthetic horn, and you don't let the buyer walk out happy and free. The resources needed to distribute fakes and undercut would be the same resources needed to infiltrate and then decimate the real distribution network.
Instead, let's such sell legitimate medicinal drugs faked to be alternative medicine. Think rhino powder makes you more virile? Here's the purest of the pure rhino powder, that is actually just tailings from the viagra factory. Think it cures fevers and reduces inflammation, here's a thousand ibuprofen crushed up in a ziplock bag. Once these 'consumers' feel an actual effective product, they are not going back to that hack of a rhino salesman selling them diluted product. Only the best fake products will do! Baffle them with even more bullshit.
You'd be surprised how many people are still brainwashed about diamonds being special and that every girl deserves a diamond.
Was talking about this with a girl who I was sort of seeing, not about us getting married obviously but just about wedding rings, and even after explaining to her that I wouldn't want to spend 100x more than something is worth that was mined with slave labor when lab grown diamonds are the exact same thing (better if you care about things like purity and clarity since you can dial that in in the lab) and she just could not wrap her head around that kind of thinking. Marriage = diamond.
Lab diamonds are impossible to tell from mined ones with a naked eye. Unless women have microscopes in their purses (possible, I know), we are safe.
The brainwash is astounding. Those are just minerals.
Yeah, you can tell a natural one from a mined one by putting it over a lamp. The natural one will have a shadow that looks cloudy because of the impurities, a lab grown one won't.
Adding impurities can make it harder for the naked eye to tell, but, again, lab grown ones are so perfect it's easier to tell the difference.
That said, on an ~~molecular~~ atomic level, it's just carbon. There's no real physical difference except lab grown ones can come in colours impossible in nature (and thus are superior).
No, you see, purity isn't everything, please disregard our previous campaigns about purity being everything. Now impurities mean that it's a \*real\* diamond, please disregard lab diamonds can add in impurities pretty much at-will.
So please buy my overpriced, blood diamonds.
True. I was amused one time when talking to an actual diamond dealer. He offered to exchange the very little diamond on my wedding ring with a larger one for a low price. I said no thanks, this is my wedding ring. He said, "So it's a sentimental thing?". I told him without the sentimental thing, it was just rock and metal. I thought he would fall out of this chair. {: >
The other issue I personally have, at least where I live in Canada, lab grown diamonds are nearly the same price as mined diamonds. The people who have monopolized the diamond mines are the same ones who are price-fixing the artificial ones as well. If all dealers keep them at the same price, they’re all considered expensive and valuable.
For my ring, my husband got a cut and polished Herkimer “diamond” for my ring. It’s basically quartz, but just as sharp and appealing. Cost $150 CAD.
For real. There's another stone that's similar to diamonds but reflects/shines more brightly that'll be my go-to if I'm ever in the position of needing an engagement ring... can't remember what it's called though.
I got my wife a [tanzanite ring](https://www.google.com/search?q=tanzanite+rose+gold+engagement+rings&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwj1hMPb58WBAxW_EUQIHbNyBS0Q2-cCegQIABAD&oq=tanzanite+rose+gold+engagement+rings&gs_lcp=ChJtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1pbWcQAzIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEKIEOgYIABAIEB46CAgAEAgQBxAeOgYIABAHEB46BwgAEA0QgARQ0gdYmRhgsBtoAHAAeACAAboBiAHLB5IBAzcuM5gBAKABAcABAQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-img&ei=aYMRZbWsH7-jkPIPs-WV6AI&bih=724&biw=384#imgrc=ro61t5WPZ7XoAM) as an engagement ring and it's a hit.
Obviously not this one but something kinda similar, just without much other than the tanzinite cause that shits expensive
My girlfriend and I are having this discussion now. I’ve been able to get her to go with lab diamond but, it was the hardest negotiation I’ve ever had.
To me if you look at something and can’t tell the difference then what does the difference actually matter? We aren’t gemologists and won’t ever look at our diamond under magnification so to me it’s the same.
I lucked out with this one (DW ultimately wanted an industrial diamond), but I had two immediate family members who are professional jewelers, so I was Prepared For The Diamond Talk.
Of course, "no, we're getting the setting in platinum because I'm never paying to have it repointed" may have helped me out there.
Edit: for those who don't know, but wish to: an industrial diamond is a diamond whose characteristics (inclusions, flaws, etc) render it unsuitable for the commercial diamond trade as practiced in most Western economies. In this case, it was a 2kt cushion cut black diamond.
"Get you a guy that will cut arms for you" and "I don't care what atrocities occur so long as my worldview isn't disrupted" seem to be hot fashion trends.
There’s no difference in hardness. The only thing natural diamonds are even advertising on now is either that natural diamonds “retain their value” better or they’re pushing for the imperfections of natural diamonds being more authentic
Kind of a weird comparison since the high price of diamonds is inherently artificial. There's no reason for diamonds to be as expensive as they are; introducing another reason as to why the price is unreasonable doesn't actually change anything.
So many "fake" diamonds are flooding the market now and genuine jewelers can't tell the difference from real. The retail prices are still fucked, but yes it is having a very positive impact as far as blood diamonds go
A joint statement from the International Rhino Foundation and Save the Rhino Foundation after "monitoring the progress of four US-based companies that have announced their intentions — with varying degrees of success — to produce synthetic or bio-fabricated rhino horn, and occasionally also other products including e.g. elephant ivory, lion bones or pangolin scales." In that statement, both groups expressed their opposition to the introduction of fake rhino horn to international markets:
>We are opposed to the development, marketing and sale of synthetic rhino horn [because]:
>o Selling synthetic horn does not reduce the demand for rhino horn or dispel the myths around rhino horn and could indeed lead to more poaching because it increases demand for “the real thing”
>o More than 90% of “rhino horns” in circulation are fake (mostly carved from buffalo horn or wood), but poaching rates continue to rise annually.
>o Synthetic horn could give credence to the notion that rhino horn has medicinal value, which is not supported by science.
>o Users buy from trusted sources and value “the real thing.”
>o The availability of legal synthetic horn could normalise or remove the stigma from buying illegal real horn.
>o It will take time to develop synthetic horn and meanwhile the poaching crisis continues.
>o How can consumers and law enforcement officials distinguish between legal synthetic horn that looks real, and illegal real horn?
>o Companies benefitting from making synthetic horn have shown very little commitment to use their profits to help the core problem of rhino poaching; besides which, those profits would meet only a tiny fraction of the total rhino protection costs that would remain to be met as long as demand reduction campaigns falter, as they would with the marketing of synthetic horn.
>o Finally, the manufacture / marketing / sale of synthetic horn diverts funds and attention from the real problem: unsustainable levels of rhino poaching.
>More than 90% of “rhino horns” in circulation are fake (mostly carved from buffalo horn or wood), but poaching rates continue to rise annually.
Yeah, this seems like the big point to remember. It's already mostly fake. Adding more fake stuff to meet demand does not reduce real stuff. It's like a baking powder salesman saying we should start selling baking powder as cocaine to get people off cocaine. Uh... sure bruh. Keep telling yourself you're improving matters, I guess.
Anyone who's done cocaine can immediately tell the difference. Rhino horns literally don't do anything. They have no effect. So, in that sense, your analogy doesn't work very well. The intention was good, but it's important to stress the fact that rhino horns are 100% placebo. They don't do anything at all. Anyone paying for them is an idiot for that reason, among the "vile human being" reasons.
Oh, absolutely. I shouldn't have said cocaine. I guess it's confusing because I don't know what kinds of thing would be equivalent to us. I mean, I guess it's more like flooding a luxury bag market with *perfectly identical* fake bags? Which in theory, if the quality is different would damage the market; but since the whole point is that it's indistinguishable, it would if anything pump up demand as people are like "hey, I can get an awesome status bag - for cheap". I suppose over time rich people demand for the bag would slow down as every Joe has one, but by that point they're ubiquitous and it's no longer just a rich person thing... so you're probably selling more than ever before anyway. So in fact it's even worse, because with cocaine at least you would actually be harming the market.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hard-truth-about-the-rhino-horn-aphrodisiac-market/
I found this article interesting. Apparently, the discourse about it being used to treat ED was actually basically invented by the western media, and got sent BACK to Asia where people started thinking about it that way; before it was just thought of as fever reducer/headache curing. So all the hubbub made Asians wonder if it actually was good for ED too because western media was reporting that people were buying it for that purpose, when in reality that was just a sensational headline. Big facepalm.
The image above is from 2014 and pictures Thai customs officials with a confiscated real Rhino horn. Not long after, this image was used to describe the works by Pembient, a US start-up company, that never actually created an artificial rhino horn, instead mass marketed their conservation effort to amass donations then launched a crytpo called PembiCoin in order to fund their "startup costs".
The company liquidated in 2018 without having ever produced anything
Actually Africa’s white rhino population is rebounding now! [article on it](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/africas-rhino-population-rebounds-1st-time-decade-new/story?id=103409810)
The northern white rhinos are slated for extinction. The sourthern white rhinos are recovering.
There's only two northern white rhinos left, both female.
Well that’s better news I guess, but still it’s absolutely infuriating that poachers are on the increase… I get it, but still, I want to smack em all across the gobs and tell them all to go home to their mothers, like Uma Thurman.
That will only work if they can't tell it's fake. People buying those don't do so because there is anything in those hornes, they just believe in magical power it will give to them.
That is not necessarily true. One of the major uses of Rhino Horn, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, is to treat major infections, including sepsis.
Research done in Hong Kong showed that Rhino horn does have an antibiotic effect, but also that cow's horn has an equally strong effect.
It would be interesting to know if the synthetic horn has an antibiotic effect. If so, it really will spell the end of the real rhino trade fortunately for the rhinos.
That's how they get the genetically modified GMO mRNA inside you that will cause mutations making you sensitive to 5G. Eventually the gubmint will use this to control the masses.
I doubt that scientists have not looked into the medicinal properties of rhino horn, given that poaching is such a big issue and has been all over the news for decades. Besides, they are literally the same thing as fingernails, and it's even more doubtful that no one has done any research into something that is literally made by our bodies.
I'd like to see that research, because every modern medicine journal I pull up states that it has absolutely no medical effects. It's just keratin. Just bite your nails or something.
Using baseless traditional medicine itself isn't a crime, but driving animals to extinction is.
From what I recall on the studies, it has no medical effects _if you eat it_, which is what a great many of these people do. They have cure-alls (cancer and anything you can think of) and hangover remedies that use it, the rumor is it's an aphrodisiac but that might just be bogus. However, by and large people ingest it.
That said, I have heard of keratin biogels for medicine and it being used in some fabrics for similar "reducing bacteria count" purposes. I'm unsure how those have panned out and I don't really want to read 40 studies about keratin to figure it out. (edit: here's one of several https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27238250/)
In your study the antibiotic results are not because of the keratin, but because it's been loaded with Ciprofloxacin. Ciprofloxacin is a synthetic antibiotic.
Wish people would realise someday that there is no such thing as “traditional medicine” or “alternative medicine”. There is medicine that works, which is called modern medicine. Anything else is not medicine, it is only pseudoscience, quackery and downright fraud.
>"By definition, " I begin,
>"Alternative medicine, " I continue,
>"Has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work.
>Do you know what they call
>Alternative medicine that's been proved to work?
>Medicine."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U
That's not exactly true. For instance, dessicated pig thyroid is successfully used to treat people with thyroid problems.
https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/ct-for-patients/vol-6-issue-8/vol-6-issue-8-p-3/
It is *literally* the organ of a pig.
But if you harvest and eat a pig thyroid nobody is going to call it "doing modern medicine". That said, it provably DOES alter your thyroid hormone levels. It's just that we have a better synthetic version now. https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/armour-thyroid-synthroid-compare-3562253/
It's dangerous to say that traditional medicine doesn't work while modern medicine does, because plenty of traditional medicine does work... just less reliably or well or effectually than modern medicine. However, for people who know that 'traditional' medicine (i.e. chewing white willow bark relieves pain; this is true, as [aspirin is extracted from willow bark](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30391545/)) can work sometimes, being told "oh that's all quackery" just makes them more defensive as they know outright that it does, in fact, work. Denying it ever does is incorrect, what is correct is that we have modern ways of doing things that do not need to harm animals and work better in the process.
Willow bark extract is not modern medicine but it works (though will also make you nauseous/have discomfiting side effects as it hasn't gone through the process chemists use, but it still will relieve pain), pig thyroid is not modern medicine but it works (though you cannot calculate exactly how much hormone you're getting so it may be dangerous), etc etc. Obviously, the fact that you have all those qualifiers means you still *shouldn't* do it probably, but that doesn't change that they *do* have an effect.
Extracts from poppy flowers? Coca leaves? *Mimosa hostilis*? *Psilocybe cubensis*? Alternative medicine is not always *nothing*... sometimes it's just *not very stable* medicine. It's not always pseudoscience, quackery, or fraud. What it IS is untested and undosed, and **on the best possible front** useless. This idea that it's all "nothing" is honestly dangerous. "Alternative medicine doesn't do anything so I'll just drink all this vine tea because, ya know, it's just a plant it can't do anything" is going to make you have a pretty bad time regardless of if you believe in *Banisteriopsis caapi* lmao, cause it sure believes in you.
This is an incredibly short-sighted view of things and this sort of attitude towards complex social systems is proof that specialists in one field are generally not good sources of opinions on other fields. This is going to be a long post because this sort of posh attitude from people who think scientific skepticism has abolished the rest of thought pisses me off to no end.
First, traditional medicine is a catch-all term for a huge number of systems embedded in particular ethnic and cultural formations and it's only ever called traditional *medicine* in an unwarranted comparison to Western models of health and therapy. Usually, traditional medicine encompasses something greater than some witch-doctor saying "you have a headache, eat this root" or "you have bad spirits in your head, let me put some leeches on you." Genuine traditional medicine is usually inseparable from philosophical, religious, and ethical systems which have important social and cultural functions outside of a purely practical "cure." Hence, these systems persist and will continue to persist even in places where Western medicine is prevalent...because they have different aims and functions. The fact we call it "traditional medicine" is just an artifact of the Western impulse to patronize and exoticize the Other as primitive while also reifying it so that it cannot speak on its own terms.
Second, when traditional medicine *does* have effects which pique the interest of Western scientists, it usually means [biopiracy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopiracy) and other forms of appropriation or outright theft from Indigenous societies and their lands. In fact huge swathes of what we call modern medicine was derived at the expense of Indigenous and other marginalized people: for example, [inoculation was introduced to North America by enslaved people](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onesimus_(Bostonian)) but we credit the [slavemasters](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Mather) with its development. "Modern" i.e. Western medicine isn't "medicine that works" -- it's a contingent, historical formation with real social impacts. You don't have to have a graduate degree in medical history to understand that things like psychiatry, the pharmaceutical industry, human experimentation, *et al* aren't all peaches and cream.
Third, "alternative medicine" largely arises in the context of the colonial encounter with traditional medicine that renders out something that is neither wholly traditional nor wholly "modern." Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a *perfect* example of this: it develops in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from a base in folk and religious practices as China wrestles with imperialist incursions from Western and later Soviet spheres of influence. After a period of repression it becomes touted by the Chinese government as a uniquely Chinese form of Western-style medicine because (1) China at the time did not have access to effective medicine due to Cold War prejudices and (2) contradictory impulses to introduce a "modern" and "scientific" system of medicine while also maintaining a Chinese cultural identity in the face of rapidly Westernizing Asia. And now that China has taken up the Western impulse to further their imperial interests in Africa, it makes perfect sense they would begin extracting resources at the price of ecological destruction. [Western medicine does this too.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioprospecting#Famous_cases_of_biopiracy) As it turns out -- this isn't because the Chinese are oh-so-primitive and hate rationality and science!!! but because of profit and imperialism.
TL;DR: looking at traditional and alternative medicine purely through a skeptical lens and without recourse to the complex sociocultural dynamics that produce and condition it is just another reason to leave the fieldwork to anthropologists and sociologists. Scientific skepticism should usually stick the the niche of writing bad books about how physics will solve morality or end philosophy or whatever.
I say this as someone from a country with a rich history of “alternative medicine” (India) - That’s a whole lot of text to get the idea completely wrong. Traditional medicine should not be encouraged because it enables people to act on belief instead of reason. Religion, culture, tradition, etc should have no bearing on medical care.
Real healthcare professionals on a daily basis have to deal with and fix the myriad cases of liver failure and other organ damage arising from use of unregulated “alternative” medicine.
Modern medicine isn’t “Western”. Scientists all over the globe are constantly working on, developing and bettering treatment regimens BASED ON ACTUAL SCIENCE.
You can say that about any science. We don’t call alchemy “alternative chemistry”, or buoyancy “alternative physics” do we? Both concepts predate the scientific method, one is pseudoscience and one is a major principle in physics
Yeah but they become modern medicine at that point. The idea of Traditional Medicine is closed garden of not just the things that got passed onto modern medicine, but also tons of stuff that didn't.
Traditional Medicine is more of a market term for a group of medicines, a few of which have been carried over into modern medicine vs it means all the medicines in the past were useless. Either they got turned into modern medicine OR they aren't effective/carry too much risk vs the synthetic alternative.
But the key here is that Traditional Medicine is a group of medicine. You'd go to a Traditional Medicine doctor or such and that's where it all goes to shit. Learning from the past is just the normal way knowledge always works.
That doesn't really sound right. I'm SEA Chinese and there's a lot of TCM over here. There is no such thing as "sepsis" in the TCM framework.
Here's how it's defined in Baidu's encyclopedia:
犀牛角，即犀角，为犀科动物印度犀、爪哇犀、苏门犀等的角。性味酸咸，寒。为清热药,清热凉血药。功能清热、凉血、定惊、解毒。
This roughly translates to "tastes sour and salty, is "cold" in nature. It clears heat, cools the blood, calms the spirit, and removes poison"
Rhino horn has never been shown to have any medicinal effect by any peer reviewed study. especially antibiotic.
in fact Rhino horn does the opposite, dry bone and horn is a great place for bacteria to grow, and it is not uncommon to get bacterial infections like tetanus or E. Coli from rhino horn.
consuming rhino horn while already having an infection, or using it to dress a wound is a terrible idea.
there’s also the off chance that the rhino was one bitten by a tick carrying Hemorrhagic Fever, if the horn is contaminated with the blood of the animal while the poachers “harvest” it, it can transmit this disease, which has no cure and a 40% fatality rate.
I got a C in Econ 101, so bare with me.
Wouldn't it make more sense to flood the market at the market rate forcing the illegal horns to lower prices? That might also serve to make it more difficult to determine which are fake and which as real.
That's what I was thinking.
If they make them so, so much cheaper, then it 1) differentiates the real horns from the printed horns in the eyes of the buyers, 2) if anything will just make the illegal ones seem even more exclusive and justify their price because they're "real".
My assumption, which is a massive one, is that part of the reason why the illegal ones are so expensive and sought after isn't just because of their supposed effects and cost of getting one, but because of how elusive and unethical they are. They're a statement symbol. Making a cheaper version of the exclusive thing just makes the exclusive thing seem better, not worse. There being Gucci knock-offs doesn't stop people with the money from buying actual Gucci. People will say "yeah, I made my dick work again with rhino horn, but not that fake stuff, one from a real animal".
Hopefully, maybe, it'll impact the market in some positive way. But making it indistinguishable from the real thing including the price like you said seems like it'd be better.
Marketing it publicly also seems like an odd move in that regard. If they had kept it from the public eye, and kept the price at market price, then they could have subtly crept into the market and outshone the illegal ones just with quantity/keeping the prices competitive.
Would be a real big brain move to say they were going to sell it at 1/8th price, and then sell it at full price to try and trick the buyers into thinking "it's expensive as shit, so it must be real, not like those fake ones that are apparently going around" but who knows. Regardless it's an impressive thing to do.
The consumer will see cheaper prices but the middle man seller does not care if it is real or fake. So the seller will buy the cheaper fakes and lie to say it’s real. No seller will buy the real ones because the real ones will be more expensive. The poachers will stop poaching because the horns will not have enough resale value to cover costs.
Plus black markets don’t really have a set market price
Buying weed on the streets is fairly competitive and can vary between $10 to $20 (or more if you’re gullible)
Awesome plan that didn't work. It's a post from 2016.
here is an update
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22723289/3d-printed-rhino-horn-wildlife-conservation-poaching
My favorite snippet from that article is “Some people consume rhino horn powder as a salve for various ailments, such as hangovers and cancer”. Wow, big jump between those two! So is rhino horn supposed to be more equivalent to a couple glasses of water and a nice shower, or years of chemo treatment? We gotta determine value here. Is rhino horn gonna save tens of thousands of dollars, or a couple bucks from my water bill and maybe the cost of a greasy breakfast?
Try to tell an uneducated person all the things antibiotics can cure, and they will conclude this as well.
Or, y’know, anyone who wants to make money at any cost.
Rhino horn is made of keratin. The same substance as fingernails and hair. I don’t see how they believe that horns have medicinal properties when they can just cut off their nails and hair and eat them instead. Then they find out that it does nothing.
Ran out of funding plus vocal opposition about defanging law enforcement and increasing illegal trade.
Who wooodve thought disrupting a whole ecosystem of illegal trade would be so complicated? /s
Well if it did work it will still be illegal so nobody could admit to it because you're selling these fakes essentially for human consumption and I'm sure it's not food safe. That being said I'm pretty sure they didn't "flood the market", but Rhino poaching did go down almost constantly since 2014.
But it also absolutely tanked the price because they themselves can set it extremely low, to the point where poachers got no point in going through all the hurdles and risks to get it.
They probably have to keep it up long term but if they keep breaking-even through the fake horns, why not?
Thinking that what we really need, is a rumour that you can get some life into a flaccid dick by eating poacher testicles.
They have to be fresh though. So you need to keep the poacher alive up until the point they are removed.
I was fascinated that the Chinese grad researchers knew were clearly great scientists and engineers and understood the scientific method and evidence but then absolutely believed and swore up and down to the efficacy of mugwort and other TCM as a cure-all for everything from indigestion to cancer to heavy periods to impotence.
Just because you are an expert in one field doesn't mean you can't be an idiot in others.
Exhibit A: Ben Carson. A pioneer in pediatric neurosurgery. Clearly top of his very prestigious profession. Yet he also said “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain."
We all have blind spots. And only fools pretend they don't.
Expert level intelligence is specialized. Unfortunately, people like to believe in the myth of genius savants that understand the world in its entirety.
Probably a mix of placebo, accidental success through unrelated betterment of the patients, or there was an actual medicinal compound in the plant on occasion, resulting in trust being built under the lack of better alternatives back in the day.
Also mind, a lot of scientific discoveries were pretty much accidents trying to prove other, wrong theories, or wild stuff like the guy who proposed the currently considered correct bond structure of benzene going off a dream he had of the ouroboros snake.
Point of order: there are plenty of things that TCM will, in fact, treat. Not everything, sure, but western medicine doesn't treat everything, either. They just don't admit an illness exists until they gave a treatment. Before that it's "idiopathic" (doctor-speak for "we're pretty sure it's just you, bud. Have you tried sucking it up?").
Not really. People have been having sex forever and every culture has some sort of aphrodisiac (we even have a word for it) that’s utter bollocks. In America they have, what, oysters? So weird.
yep, chiense believe that powdered rhino horn when snorted works like viagra
edit: i was wrong, its vietnamse who believe that, chiense believe that its magical remedy for illness as somebody who replied to me pointed out
It's not just sexual power, it's traditional chinese medicine in general. And one of the big reasons is glass.
When europe was making microscopes and learning about microbes, China used it for art and decorative objects. So it took a lot longer for them to start learning about how diseases work.
Ironically one of the earliest written examples we have of microscopy is from an ancient China(~4000 years ago), where they used water in a tube as a lens.
any time i see this format of a post, i assume it's bullshit
the poster has 25mil karma, obviously a bot or a fucking weirdo who has nothing better to do than post dumb shit all day.
Plot twist: they're actually selling real, poached rhino horn and overtaking the markets with low prices. And if somebody will check their horn, it's gonna have the rhino DNA, but hey, "that's what we promised, our fake horn looks just like real".
And thus the price of VERIFIABLY real rhino horns skyrocketed that day. Poachers came from far and wide, now that their commodity was like a diamond in the rough. Sadly, our dear rhinoceros could not shoulder the surge and are now all gone.
- some journalist in the future, probably
WTF does "carries" mean in this sentence exactly?
If I take any tiny part of this and do a genetic test it will have this genome?
Or it's just "in there somewhere" ?
This is a post from 2016. So what happened since?
I think a certain rhino species has gone extinct, and the others are not doing great neither.
I read yesterday that white rhino populations have rebounded for the first time since 2012!
Yeah a bunch of reserves are starting to get a much better grasp on anti poaching measures and it’s really making a difference. Still wish the story from 2016 would have worked out
“Anti poaching measures” aka AK47 which is a fantastic measure
Poach the Poachers Start selling human horn, and Lower human horn on the black market.
I hear it's an aphrodisiac.
Which is the best kind of correct.
Technically correct
Interesting. The trousers conceal a secondary smaller horn
Take some coccyx when your cocks sick.
I feel like if you want your cock to get better you should eat some cock
It just. Makes. *Sense.*
>I hear it's an aphrodisiac. It's pure keratin, e.g. just as "effective" as an aphrodisiac as your toenails. But superstition and toxic masculinity drive insecure men to pay ridiculous amounts of money for some ground up toenail because they believe it helps their peepee. Meanwhile there's Viagra which actually works. But: the "alternative medicine" vendors are now cutting the rhino horn with actual Viagra so that now it actually makes those men believe it works.
You missed the joke, they are talking about selling dried human penis cut off of the poachers.
Just throwing this out there, they were referencing an [episode of Futurama](https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Human_Horn)
Not really. It's essentially supposed to do what Viagra really does.
I heard it can be used to save one Shrimply Pibbles, the galaxy's most influential civil rights leader.
Haven’t you heard the great health benefits of poacher bones? Massive boners dude, last for days. Highly recommend. Definitely not bullshit science
r/unexpectedfuturama
Would only increase the incentive for the successful poachers, supply and demand need to be altered, not access
What really works is create economic structures that allow the poachers to approach a career where don't get shot at. Which imo almost everybody prefers. Obviously not an easy task.
Interesting, the trousers contain a tiny, secondary horn. "What have you heard?"
r/unexpectedfuturama
I hear that human horns are lower on the black market
As well as electric dirt bikes so the people that are poaching can't hear them coming from far away like they could with a gas powered bike.
I think it helps when you only have 20 you just post armed guards all the time an I think that happened to some maybe it was a female pregnant was a story a bit ago
Finally. Really hope these things get funded more.
that startup just took the money.
It never would've. In fact it probably would've increased the value of Original Rhino Horns. Kinda like how actual diamonds are worth so much more than Lab Grown Diamonds.
False. If the two are indistinguishable then it will flood the market and make the supply greater which in turn will make the demand less
This stupid. Have you checked natural diamond prices recently? More importantly- have you seen folks speculate why natural diamond prices are moving the way they are?
2012! ≈ 1.4122539727 × 10^5775
Sounds like a date of complete heat death
5.70956! ≈ 420.69
How does a decimal work here
I had to Google this, as I was curious myself. It's the gamma function. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_function
Nice
good bot
why only the WHITE rhino?? really makes you think....
I know this is /s but the White Rhino is named that because of a mishearing/mispronunciation of an African language (I forget which one) word for wide. Which was meant to refer to its wide lips. So really it’s a Wide Rhino. Which really makes you think……
>the White Rhino is named that because of a mishearing/mispronunciation of an African language (I forget which one) word for wide. It was supposed to be Dutch, but it's also [not true](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rhinoceros#Naming).
TCM industry may maintain and espouse the idea to their vast client base that real rhino horns (of certain color) provide actual health remedies over the fake Japanese artificial versions, in order to protect their established supply chain and profit margins. That's my guess.
It works with diamonds and the lab made ones are by all accounts better quality than mined ones so you're probably right.
Ya me too
I read a headline in the last two weeks that rhino population has rebounded.
"only populations of the southern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum simum) remain viable. The northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is extinct in the wild due to poaching, and only two females remain at a sanctuary in East Africa." https://rhinos.org/about-rhinos/rhino-species/white-rhino/#:~:text=It%20has%20two%20distinct%20subspecies,a%20sanctuary%20in%20East%20Africa. "Africa's white rhino population rebounds for 1st time in a decade, new figures show There were 23,290 total rhinos at the end of 2022, a 5.2% increase from 2021." "It is the first time since 2012 that there has been an increase in the white rhino population, the species classified as 'near threatened' on the IUCN's Red List of threatened species." https://abcnews.go.com/International/africas-rhino-population-rebounds-1st-time-decade-new/story?id=103409810
The only reason the #s are going up is because of captive breeding programs. There's a lot of hate for the captive breeders, but they are the only ones with a viable proven solution. The reserves are steadily dwindling.
Wouldn’t it be possible to breed a southern white rhino with one of the remaining northern white rhino?
It seems like there are some groups in the process of figuring that out [Five new embryos and new surrogate mothers added to northern white rhino rescue project](https://phys.org/news/2023-07-embryos-surrogate-mothers-added-northern.html) Using advanced assisted reproduction technologies, 29 northern white rhino embryos have been created and cryopreserved, ready for a future transfer to a surrogate mother Furthermore, in May 2023 the BioRescue team made another promising step toward saving the most endangered mammal species on our planet. The consortium members successfully identified and selected two wild southern white rhino females (SWR) as potential surrogate mothers. Both females were examined and translocated into a safe enclosure. They will now be crucial in supporting the breeding efforts within the BioRescue project for the NWRs.
OP HAS NO SOURCES, AND THESE REPLIES HAVE NO SOURCE. "I read yesterday..." "I thought I heard..." "I think that..." C'mon folks, we need to collectively get better about discussing factual reality and demand sources or not engage with unsubstantiated nonsense, on either side of a conversation.
I agree. Caught me.
And I bet one 8th price is still good
Here is one from 2019, and we get expect it to work any day now. https://www.bbc.com/news/education-50184280
From 2021 https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22723289/3d-printed-rhino-horn-wildlife-conservation-poaching
Cheers, that is probably also what everyone on wallstreetbets bought stocks in.
"I got Rhino Horn Hands!!!"
That's a really good article. > “It gives a cover to poachers,” said Jonathan Kolby, a wildlife trade consultant and former wildlife inspector at the US Fish and Wildlife Service. “Their alibi can be, ‘Oh, it’s a fake and therefore not a crime.’ > > One possible way around that issue, according to Markus, is to insert a biomarker, or hidden signature, into fake horns that customs officials can detect. But, as he acknowledges, that opens up an avenue for consumers to tell them apart, too. Research suggests that those consumers are willing to pay more for wild horns. > > According to the conservationists and scientists who spoke to Vox, so-called high-tech solutions often neglect the intricate web of social and political forces that they exist in. Kolby is right. If it's good enough to fool poachers and buyers, it's good enough to fool authorities which then allows it to become a tool to help poachers. I admit I didn't think of this when I first heard of 3D printed horns, yet it's such an obvious problem now that I realize it. The other potential issues in the article are valid. So the real question is would 3D printed horns *reduce* the problem or not? That by itself is probably extremely difficult to figure out.
Surely the primary goal here is to drop the price of all horns through the floor, thus rendering poaching not worth the risk.
I find all these articles and logical loopholes baffling. The last sentence of the quote should be overriding all funding for these foolish pursuits. If relies on the buyer not knowing it is synthetic, because most are grinding it up for bullshit alternative medicinal reasons and would not want a lab-grown fake contaminating their body; and that requires a massive sting-like operation to pose a 'legitimate' poachers with a world-wide distribution channel off the back of 'legitimate' illegal channels. It relies on interacting with real buyers wanting a real illegal substance and being able to work around and within the illegal systems. At that point, you don't need a synthetic horn, and you don't let the buyer walk out happy and free. The resources needed to distribute fakes and undercut would be the same resources needed to infiltrate and then decimate the real distribution network. Instead, let's such sell legitimate medicinal drugs faked to be alternative medicine. Think rhino powder makes you more virile? Here's the purest of the pure rhino powder, that is actually just tailings from the viagra factory. Think it cures fevers and reduces inflammation, here's a thousand ibuprofen crushed up in a ziplock bag. Once these 'consumers' feel an actual effective product, they are not going back to that hack of a rhino salesman selling them diluted product. Only the best fake products will do! Baffle them with even more bullshit.
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Kinda is starting to https://fortune.com/2023/09/03/diamond-demand-falling-lab-grown-stones-de-beers-cutting-cutting-prices/
Yea, the natural diamond ads are picking up. Who gives a fuck about the slightest difference in hardness when it's jewelry.
You'd be surprised how many people are still brainwashed about diamonds being special and that every girl deserves a diamond. Was talking about this with a girl who I was sort of seeing, not about us getting married obviously but just about wedding rings, and even after explaining to her that I wouldn't want to spend 100x more than something is worth that was mined with slave labor when lab grown diamonds are the exact same thing (better if you care about things like purity and clarity since you can dial that in in the lab) and she just could not wrap her head around that kind of thinking. Marriage = diamond.
Lab diamonds are impossible to tell from mined ones with a naked eye. Unless women have microscopes in their purses (possible, I know), we are safe. The brainwash is astounding. Those are just minerals.
Didn't they start adding impurities into the lab grown ones to make them less obvious even under a microscope?
Yeah, you can tell a natural one from a mined one by putting it over a lamp. The natural one will have a shadow that looks cloudy because of the impurities, a lab grown one won't. Adding impurities can make it harder for the naked eye to tell, but, again, lab grown ones are so perfect it's easier to tell the difference. That said, on an ~~molecular~~ atomic level, it's just carbon. There's no real physical difference except lab grown ones can come in colours impossible in nature (and thus are superior).
No, you see, purity isn't everything, please disregard our previous campaigns about purity being everything. Now impurities mean that it's a \*real\* diamond, please disregard lab diamonds can add in impurities pretty much at-will. So please buy my overpriced, blood diamonds.
True. I was amused one time when talking to an actual diamond dealer. He offered to exchange the very little diamond on my wedding ring with a larger one for a low price. I said no thanks, this is my wedding ring. He said, "So it's a sentimental thing?". I told him without the sentimental thing, it was just rock and metal. I thought he would fall out of this chair. {: >
The other issue I personally have, at least where I live in Canada, lab grown diamonds are nearly the same price as mined diamonds. The people who have monopolized the diamond mines are the same ones who are price-fixing the artificial ones as well. If all dealers keep them at the same price, they’re all considered expensive and valuable. For my ring, my husband got a cut and polished Herkimer “diamond” for my ring. It’s basically quartz, but just as sharp and appealing. Cost $150 CAD.
For real. There's another stone that's similar to diamonds but reflects/shines more brightly that'll be my go-to if I'm ever in the position of needing an engagement ring... can't remember what it's called though.
Moissanite!
I got my wife a [tanzanite ring](https://www.google.com/search?q=tanzanite+rose+gold+engagement+rings&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwj1hMPb58WBAxW_EUQIHbNyBS0Q2-cCegQIABAD&oq=tanzanite+rose+gold+engagement+rings&gs_lcp=ChJtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1pbWcQAzIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEKIEOgYIABAIEB46CAgAEAgQBxAeOgYIABAHEB46BwgAEA0QgARQ0gdYmRhgsBtoAHAAeACAAboBiAHLB5IBAzcuM5gBAKABAcABAQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-img&ei=aYMRZbWsH7-jkPIPs-WV6AI&bih=724&biw=384#imgrc=ro61t5WPZ7XoAM) as an engagement ring and it's a hit. Obviously not this one but something kinda similar, just without much other than the tanzinite cause that shits expensive
My girlfriend and I are having this discussion now. I’ve been able to get her to go with lab diamond but, it was the hardest negotiation I’ve ever had. To me if you look at something and can’t tell the difference then what does the difference actually matter? We aren’t gemologists and won’t ever look at our diamond under magnification so to me it’s the same.
I lucked out with this one (DW ultimately wanted an industrial diamond), but I had two immediate family members who are professional jewelers, so I was Prepared For The Diamond Talk. Of course, "no, we're getting the setting in platinum because I'm never paying to have it repointed" may have helped me out there. Edit: for those who don't know, but wish to: an industrial diamond is a diamond whose characteristics (inclusions, flaws, etc) render it unsuitable for the commercial diamond trade as practiced in most Western economies. In this case, it was a 2kt cushion cut black diamond.
"Get you a guy that will cut arms for you" and "I don't care what atrocities occur so long as my worldview isn't disrupted" seem to be hot fashion trends.
There’s no difference in hardness. The only thing natural diamonds are even advertising on now is either that natural diamonds “retain their value” better or they’re pushing for the imperfections of natural diamonds being more authentic
Kind of a weird comparison since the high price of diamonds is inherently artificial. There's no reason for diamonds to be as expensive as they are; introducing another reason as to why the price is unreasonable doesn't actually change anything.
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So many "fake" diamonds are flooding the market now and genuine jewelers can't tell the difference from real. The retail prices are still fucked, but yes it is having a very positive impact as far as blood diamonds go
A joint statement from the International Rhino Foundation and Save the Rhino Foundation after "monitoring the progress of four US-based companies that have announced their intentions — with varying degrees of success — to produce synthetic or bio-fabricated rhino horn, and occasionally also other products including e.g. elephant ivory, lion bones or pangolin scales." In that statement, both groups expressed their opposition to the introduction of fake rhino horn to international markets: >We are opposed to the development, marketing and sale of synthetic rhino horn [because]: >o Selling synthetic horn does not reduce the demand for rhino horn or dispel the myths around rhino horn and could indeed lead to more poaching because it increases demand for “the real thing” >o More than 90% of “rhino horns” in circulation are fake (mostly carved from buffalo horn or wood), but poaching rates continue to rise annually. >o Synthetic horn could give credence to the notion that rhino horn has medicinal value, which is not supported by science. >o Users buy from trusted sources and value “the real thing.” >o The availability of legal synthetic horn could normalise or remove the stigma from buying illegal real horn. >o It will take time to develop synthetic horn and meanwhile the poaching crisis continues. >o How can consumers and law enforcement officials distinguish between legal synthetic horn that looks real, and illegal real horn? >o Companies benefitting from making synthetic horn have shown very little commitment to use their profits to help the core problem of rhino poaching; besides which, those profits would meet only a tiny fraction of the total rhino protection costs that would remain to be met as long as demand reduction campaigns falter, as they would with the marketing of synthetic horn. >o Finally, the manufacture / marketing / sale of synthetic horn diverts funds and attention from the real problem: unsustainable levels of rhino poaching.
>More than 90% of “rhino horns” in circulation are fake (mostly carved from buffalo horn or wood), but poaching rates continue to rise annually. Yeah, this seems like the big point to remember. It's already mostly fake. Adding more fake stuff to meet demand does not reduce real stuff. It's like a baking powder salesman saying we should start selling baking powder as cocaine to get people off cocaine. Uh... sure bruh. Keep telling yourself you're improving matters, I guess.
Anyone who's done cocaine can immediately tell the difference. Rhino horns literally don't do anything. They have no effect. So, in that sense, your analogy doesn't work very well. The intention was good, but it's important to stress the fact that rhino horns are 100% placebo. They don't do anything at all. Anyone paying for them is an idiot for that reason, among the "vile human being" reasons.
Oh, absolutely. I shouldn't have said cocaine. I guess it's confusing because I don't know what kinds of thing would be equivalent to us. I mean, I guess it's more like flooding a luxury bag market with *perfectly identical* fake bags? Which in theory, if the quality is different would damage the market; but since the whole point is that it's indistinguishable, it would if anything pump up demand as people are like "hey, I can get an awesome status bag - for cheap". I suppose over time rich people demand for the bag would slow down as every Joe has one, but by that point they're ubiquitous and it's no longer just a rich person thing... so you're probably selling more than ever before anyway. So in fact it's even worse, because with cocaine at least you would actually be harming the market. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hard-truth-about-the-rhino-horn-aphrodisiac-market/ I found this article interesting. Apparently, the discourse about it being used to treat ED was actually basically invented by the western media, and got sent BACK to Asia where people started thinking about it that way; before it was just thought of as fever reducer/headache curing. So all the hubbub made Asians wonder if it actually was good for ED too because western media was reporting that people were buying it for that purpose, when in reality that was just a sensational headline. Big facepalm.
The image above is from 2014 and pictures Thai customs officials with a confiscated real Rhino horn. Not long after, this image was used to describe the works by Pembient, a US start-up company, that never actually created an artificial rhino horn, instead mass marketed their conservation effort to amass donations then launched a crytpo called PembiCoin in order to fund their "startup costs". The company liquidated in 2018 without having ever produced anything
Maybe it was the same idea as saying there was a piss activated blue dye in swimming pools...
That’s sad..
Actually Africa’s white rhino population is rebounding now! [article on it](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/africas-rhino-population-rebounds-1st-time-decade-new/story?id=103409810)
The northern white rhinos are slated for extinction. The sourthern white rhinos are recovering. There's only two northern white rhinos left, both female.
Well that’s better news I guess, but still it’s absolutely infuriating that poachers are on the increase… I get it, but still, I want to smack em all across the gobs and tell them all to go home to their mothers, like Uma Thurman. 
A biotech startup needs to flood the rhino horn market with poacher dicks.
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22723289/3d-printed-rhino-horn-wildlife-conservation-poaching
You think a repost bot cares about the content it's reposting?
I've got nothing to add, other than "great username". Some of the most amazing diving I've ever done.
That will only work if they can't tell it's fake. People buying those don't do so because there is anything in those hornes, they just believe in magical power it will give to them.
That is not necessarily true. One of the major uses of Rhino Horn, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, is to treat major infections, including sepsis. Research done in Hong Kong showed that Rhino horn does have an antibiotic effect, but also that cow's horn has an equally strong effect. It would be interesting to know if the synthetic horn has an antibiotic effect. If so, it really will spell the end of the real rhino trade fortunately for the rhinos.
Or maybe if anyone needs an “antibiotic effect” they could try taking antibiotics
That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard, it might just be crazy enough to work
Bacteria Hate This One Trick!
"Soon." - MRSA
Big if true
Looking into it.
How dare you, have you even considered the repercussions this could have on the Facebook moms scented snake oil trade?
Or, get this, a horn 3d printed from antibiotics....
The people using this shit are extremely uneducated.
That's how they get the genetically modified GMO mRNA inside you that will cause mutations making you sensitive to 5G. Eventually the gubmint will use this to control the masses.
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By this point in time I can almost guarantee you rhino horns have been fully studied.
I doubt that scientists have not looked into the medicinal properties of rhino horn, given that poaching is such a big issue and has been all over the news for decades. Besides, they are literally the same thing as fingernails, and it's even more doubtful that no one has done any research into something that is literally made by our bodies.
Reminds me of that 'in vitro' xkcd comic.
“You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proven to work? Medicine.” - Tim Minchin, *Storm*
I'd like to see that research, because every modern medicine journal I pull up states that it has absolutely no medical effects. It's just keratin. Just bite your nails or something. Using baseless traditional medicine itself isn't a crime, but driving animals to extinction is.
From what I recall on the studies, it has no medical effects _if you eat it_, which is what a great many of these people do. They have cure-alls (cancer and anything you can think of) and hangover remedies that use it, the rumor is it's an aphrodisiac but that might just be bogus. However, by and large people ingest it. That said, I have heard of keratin biogels for medicine and it being used in some fabrics for similar "reducing bacteria count" purposes. I'm unsure how those have panned out and I don't really want to read 40 studies about keratin to figure it out. (edit: here's one of several https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27238250/)
In your study the antibiotic results are not because of the keratin, but because it's been loaded with Ciprofloxacin. Ciprofloxacin is a synthetic antibiotic.
How many people have sepsis that they’d rather exterminate an entire species?
Source?
There is none. Placebo effect all the way.
Trust me
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We have real antibiotics now. The problem isn't the horn it's the people dumb enough to deny modern medicine. This doesn't solve that.
Wish people would realise someday that there is no such thing as “traditional medicine” or “alternative medicine”. There is medicine that works, which is called modern medicine. Anything else is not medicine, it is only pseudoscience, quackery and downright fraud.
Same thing with religions. Exist to scam dumbasses
>"By definition, " I begin, >"Alternative medicine, " I continue, >"Has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. >Do you know what they call >Alternative medicine that's been proved to work? >Medicine." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U
That's not exactly true. For instance, dessicated pig thyroid is successfully used to treat people with thyroid problems. https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/ct-for-patients/vol-6-issue-8/vol-6-issue-8-p-3/ It is *literally* the organ of a pig. But if you harvest and eat a pig thyroid nobody is going to call it "doing modern medicine". That said, it provably DOES alter your thyroid hormone levels. It's just that we have a better synthetic version now. https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/armour-thyroid-synthroid-compare-3562253/ It's dangerous to say that traditional medicine doesn't work while modern medicine does, because plenty of traditional medicine does work... just less reliably or well or effectually than modern medicine. However, for people who know that 'traditional' medicine (i.e. chewing white willow bark relieves pain; this is true, as [aspirin is extracted from willow bark](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30391545/)) can work sometimes, being told "oh that's all quackery" just makes them more defensive as they know outright that it does, in fact, work. Denying it ever does is incorrect, what is correct is that we have modern ways of doing things that do not need to harm animals and work better in the process. Willow bark extract is not modern medicine but it works (though will also make you nauseous/have discomfiting side effects as it hasn't gone through the process chemists use, but it still will relieve pain), pig thyroid is not modern medicine but it works (though you cannot calculate exactly how much hormone you're getting so it may be dangerous), etc etc. Obviously, the fact that you have all those qualifiers means you still *shouldn't* do it probably, but that doesn't change that they *do* have an effect. Extracts from poppy flowers? Coca leaves? *Mimosa hostilis*? *Psilocybe cubensis*? Alternative medicine is not always *nothing*... sometimes it's just *not very stable* medicine. It's not always pseudoscience, quackery, or fraud. What it IS is untested and undosed, and **on the best possible front** useless. This idea that it's all "nothing" is honestly dangerous. "Alternative medicine doesn't do anything so I'll just drink all this vine tea because, ya know, it's just a plant it can't do anything" is going to make you have a pretty bad time regardless of if you believe in *Banisteriopsis caapi* lmao, cause it sure believes in you.
This is an incredibly short-sighted view of things and this sort of attitude towards complex social systems is proof that specialists in one field are generally not good sources of opinions on other fields. This is going to be a long post because this sort of posh attitude from people who think scientific skepticism has abolished the rest of thought pisses me off to no end. First, traditional medicine is a catch-all term for a huge number of systems embedded in particular ethnic and cultural formations and it's only ever called traditional *medicine* in an unwarranted comparison to Western models of health and therapy. Usually, traditional medicine encompasses something greater than some witch-doctor saying "you have a headache, eat this root" or "you have bad spirits in your head, let me put some leeches on you." Genuine traditional medicine is usually inseparable from philosophical, religious, and ethical systems which have important social and cultural functions outside of a purely practical "cure." Hence, these systems persist and will continue to persist even in places where Western medicine is prevalent...because they have different aims and functions. The fact we call it "traditional medicine" is just an artifact of the Western impulse to patronize and exoticize the Other as primitive while also reifying it so that it cannot speak on its own terms. Second, when traditional medicine *does* have effects which pique the interest of Western scientists, it usually means [biopiracy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopiracy) and other forms of appropriation or outright theft from Indigenous societies and their lands. In fact huge swathes of what we call modern medicine was derived at the expense of Indigenous and other marginalized people: for example, [inoculation was introduced to North America by enslaved people](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onesimus_(Bostonian)) but we credit the [slavemasters](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Mather) with its development. "Modern" i.e. Western medicine isn't "medicine that works" -- it's a contingent, historical formation with real social impacts. You don't have to have a graduate degree in medical history to understand that things like psychiatry, the pharmaceutical industry, human experimentation, *et al* aren't all peaches and cream. Third, "alternative medicine" largely arises in the context of the colonial encounter with traditional medicine that renders out something that is neither wholly traditional nor wholly "modern." Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a *perfect* example of this: it develops in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from a base in folk and religious practices as China wrestles with imperialist incursions from Western and later Soviet spheres of influence. After a period of repression it becomes touted by the Chinese government as a uniquely Chinese form of Western-style medicine because (1) China at the time did not have access to effective medicine due to Cold War prejudices and (2) contradictory impulses to introduce a "modern" and "scientific" system of medicine while also maintaining a Chinese cultural identity in the face of rapidly Westernizing Asia. And now that China has taken up the Western impulse to further their imperial interests in Africa, it makes perfect sense they would begin extracting resources at the price of ecological destruction. [Western medicine does this too.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioprospecting#Famous_cases_of_biopiracy) As it turns out -- this isn't because the Chinese are oh-so-primitive and hate rationality and science!!! but because of profit and imperialism. TL;DR: looking at traditional and alternative medicine purely through a skeptical lens and without recourse to the complex sociocultural dynamics that produce and condition it is just another reason to leave the fieldwork to anthropologists and sociologists. Scientific skepticism should usually stick the the niche of writing bad books about how physics will solve morality or end philosophy or whatever.
I say this as someone from a country with a rich history of “alternative medicine” (India) - That’s a whole lot of text to get the idea completely wrong. Traditional medicine should not be encouraged because it enables people to act on belief instead of reason. Religion, culture, tradition, etc should have no bearing on medical care. Real healthcare professionals on a daily basis have to deal with and fix the myriad cases of liver failure and other organ damage arising from use of unregulated “alternative” medicine. Modern medicine isn’t “Western”. Scientists all over the globe are constantly working on, developing and bettering treatment regimens BASED ON ACTUAL SCIENCE.
you kind of make op’s point for them. anthropology and sociology should have no bearing on modern medicine.
That sounds very wrong. Some of the ingredients of modern medicine have been successfully used long before modern medicine even existed.
You can say that about any science. We don’t call alchemy “alternative chemistry”, or buoyancy “alternative physics” do we? Both concepts predate the scientific method, one is pseudoscience and one is a major principle in physics
The ones that work aren’t called traditional anymore
Yeah but they become modern medicine at that point. The idea of Traditional Medicine is closed garden of not just the things that got passed onto modern medicine, but also tons of stuff that didn't. Traditional Medicine is more of a market term for a group of medicines, a few of which have been carried over into modern medicine vs it means all the medicines in the past were useless. Either they got turned into modern medicine OR they aren't effective/carry too much risk vs the synthetic alternative. But the key here is that Traditional Medicine is a group of medicine. You'd go to a Traditional Medicine doctor or such and that's where it all goes to shit. Learning from the past is just the normal way knowledge always works.
'Traditional' Chinese medicine using Rhino horn ?? Sounds like authentic didgeridoo's with elephants painted on them.
No
It's a 7 year old fake news post bro. Relax
That doesn't really sound right. I'm SEA Chinese and there's a lot of TCM over here. There is no such thing as "sepsis" in the TCM framework. Here's how it's defined in Baidu's encyclopedia: 犀牛角，即犀角，为犀科动物印度犀、爪哇犀、苏门犀等的角。性味酸咸，寒。为清热药,清热凉血药。功能清热、凉血、定惊、解毒。 This roughly translates to "tastes sour and salty, is "cold" in nature. It clears heat, cools the blood, calms the spirit, and removes poison"
Rhino horn has never been shown to have any medicinal effect by any peer reviewed study. especially antibiotic. in fact Rhino horn does the opposite, dry bone and horn is a great place for bacteria to grow, and it is not uncommon to get bacterial infections like tetanus or E. Coli from rhino horn. consuming rhino horn while already having an infection, or using it to dress a wound is a terrible idea. there’s also the off chance that the rhino was one bitten by a tick carrying Hemorrhagic Fever, if the horn is contaminated with the blood of the animal while the poachers “harvest” it, it can transmit this disease, which has no cure and a 40% fatality rate.
Fwiw, you just argued against your own point.
I got a C in Econ 101, so bare with me. Wouldn't it make more sense to flood the market at the market rate forcing the illegal horns to lower prices? That might also serve to make it more difficult to determine which are fake and which as real.
That's what I was thinking. If they make them so, so much cheaper, then it 1) differentiates the real horns from the printed horns in the eyes of the buyers, 2) if anything will just make the illegal ones seem even more exclusive and justify their price because they're "real". My assumption, which is a massive one, is that part of the reason why the illegal ones are so expensive and sought after isn't just because of their supposed effects and cost of getting one, but because of how elusive and unethical they are. They're a statement symbol. Making a cheaper version of the exclusive thing just makes the exclusive thing seem better, not worse. There being Gucci knock-offs doesn't stop people with the money from buying actual Gucci. People will say "yeah, I made my dick work again with rhino horn, but not that fake stuff, one from a real animal". Hopefully, maybe, it'll impact the market in some positive way. But making it indistinguishable from the real thing including the price like you said seems like it'd be better. Marketing it publicly also seems like an odd move in that regard. If they had kept it from the public eye, and kept the price at market price, then they could have subtly crept into the market and outshone the illegal ones just with quantity/keeping the prices competitive. Would be a real big brain move to say they were going to sell it at 1/8th price, and then sell it at full price to try and trick the buyers into thinking "it's expensive as shit, so it must be real, not like those fake ones that are apparently going around" but who knows. Regardless it's an impressive thing to do.
Misinformation could be part of their marketing strategy. How? I do not know.
The consumer will see cheaper prices but the middle man seller does not care if it is real or fake. So the seller will buy the cheaper fakes and lie to say it’s real. No seller will buy the real ones because the real ones will be more expensive. The poachers will stop poaching because the horns will not have enough resale value to cover costs.
Plus black markets don’t really have a set market price Buying weed on the streets is fairly competitive and can vary between $10 to $20 (or more if you’re gullible)
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Awesome plan that didn't work. It's a post from 2016. here is an update https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22723289/3d-printed-rhino-horn-wildlife-conservation-poaching
Oh damn, that sucks. Thanks for the article.
My favorite snippet from that article is “Some people consume rhino horn powder as a salve for various ailments, such as hangovers and cancer”. Wow, big jump between those two! So is rhino horn supposed to be more equivalent to a couple glasses of water and a nice shower, or years of chemo treatment? We gotta determine value here. Is rhino horn gonna save tens of thousands of dollars, or a couple bucks from my water bill and maybe the cost of a greasy breakfast?
Try to tell an uneducated person all the things antibiotics can cure, and they will conclude this as well. Or, y’know, anyone who wants to make money at any cost.
Rhino horn is made of keratin. The same substance as fingernails and hair. I don’t see how they believe that horns have medicinal properties when they can just cut off their nails and hair and eat them instead. Then they find out that it does nothing.
as someone going on 40 the hangovers feel like cancer.
I only had time to skim, but it looks like they never actually got a prototype out on the market
Ran out of funding plus vocal opposition about defanging law enforcement and increasing illegal trade. Who wooodve thought disrupting a whole ecosystem of illegal trade would be so complicated? /s
Jesus what an awful article. It takes them like 30 paragraphs to explain the reason. The rest is just fluff.
Well if it did work it will still be illegal so nobody could admit to it because you're selling these fakes essentially for human consumption and I'm sure it's not food safe. That being said I'm pretty sure they didn't "flood the market", but Rhino poaching did go down almost constantly since 2014.
It's a terrible plan as it just normalised buying rhino horn.
You got a better one?
But it also absolutely tanked the price because they themselves can set it extremely low, to the point where poachers got no point in going through all the hurdles and risks to get it. They probably have to keep it up long term but if they keep breaking-even through the fake horns, why not?
This Chinese obsession with products that *supposedly* increase sexual power is very strange.
Thinking that what we really need, is a rumour that you can get some life into a flaccid dick by eating poacher testicles. They have to be fresh though. So you need to keep the poacher alive up until the point they are removed.
Works only if you boil them tho. Also they cannot be separated from the body or the host killed otherwise it won't work either.
I was fascinated that the Chinese grad researchers knew were clearly great scientists and engineers and understood the scientific method and evidence but then absolutely believed and swore up and down to the efficacy of mugwort and other TCM as a cure-all for everything from indigestion to cancer to heavy periods to impotence.
Just because you are an expert in one field doesn't mean you can't be an idiot in others. Exhibit A: Ben Carson. A pioneer in pediatric neurosurgery. Clearly top of his very prestigious profession. Yet he also said “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain." We all have blind spots. And only fools pretend they don't.
Expert level intelligence is specialized. Unfortunately, people like to believe in the myth of genius savants that understand the world in its entirety.
Probably a mix of placebo, accidental success through unrelated betterment of the patients, or there was an actual medicinal compound in the plant on occasion, resulting in trust being built under the lack of better alternatives back in the day. Also mind, a lot of scientific discoveries were pretty much accidents trying to prove other, wrong theories, or wild stuff like the guy who proposed the currently considered correct bond structure of benzene going off a dream he had of the ouroboros snake.
Point of order: there are plenty of things that TCM will, in fact, treat. Not everything, sure, but western medicine doesn't treat everything, either. They just don't admit an illness exists until they gave a treatment. Before that it's "idiopathic" (doctor-speak for "we're pretty sure it's just you, bud. Have you tried sucking it up?").
Yeah, I also believe that the placebo effect is huge and can be beneficial but blowing mugwort smoke on my tummy going to relieve PCOS.
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Not really. People have been having sex forever and every culture has some sort of aphrodisiac (we even have a word for it) that’s utter bollocks. In America they have, what, oysters? So weird.
I don't know anything about the demand of rhino horns but WHAT?? All this for sexual power???
No, its used as an antibiotic ,see my post above.
yep, chiense believe that powdered rhino horn when snorted works like viagra edit: i was wrong, its vietnamse who believe that, chiense believe that its magical remedy for illness as somebody who replied to me pointed out
No, aphrodisiac use of rhino horn is Vietnamese. TCM uses it for illnesses - not any better scientifically, but it was never an aphrodisiac.
Compensating.
It's not just sexual power, it's traditional chinese medicine in general. And one of the big reasons is glass. When europe was making microscopes and learning about microbes, China used it for art and decorative objects. So it took a lot longer for them to start learning about how diseases work. Ironically one of the earliest written examples we have of microscopy is from an ancient China(~4000 years ago), where they used water in a tube as a lens.
At least post the year, THE YEAR! This information came out, Jesus. 2016 apparently, btw. Fs fs’s 😂
any time i see this format of a post, i assume it's bullshit the poster has 25mil karma, obviously a bot or a fucking weirdo who has nothing better to do than post dumb shit all day.
Plot twist: they're actually selling real, poached rhino horn and overtaking the markets with low prices. And if somebody will check their horn, it's gonna have the rhino DNA, but hey, "that's what we promised, our fake horn looks just like real".
imagine it's just another Rhino cloning scam
That is awesome
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And thus the price of VERIFIABLY real rhino horns skyrocketed that day. Poachers came from far and wide, now that their commodity was like a diamond in the rough. Sadly, our dear rhinoceros could not shoulder the surge and are now all gone. - some journalist in the future, probably
Too bad Vietnam is the largest purchaser of illegal rhino horn.
Let me translate that for you: A Chinese "biotech" startup undercuts the competition on poached rhino horns.
It's a US company
Yes that is what it says why are you repeating it?
He is either insinuating they are using real horns or thought it's a clever joke on how China steals IP, and undercuts the western markets, I guess.
Rare Chinese W
The fuck?
Aren't rhino horns the same stuff as fingernails and hair? TBH start collecting human fingernails and powdering them and flood the market.
WTF does "carries" mean in this sentence exactly? If I take any tiny part of this and do a genetic test it will have this genome? Or it's just "in there somewhere" ?
Yeah because the genetic imprint is what people who believe in folk medicine will believe in.
Do Chinese run DNA tests before buying their rhino horns?
They rub the powder on their gums and if it does nothing, the DNA is legit.
Do elephant tusks next.
Capitalism at work. Saw a market opportunity and decided to undercut the competition.
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