Customer Reviews

Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Journalist Christopher Booker and former food safety consultant Dr Richard North have written a fascinating book on the rash of scares in the last 20 years. They earlier worked together on a brilliant book on the European Union The great deception.

They study the food scares - salmonella in eggs (1988-9), listeria in cheese, BSE in beef (1996-9) and dioxins in Belgian poultry (1999). Other scares they discuss include the Millennium bug (1999), DDT, the satanic child abuse mania (1987-94), lead, passive smoking, asbestos, SARS, bird flu (2005) (which the World Health Organisation absurdly called `the greatest single health challenge'), organophosphorus, and global warming.

They note that banning DDT has killed two million people every year, because DDT had cut malaria deaths by 95%. The EU backed the ban on DDT.

Organophosphorus, used in sheep dip, was `MAFF-approved', and an HSE leaflet warned of its `cumulative toxicity' leading to `irreversible' damage to the nervous system, akin to ME and Gulf War Syndrome (which also never happened, according to the MoD). The government suppressed the whole story, because it was directly responsible.

A review in the Independent claimed that their chapter on global warming had scarcely any scientific references. It has 117, including important articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the Journal of Geophysical Research, Energy and Environment, the International Journal of Climatology, six from Nature and five from Science. The authors expose as exaggerated the claims of climate doom. They point out that historically rising CO2 levels are associated both with rising and falling temperatures and that the overall ice mass of the Antarctic, which has 89.5% of the world's ice, is increasing, as is Greenland's (10%).

They study the roles of scientists, the media, politicians, officials and non-governmental organisations, especially the `animal rights' groups. All these scares, and others from the witch craze to McCarthyism to the war scares over Iraq and Iran, always give the message - trust the government, pay the huge costs of protection. The real message of the scares for us must be - always look at the evidence not the spin, and seek the truth.

"Scared to Death" does a very good job of describing past scares: Salmonella in eggs, Listeria in cheese, Mad Cow Disease, Dioxins in poultry feed, anti-malarial DDT, SARS and bird flu, The Milennium Bug, Ritualized Child Abuse, Auto Speed Limits, Lead in gasoline, Passive Smoking, organophosphorus in pesticides, and The Great Asbestos Scam. This book also summarizes the misinformation and misconceptions surrounding the Global Warming Scare and explains why the Kyoto Protocol is a futile and economically disastrous policy.

Very informative and well written. The illnesses and food scares became a bit tedious after a while, however the chapters on Global Warming, lead, asbestos, and second hand smoke were facinating and very well documented. The author provides details most have never heard behind the suppression and discrediting of dissenting studies, which are abandoned after they fail to support the politically correct position. I've watched since the 60s as passive smoking went from a stinky habit which was impolite to do in the company of non-smokers, to the 2000's when near panic would errupt by the fanatical anti-smoking lobby if a single whiff entered their nostrils on a beach. Truly silly stuff. Its always surprised me that Americans would buy into that nonsense. This book really details how deceived we've been - and still are.

Looking for a light dissection of the idiocies perpetrated by the army of cranks, headline seekers and gulls that govern us? I was. But this book is not it. Instead, we get a meticulously (not to say remorselessly) detailed history of the various health and environmental scares that have struck the UK (and the USA & EU).

The authors show that these are usually ridiculously overblown and cost a fortune with no discernible benefit. They also describe a five step process where the scare germinates, is spread by the press and NGOs, overwhelms government and is finally forgotten.

But I think the authors have the emphasis slightly wrong. To be "credible" in this credulous age, a threat has to be highly mysterious. Paedophile rings are not enough, they have to be satanic ritualised. Other threats (germs in chickens or cheese, CO2) have to be invisible. And they have to menace everybody. The example of the scare-that-wasn't doesn't conform. The chemical comes in a tub, and it affects an easily defined minority (sheep farmers).

You can read this book and still believe in global warming. (The sceptics cited are the usual ones.) What would be harder is to read this book and still have faith in government agencies and NGOs, which have grown like weeds and need scares to justify their existence. Your faith in scientists will be shaken, given the litany of corruption of the scientific method enumerated.

O tempora! O mores!

This book is very revealing.

Not just about us as a species and how we tend to except negative over positive....but about how the media and government work to take advantage of that fact. ...and of course how this all results in bad policy decisions.

The chapter on global warming is most revealing of all. Al Gore fans stay away unless you are prepared to be disillusioned with him.

The mystery to me is why this book hasn't been widely heralded or attacked. It's been out almost 2 years now and contains what appear to be unassailable arguments and documentation as to why two of the current scares, global warming and secondhand smoke are nonsensical as threats. It hasn't made the best seller lists, yet it also contains a lucid explanation of why reliance on wind energy is both costly and foolish (hint: winds don't always blow and you have to have a backup system when they don't, ergo the cost calculations are nonsense). Where are the global warming acolytes to attack this thing? Where is the savior, Al Gore, to explain it's fallacies? A "must read" for the serious skeptic, but tough slogging. Worth the effort.

This book describes and documents (thoroughly) a series of historically recent hysteria incidents in Britain and America, usually caused by "real" events which were immediately blown up out of all proportion to the event itself by people with their own agendas, some in private life, including academia, and some in government, by using incomplete or inaccurate data. The authors posit a pattern that seems to exist for each "scare" that determines the severity of the political and economic consequences. They include, as the title shows, "BSE to Global Warming" as well as many others, such as "satanic child abuse", "salmonella in eggs" etc. This book is well worth reading, regardless of the reader's position on the political spectrum.

A well-researched and superb selection of the sort of madness and mass delusions that have always gripped mankind. The staggering costs and human tragedies of the scares is well presented and I only hope many people who are not usually interested in this sort of thing will read it, so that the next time they hear something like "measles vaccine causes autism" they'll demand to see proof before diving into the deep end. As for the media, I'd like to see them display more responsibility, but quite frankly, I doubt they ever will. "If it bleeds, it leads" seems to be branded into their brains at journalism school. A shame more time wasn't spent on skepticism and research. As an example, any time they hear someone say "It's for the children!" they should assume that those people are incompetent, lying, or pushing an agenda, and start their investigation with that in mind.
I give out very few 5 star reviews, so that should indicate how impressed I as by this book.

I found this book interesting from beginning to end. It was well documented. The content was sobering and I found it amazing that the entire world could be duped by government officials, media, politicians and environmentalists to take up causes that have cost the world billions and billions of dollars! I recommend this book to all and even if you disagree with the content you would have to admit that the "run-away train mentality" is alive and well today. It is a must read!

Provides the history and the facts about many of the overblown crises scaring the public and causing tremendous wasts