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Health
Wars: |
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Joe Kaplinsky
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The bulk of this volume is made up of health scares featured in UK newspaper stories from the first half of 2001. Each story is given a headline followed by a short precis. Lined up one after another, carefully catalogued day by day, they make a strange document. It is as if some warped mind had set out on a quest to find The Meaning of Human Mortality or to find a cure for Death, and returned disappointed, with only this long list of more or less plausible causes of particular deaths and injuries, no closer to the ultimate cause. In fact the book has an entirely sane motivation. It has been compiled by Josephine Gaffikin of the smoker’s rights organisation FOREST. Smoking, as we all know, carries with it risks. FOREST’s interest in health scares is not just the way in which they are often exagerated, but the way in which they are used to justify the regulation of lifestyle. The purpose of Health Wars is not so much to denounce health scares which are based on unfounded junk science (although there is some of this), as to draw attention to the moralistic and authoritarian purposes to which the scares are put. The notes usefully highlight the contradictory and out of control nature of health scares today. They are used in the name of both traditional conservative morality (the supposed dangers of taking drugs, sleeping around or immigrants who carry diseases) and to denounce more traditional activities like breast feeding and having children. In particular Gaffikin notes that while the prevalence of health scares might give an impression of the medical profession rising in authority, in fact many scares today (most notably around the MMR vacine) are centered on the actvity of doctors. Gaffikin writes of the ensuing confusion: “Health scares may not have a ‘central command unit’ but the complexity of forces involved does not diminish the power and ubiquity of the propaganda campaign.” (p7) The most persistent themes of health scares are highlighted as “cancer, the MMR vaccine, deep vein thrombosis, BSE/CJD, mobile phones, asthma, autism, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, food, diet and weight.” (p9) With a list like that you may have thought that there would not be much left. However, not only does each item on the list appear in every possible combination, but there is a bizzare variety of other scares, ranging from the influence of the moon (Daily Telegraph, January 29) to dolls theat “could give the dangerous message to children that it is safe to sunbathe” (Daily Mail, June 15) and “burning nine candles in one room” (Independent, June 15). My own favourite is a warning against thinking too hard (Daily Mail, June 6). The only weakness of the book is a focus on the “top down” origins of health scares, which underestimate of the “bottom up” component. The pressure groups, journalists, politicians, scientists, doctors and companies targeted by Gaffikin all bear responsibility for spreading panic. But we live in times that are uniquely susceptible to fear, and the resonance that health scares find in the broad population is undeniable. Without FOREST to help us see the wood for the trees it is all too understandable that people succumb in the face of the sheer quantity and diversity of scares. The front cover announces that this report is volume 1. I look forward to a forthcoming episode, Health Wars: A New Hope, in which a small band of rebels fight back against tyranny and oppression!
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