|
Will the
world end with a bang or with a whimper? Will terrorists shake
the very foundations of civilization by setting off suitcase
nukes in major world cities, or will the continuing
contamination of the environment with toxic man-made chemicals
give everyone on the planet terminal cancer? One way or another,
the apocalypse, it seems, is just around the corner. Or is it?
In fact, neither of these
fears is anywhere near as threatening as many people believe
them to be. Dan Gardner, columnist and senior writer for the
Ottawa Citizen, has written a book called
Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, published last
year and newly available in paperback, in which he tries to put
such fears in perspective. According to Gardner, even factoring
in the 3000 deaths from the unprecedented destruction of the
World Trade Center in 2001, Americans are more likely in any
given year to be unintentionally electrocuted than to be killed
in a terrorist attack. Of course, the real fear is that
terrorists will get their hands on nuclear weapons. But while
this risk does exist, there are also very substantial obstacles
that make such a scenario extremely unlikely. Even if, against
all odds, a terrorist organization managed to detonate a nuclear
bomb in a major American city, killing on the order of 100,000
people, this would be roughly equivalent to the number of
Americans killed each year by diabetes, or by accidents,
or by infections contracted in hospitals.
As for the fear that
toxic man-made chemicals are responsible for increasing
incidences of cancer, it hides several misconceptions. For one,
it implies that the natural is good and that the man-made is bad.
In fact, most pesticides, for instance, are not man-made but
occur naturally in the foods we eat. Our fear of toxic chemicals
also tends to ignore any consideration of dose, since we tend to
panic over insignificant parts per billion that are far below
the thresholds found to kill lab rats. As toxicologists are fond
of repeating, even water is poisonous in large enough quantities.
The fear of environmental chemicals, natural or man-made, is
also misplaced in that the American Cancer Society estimates
they are responsible for only 2 percent of all cancers, as
compared to lifestyle factors (smoking, drinking, diet, obesity,
and exercise) that account for a whopping 65 percent. Finally,
when adjusted for age and improved screening procedures,
incidence rates for all cancers except lung cancer are actually
declining, not increasing.
Why are we so much more afraid of terrorism than diabetes? Why
do we pay so much attention to minuscule environmental hazards
while essentially ignoring much larger lifestyle risks?
Contrasting Europeans’ blasé smoking habits with their
outsized fear of genetically modified organisms, Gardner writes,
“Surely one of the great riddles to be answered by science is
how the same person who doesn’t think twice about lighting a
Gauloise will march in the streets demanding a ban on products
that have never been proven to have caused so much as a single
case of indigestion.” To take just one more example, we fear
statistically non-existent threats like child abduction and
therefore keep our kids indoors, depriving them of exercise and
contributing to sedentary lifestyles that have a very real
chance of cutting years off of their lives.
The answers to this
“great riddle” are partly to be found in human nature. We have
gut reactions to dangers that are more dramatic, like terrorist
attacks and plane crashes. These rare events also are more
likely to make the news, both because of their drama and because
of their rarity. Another thousand people died today from heart
disease? Ho-hum. Fifty people died in a plane crash? That hasn’t
happened in months or years, and the visuals are exciting, so
that’s news!
|
Be Afraid… Be Very Afraid |
Irrational fears not only lead us to make bad choices, like
driving instead of flying, which place us in greater danger.
They also allow government officials to manipulate us more
effectively and insinuate themselves more deeply into more and
more areas of our lives. The disproportionate fear of terrorism
has been nurtured and used to justify a protocol of time-consuming
security checks at airports, the warrantless wiretapping of
phone calls, the tightening of international borders, and of
course, two ongoing wars with huge costs both in terms of lives
and money. The exaggerated fear of environmental dangers, for
its part, has led to increased taxation and regulation of
 production,
empowering bureaucrats and lobbyists while acting as a drag on
innovations and economic growth that could be of even greater
benefit to human life and flourishing. (See Gennady Stolyarov
II’s “Eden
Is an Illusion” elsewhere in this issue of Le Québécois
Libre.)
We are prone to fear all
kinds of things we really shouldn’t, fears that can be and are
reinforced by the media out to tell an entertaining story; by
companies out to sell us an alarm system or a new drug; by
activists or non-governmental organizations out to elicit
donations and support; and by politicians out to win elections
and accumulate power. The only way to counteract this is to
inform ourselves about relative risks and becoming comfortable
dealing with numbers and statistics in general.
There is no such thing as
a risk-free world, but despite the real dangers that exist, we
in the developed world in the twenty-first century are better
off than any other people who have ever lived. We have our human
ingenuity to thank for the startling advances in fighting
diseases and increasing lifespans that characterize our time. We
shouldn’t let our equally human irrational fears get the better
of us and push us into giving up our freedom in exchange for
ersatz safety. |
