How Politicians and Scientists Have a Vested Interest in Spreading Panic

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/media/how-politicians-and-scientists-have-vested-interest-spreading-panic



Now it is planes falling from the sky. On Tuesday it was " superbugs threaten return to dark ages". At the weekend it was internet thought-control menace. Last week we had killer fruit juice. The edifice of fear knows no limits, its apparatchiks know no shame.

Had the Guardian leaked yesterday's story from the US about a "stealth bomb alert" at world airports, it would have been accused of traitorously warning terrorists that the authorities were on to their new weapons. Unnamed officials were asserting "a global threat environment" related to plastic explosives hidden in body cavities and tested in Syria. Details of the cells responsible were traced by the BBC to the rightwing American Cato Institute and David Cameron's office confirmed "there are terror organisations that seek to do the UK, its citizens and its allies harm". I am sure – but why tell us now?

A day earlier Cameron was double-barrelling. He held a press conference to smother his European presidency debacle with antibiotics. Banging the drum for Britain, he trumped Jean-Claude Juncker with superbugs posing "a very serious threat. He spoke of "tens of thousands dying", of "unbelievable scenarios" and of a time when "minor scratches could become fatal if nothing is done" – that is, done by him. He said Britain had saved "billions of lives round the world" by inventing penicillin, and would do so again." He appointed a committee.

How to respond to this daily output from the fear factory? At the drop of a headline, prime ministers disappear into "Cobra bunkers", to return telling of blood-curdling threats. These are always backed by "hard evidence" from the government's two most trusty allies, the security-industrial complex and big science and/or big pharma.

[LuvNewcastle]

1. I wish more people would see this article, but even if they did,

they wouldn't read it. All these 'disasters' are one of the reasons why I have no idea what my parents are talking about when I go visit them.

Fox News will declare in garish red and blue flashing lights that the end of the world is nigh, and you heard it first there. All their viewers, who are usually old people, will run down to Wal-Mart and stock up on canned food and batteries. Then, when we go visit our parents, they'll be asking us what we're doing to prepare for the epidemic or whatever. It's so fucking sad. These people should be out gardening or golfing, not shuddering in their houses over some invented crisis they've heard about on the tube.

[Arkansas Granny]

2. "Follow the money." Always good advice.

[tridim]

3. Nothing beats Bush's terra-lerts in the 2000's...

The color-coded tool of fear that magically stopped the day he left office.

[raouldukelives]

4. The only disasters they don't acknowledge are the real ones. nt

[caraher]

5. I hate the headline

Could have been written by any of the vast horde of "climate skeptics" out there... by and large, scientists do not themselves promulgate scares but rather science illiterate media types. I would also place media MDs in an entirely different category from scientists. The vast majority of "everyday" working scientists profit not at all from whipping up panic, and you will find very little "emotive language" in their writing.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Agree completely ... remember who it was that invented the term "junk science" ... nt