You remember, or read, wrong. The disease that is low risk (and I mean, low) is Creutzfeld Jacob Disease (CJD), or to be precise vCJD. No human has ever contracted Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, which as the name suggests is a Bovine disease. There is scientific speculation that vCJD is, 'the human form' of BSE (a somewhat loaded formulation). But speculation is all it is. It may be that this is demonstrated to be the case. But until it is it is just that, speculation.
In so far as there is a political position being expressed it is not about the science (which being a matter of the laws of nature is not subordinate to political positions). The political position is about moral panics, or specifically food panics. These are growing in scale, and exist quite independently of any justification or otherwise for them. In fact they arise not out of any real risk, but the generalised sense of atomisation and alienation that obtains. They are extremely destructive, and never yield any progressive consequences.
>
>But as with global warming, what strikes me is the complacency of
>this kind of thinking: because it's not an emergency today, it's
>nothing to worry about tomorrow or in a decade, so there's no reason
>to do anything to prevent disaster.
Do you mean, 'complacency', really? Let me assure you that I am far from complacent. On the contrary, you might have noticed that I am quite agitated on the matter. My point is that panics are destructive in their character, and corrosive of class solidarity, more than that of simple social solidarity. Far from being motivated by indifference, I think it extremely important to challenge this kind of collective angst.
> But the risks are clearly
>enormous,
Get a grip, Doug. The risk of vCJD is clearly enormous? The risk of vCJD is one in three million. It's the same risk as that of being killed by lightning (what precautions are you taking against lightning?). In another post you rather elegantly explained why common sense is so often a cover for stupidity. And yet when it comes to defending the 'consensus' on global warming you come over all militant.
>and so it's sensible according to the most rigorous
>scientific standards of judgment to take precautionary action now,
Well, why not take precautions against alien abduction, or fluoride in the water, or the presumed evils of black muggers or all the other hysterical fears that motivate cranks?
Perhaps you are not aware, but the government response to the current hysteria over foot and mouth (a disease which is not only incommunicable to humans, but relatively harmless to animals) several parts of the country have been placed under army control? Thankfully the army have more sense than to accept full operational responsibility - but if they had felt it was in their interest, virtually no-one in Britain would have objected, because in a period of generalised alarm, any measures are acceptable.
>and not when half of Britain has brains resembling Swiss cheese, or
>when several small island countries in the Caribbean disappear under
>water.
I am beginning to think that an epidemic of vCJD has been rampant in the US for generations. I am delighted that some medical resources are dedicated to research into prion-based diseases, but the idea that 'half of Britain' will get vCJD is as likely as the possibility that all Americans have been abducted and replaced by androids.
Climate change is rather different, in that the world is plainly getting hotter in very gradual increments. It always has cooled and warmed on a ten thousand year cycle, according to ice core evidence.
And if I thought for one moment that anyone had a political programme that was going to put the climate under human supervision, I would endorse it straight away. But all I hear is a complacent breast-beating by people who would not even give up their internet connection for a week but want at the same time to bemoan what evil they are doing the planet.
JG Fraser wrote of early peoples that they were often prey to magical thinking, imagining that their actions determined the course of nature, sacrificing to the harvest and so on. Such rituals served to mask their actual impotence natural necessity. I hear people droning on about what damage they are doing to the environment and ask myself, if you really believed one iota of what you were saying, why aren't you doing anything about it? The reason is that this belief system is not meant to be acted upon. On the contrary, it is the necessary compliment to industrial society, not its opposite. It is the magical thinking of the post-modern impotent.
In message <ODBJKDJEOKKDLAAA at mailcity.com>, matt hogan
<matt.hogan at lycos.com> writes
>I have a question for the antiglobal warming crowd:
>" What evidence would prove to you that global warming is actually taking
>place?"
Nobody doubts that global warming is taking place. The question is over the human contribution to that change.
-- James Heartfield