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

by Booker, Christopher; North, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780826476203
• ISBN10: 0826476201
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-01
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

This book tells the inside story of each of the major scares of the past two decades, showing for the first time how they have followed a remarkably consistent pattern.

Author Biography

Christopher Booker, the first editor of Private Eye, has since 1990 been a columnist on the Sunday Telegraph, where he has reported on all the scares covered in this book. His other books include The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Dr Richard North was formerly a food safety consultant, involved in all the food scares covered in Part One of this book. After some years as a research director in the European Parliament, he is today a political analyst on eureferendum.com. His other books include The Great Deception, also co-authored with Christopher Booker.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Introduction	p. viii
The Food Scares
Prologue to Part One	p. 3
Countdown to an Explosion: How Scares Became a Disaster Waiting to Happen, 1981-8	p. 9
'Killer Eggs': The Great Salmonella Scare, 1988-9	p. 36
Enter the Hygiene Police: Paying the Price, 1990-4	p. 69
'Listeria Hysteria': The Lanark Blue Case, 1995	p. 92
Mad Cows and Madder Politicians: The BSE/CJD Scare, 1996-9	p. 100
Officials Can Kill: Meat, Cheese and E. coli, 1998	p. 128
The £1 Billion Blunder: The Belgian Dioxins Debacle, 1999	p. 138
Epilogue to Part One: The Rise of the 'Health and Safety Culture'	p. 153
General Scares
Prologue to Part Two: The Millennium Bug	p. 161
A Sledgehammer To Miss The Nut: A Wider Look at the Scare Phenomenon	p. 167
The Modern Witch Craze: Ritualized Child Abuse, 1987-94	p. 185
'Speed Kills': A Safety Scare That Cost Lives	p. 209
'We Love Unleaded': How Confusion Over Lead Cost Billions	p. 222
Smoke and Mirrors: How They Turned 'Passive Smoking' Into a Killer, 1950-2007	p. 246
'One Fibre Can Kill': The Great Asbestos Scam	p. 273
Saving The Planet: Global Warming - The New Secular Religion	p. 331
Licensed To Kill: OPs - The 'Scare That Never Was'	p. 410
Epilogue: A New Age of Superstition	p. 453
Index	p. 485
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