William A. Rusher
Mr. Rusher is a fellow of the Claremont Institute
and a syndicated columnist.

It seems to be a law of nature that people must have
something to worry about. In times of war, and perhaps
in periods of severe economic hardship, reality itself
provides the necessary subject matter. But in a "weak
piping time of peace" like today, or when the economy
is robust(again like today), the human psyche apparently
cannot rest until it has found something to worry about.
That is the amused perception underlying the old Jewish
joke about the man who wired his cousin,"Start worrying
now; letter follows."

It is the media, of course, who feed this need to
worry, and their chief source of new fears is science.
This isn't always science's fault (though lots of indi
vidual scientists haven't been above exploiting it).
Scientists, at least allegedly, know more than most of
us, because they study things that can't been(sic) seen,
smelled or otherwise perceived by the average person.

Thus, in the past 20 years alone,the media have partic
ipated in major efforts to scare the wits out of us over a
new ice age, nuclear winter, global warming, the greenhouse
effect, and the ozone holeto mention fears involving the
planetary climate. Peer just a little deeper into space and
we are told that it is quite likely that some asteroid or
comet not yet visible is on a collision course with the
Earth,
and that its impact could easily exceed that of object that
hit
Yucatan 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs all
over the globe.

But without much doubt the biggest cornucopia of terrors
yet found and mined by the media involves foods and other sub
stances that allegedly endanger our health. These are subject
of a report just published by the American Council on Science
and Health in New York, and it belongs on every library shelf
dedicated to the follies of mankind.

Prepared by Adam J. Lieberman and edited by Cindy F. Kleiman
,it is entitled "Facts Versus Fears: A Review of the 20 Greatest
Unfounded Health Scares of Recent times." One by one it guides
the reader through the most hysterical health fits of the past
40 years. Starting with the great "Cranberry Scare" of 1959,
it coolly(sic) describes and dismisses such majestic panics as
those over DDT (beginning in 1962),cyclamates(1969),DES in beef
(1972), Red Dye Number 2 (1976),saccharin (1977), Love Canal
(1978), Times Beach (1982) and Alar(1989).

The public uproar over each of these "dangers" recalls H.L.
Menckan's dry reminder that during the SpanishAmerican War Mass
achausetts moved the gold reserves of the Federal Reserve Bank
of Boston inland to protect them from a Spanish attack.

Liberman, in a short introduction, notes various :themes and
patterns" in the successive health scares.

For one thing, laboratory test of mice given huge doses of a
substance are indiscriminately extrapolated to humans,on the theory
that if mice got cancer,so will humans who ingest much tinier amounts.
This violates "the basic principle of toxicology," namely, that" The
dose makes the poison."

For another, the fearmongers favor the "precautionary principle,"
which asserts that, in cases where possible serious or irreversible
environmental damage is alleged,"lack of full scientific certainty
shall not be used as a reason for postponing costeffective measures
to prevent degradation." The trouble is that next to no evidence can
properly be considered"lack of full scientific certainty."

The introduction rightly says that this report "shows just how the
American public has been manipulated repeatedly by certain segments of
the media, by a handful of scientists outside the scientific mainstream,
and by a larger coterie of activists and government regulators, all of
whom have frightened the public over hypothetical risks."