Over at the American Daniel Akst is holding forth on the ignorance, and concomitant fear of science on the part of what Akst terms the chattering classes.*
Referring to the quasi-religious nature of bourgeoisie pre-occupations with food he claims: “Food is at the center of elites’ anxieties about science and modernity, yet the truth is that it has become a scapegoat, or perhaps I should say scapetofu, for a host of imaginary sins we associate with technology. The timing of this obsession is no surprise; never before has such complex technology occupied such a central place in the economy, to say nothing of daily life.”
He goes on to claim that the roots of this suspicion lie in ignorance, narrow specialisation and, citing the ambivalent history of nuclear technology, the negative consequences of some technologies. He intimates that concerns about the unintended consequences of knowledge amount to a superstition. But something important is missing from his account.
He mentions that at one time asbestos was touted as “a wonder product”. What he does not talk about is that there were reports about negative health outcomes associated with asbestos as early as 1898 but appropriate regulation was introduced in the United States only in 1989. It wasn’t ignorance that caused that delay, it was the desire to make a profit, and the utter failure by regulators to protect the public.
Mining companies continue to refuse the claims of miners whose lungs were irreparably damaged so that those companies could profit. The Anglo American Corporation is one of those, resisting the claims of miners from the Northern Cape while miners die. Payouts to the estates of dead miners are smaller than compensation to living miners.
There are many accounts that Akst ignores in which people were harmed not by science or technology but by people making money selling poison and the authorities failing to hold them to account. The root of the suspicion that Akst considers needless is not ignorance but knowledge, knowledge not of science but of the kind of world in which we live, a world in which marketers lie glibly, cloaking themselves in the authority of science, a world in which politicians are the creatures of corporations that pay their campaign contributions, a world in which regulations are written to suit the industries being regulated.
Akst writes: “Food irradiation is a great example of a safe, effective technology that could save lives, if only people could get over their terror of it.” But once again Akst fails to mention the larger story. The irradiation of meat is championed by the meat processing industry in the United States because it is cheaper than making sure that meat is not contaminated with faeces during slaughter. Irradiation is intended to kill e.coli that might be present in the faeces of slaughtered animals. Akst suggests that the main question is whether the irradiation is effective or not. But that is not the question. The question is whether you want to eat shit sprayed meat whether not it is irradiated?
*Chattering classes is a termed used by some members of the elite in America and England in a self defeating attempt to suggest that they are somehow exempt from the bourgeoisie triviality suggested by the term while they remain ironically unconscious that only members of the chattering classes use the term.
** E.R.A. Merewether & C. W. Price, “Report on Effects of Asbestos Dust on the Lung” H.M. Stationery Office, 1930
