Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth
Newly revised and updated in the light of COVID-19.

For most of the latter part of the last century, and the early part of this, Britain has been assailed by a succession of 'scares', from salmonella and eggs to BSE, from the Millennium Bug to bird flu, from DDT to passive smoking, from asbestos to global warming.

These scares have become one of the most conspicuous and damaging features of our modern world, so much so that as we entered the third decade of the new century, our senses had become so blunted that we scarcely recognised the real thing for what it was, until it arrived – COVID-19, for which we were almost completely unprepared.

The authors analyse the crucial roles of the different factions who perpetrated the scares: from the scientists who misread or manipulated the evidence to the media and lobbyists who eagerly promoted scares without regard to the consequences, and the politicians and officials who came up with absurdly disproportionate responses, leaving us to pay a colossal price.

In this updated edition, Scared to Death not only presents a detailed account of the scares that have dominated our society for the past 50 years – through all of which the authors lived – but also examines the background to the COVID-19 pandemic, tracing our lack of preparedness to its roots and then assessing, by way of contrast, why this is the real thing, as opposed to the succession of scares that we have experienced.
1137043965
Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth
Newly revised and updated in the light of COVID-19.

For most of the latter part of the last century, and the early part of this, Britain has been assailed by a succession of 'scares', from salmonella and eggs to BSE, from the Millennium Bug to bird flu, from DDT to passive smoking, from asbestos to global warming.

These scares have become one of the most conspicuous and damaging features of our modern world, so much so that as we entered the third decade of the new century, our senses had become so blunted that we scarcely recognised the real thing for what it was, until it arrived – COVID-19, for which we were almost completely unprepared.

The authors analyse the crucial roles of the different factions who perpetrated the scares: from the scientists who misread or manipulated the evidence to the media and lobbyists who eagerly promoted scares without regard to the consequences, and the politicians and officials who came up with absurdly disproportionate responses, leaving us to pay a colossal price.

In this updated edition, Scared to Death not only presents a detailed account of the scares that have dominated our society for the past 50 years – through all of which the authors lived – but also examines the background to the COVID-19 pandemic, tracing our lack of preparedness to its roots and then assessing, by way of contrast, why this is the real thing, as opposed to the succession of scares that we have experienced.
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Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth

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

by Christopher Booker, Richard North
Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth

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

by Christopher Booker, Richard North

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Overview

Newly revised and updated in the light of COVID-19.

For most of the latter part of the last century, and the early part of this, Britain has been assailed by a succession of 'scares', from salmonella and eggs to BSE, from the Millennium Bug to bird flu, from DDT to passive smoking, from asbestos to global warming.

These scares have become one of the most conspicuous and damaging features of our modern world, so much so that as we entered the third decade of the new century, our senses had become so blunted that we scarcely recognised the real thing for what it was, until it arrived – COVID-19, for which we were almost completely unprepared.

The authors analyse the crucial roles of the different factions who perpetrated the scares: from the scientists who misread or manipulated the evidence to the media and lobbyists who eagerly promoted scares without regard to the consequences, and the politicians and officials who came up with absurdly disproportionate responses, leaving us to pay a colossal price.

In this updated edition, Scared to Death not only presents a detailed account of the scares that have dominated our society for the past 50 years – through all of which the authors lived – but also examines the background to the COVID-19 pandemic, tracing our lack of preparedness to its roots and then assessing, by way of contrast, why this is the real thing, as opposed to the succession of scares that we have experienced.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781472985224
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 08/06/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 512
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Christopher Booker wrote a regular column for the Sunday Telegraph up until shortly before his death in 2019, and was the bestselling author of The Seven Basic Plots, The Real Global Warming Disaster and, with Richard North, The Great Deception and Scared to Death. He was the founding editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye.

Dr Richard North is a former environmental health officer with a PhD in the surveillance of salmonellosis. After a stint in the European Parliament he published his daily EUReferendum blog for 16 years before relaunching it as The Turbulent Times.
Christopher Booker was a founding editor of Private Eye, to which he regularly contributed, and also wrote a longstanding column for the Sunday Telegraph. His bestselling books include The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, The Real Global Warming Disaster, The Great Deception, The Mad Officials, Scared to Death and The Neophiliacs. Booker died in July 2019.
Richard North has in recent years won a reputation as one of Britain's most expert defence analysts, through his Defence of the Realm blog. Formerly a research director in the European Parliament, North is also a political analyst through his EU Referendum blog, which examines Britain's place in the world with particular reference to its membership of the European Union. He co-authored four bestselling books with the late Sunday Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker, including Scared To Death: From BSE To Global Warming, How Scares Are Costing Us The Earth (2007) and The Great Deception (2005), a comprehensive history of the European Union. He is the author of Ministry of Defeat (2009).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part One: The Food Scares
Prologue to Part One
Chapter One: Countdown to an Explosion: How Scares Become a Disaster Waiting to Happen, 1981-8
Chapter Two: 'Killer Eggs': The Great Salmonella Scare, 1988-9
Chapter Three: Enter the Hygiene Police: Paying the Price, 1990-4
Chapter Four: 'Listeria Hysteria': The Lanark Blue Case, 1995
Chapter Five: Mad Cows and Madder Politicians: The BSE/CJD Scare, 1996-7
Chapter Six: Officials Can Kill: Meat, Cheese and E. coli, 1998
Chapter Seven: The £1 Billion Blunder: The Belgian Dioxins Debacle, 1999
Epilogue to Part One: The Rise of the 'Health and Safety Culture'

Part Two: General Scares
Prologue to Part Two: The Millennium Bug
Chapter Eight: A Sledgehammer To Miss the Nut: A Wider Look at the Scare Phenomenon
Chapter Nine: The Modern Witch Craze: Ritualized Child Abuse, 1987-94
Chapter Ten: 'Speed Kills': A Safety Scare that Cost Lives
Chapter Eleven: 'We Love Unleaded': How Confusion Over Lead Cost Billions
Chapter Twelve: Smoke and Mirrors: How They Turned 'Passive Smoking' Into a Killer, 1950-2007
Chapter Thirteen: 'One Fibre Can Kill': The Great Asbestos Scam
Chapter Fourteen: Saving the Planet: Global Warming - the New Secular Religion
Chapter Fifteen: Licensed to Kill: OPs - The 'Scare that Never Was'
Epilogue: A New Age of Superstition

Index
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