Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 An excellent analysis December 27, 2007
Jean Luc Laydevant (Dublin, Ireland)
22 out of 22 found this review helpful
An excellent book that surgically dissect the mass hysteria phenomena, and how lazy journalism associated with knee jerk political reaction brings untold damage.
It is interesting to see how mass media always look forward, but conveniently never look back at the last scare story (Did Newsweek came back on their 'Global cooling' from the seventies ?'
The most dangerous of all scares, global warming is the only story for which we don't have a conclusion, since we are very much in the middle of it.
Looking at the previous financially disastrous decisions on other cases, one can only fear the next stage of this non sense mass hysteria.
The authors references to 1984 by George Orwel sounds ominiously correct when witnessing how any dissenting voice is being treated.
A courageous work, lucid and full of intellectual integrity by North and Booker.
Warmly recommanded to anyone who wants more than the lobotomized, ready to digest version served daily by the mass media.
I am scared to death... February 19, 2008
James Cope (Scotland)
26 out of 27 found this review helpful
...by the revelations in this book of how a toxic cocktail of publicity- and funding-hungry "scientists", sensation-seeking journalists and gutless, witless politicians leads to us being saddled with ludicrous restrictions and red-tape. Most of us are lucky enough to get away with that - this book relates the horrific experiences of the families caught up in the "satanic ritual abuse" nonsense whose children were removed by social workers obsessed with this non-existent phenomenon. Some were not even returned once the falsehood of these accusations had been exposed. Some of the people responsible for this appalling abuse were allowed to continue working in "child protection".
The book finishes with an examination of "The Scare that Never Was" - the appalling damage done to farmers and farm workers by the organo-phosphates that they were obliged by the British Government to use to dip their sheep. No prizes for guessing why this scare didn't hit the headlines in a big way.
Reading this one realises that the media made almost no effort to correct the impression that salmonella was ever found in eggs, vCJD was caused by BSE (Professor Lacey, who claimed that 500,000 of us a year would be dying of it, is still doing the scare-mongering rounds) or that there are groups of people sacrificing children to Satan and drinking their blood.
Farmers are still suffering the expense of dealing with regulations to limit nitrogen in large areas of the country deemed to be "Nitrate Vulnerable" on the basis of "science" which confused nitrates with nitrites and - once the first confusion was pointed out - nitrates with phosphates.
The biggest one of all is of course Global Warming. Whatever the science may really be, the devious behaviour of many of those plugging the orthodoxy - from Al Gore to various bigwigs in the IPCC - to suppress anything that might suggest it is not as simple as they would have us believe should set the alarm bells ringing.
Whilst this book is very readable it is very soberly written, with copious foot-notes and references - it will still make your blood boil!
Everyone who produces or consumes food, has children, uses fuel, votes, reads newspapers, watches television etc., etc. should read this book and hold to account those who have shafted us so comprehensively and try to limit the damage they do to society and the earth in future.
If you don't think this book is important............ February 28, 2008
J. DARBY (UK)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
.....then try reading the chapter on satanic child abuse when your children are in the same room watching the T.V. I did, and an icy chill went down my spine. Imagine at that point someone came into your house, took your children away, accused you of the most disgusting crimes and gagged any attempt you made to speak out. Orwell, Kafka? No. Cleveland, Rochdale and Nottingham in the Twentieth Century.
This book is not about denial. Booker and North do not try to deny or trivialise AIDS, BSE, smoking related diseases, E coli, Listeria or any of the issues raised. Indeed these are major issues that require a well thought out and appropriate response.
The authors take issue with the scientists who push their own research and exclude any notion that alternate research might show something to the contrary. They round on lazy jounalists who do not research facts for themselves and compete for the most sensational headline.
Mostly however, they condemn politicians who settle on the current orthodoxy and take disproportionate measures, cost millions or even billions to the taxpayer and yet fail to do any good whatsoever (what the authors call 'taking a sledgehammer and missing the nut')
What is most telling is that once the scare has been proved to be groundless, the powers that the authorities have taken for themselves to solve the problem are never given back.
An excellent read, concise and well referenced. A copy should be sent to evey politician bureucrat and pompous town hall official in the land.
scared to death March 12, 2008
Peter Oneil (spain)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
I cannot impress on you how important it is that you and everyone that you know must read this book. You will be outraged many times before you finish reading and will want to share the contents with all the open minded people that you know. you will want to discuss it and read what other people think about it.You may not want to believe the things that you will read but it is so rigorous in its approach that you will struggle to refute the contents. Scared to death is the most significant book that i have read and it should be compulsory reading for all mps, local councillors and social workers.
Once you understand the sequence of events which lead to a scare, you will be able to listen to the news with more objectivity and possibly recognise that iran is the current scare which george bush is inflicting on the world and the eu will no doubt give him the green light to persue whatever policy that he deems appropriate. Its all in this book, read it *PLEASE* and you will see for yourself.
Having read the other rewiews of this work, i agree with every word that the reviewers have written.
If you read this book, then the question that will linger in your mind as it has in mine, will be..... why have we allowed all of this to happen.
Now I know . . . March 17, 2008
Mr. Peter Holland (Colchester, England)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Like many people, I have been very suspicious of the recent outburst of scares of one sort or another. For instance, was a wooden chopping board really dangerous? I have also been suspicious of the "authorities" and the "science" which lies behind the scares. Well, if you have been concerned about such matters, you must read this book. It takes a cold, hard, look at what happened, what the facts really were and why (as so often happens) emotion replaces logic, those who dissent are silenced one way or another, and a falsehood becomes truth.
Government, politicians and the media do not show up well when the facts are finally brought to light (though there are always some honourable souls who retain their sense of proportion and concern for truth). Most horrific, however, are the casualties of the panics and witch hunts which have taken place - farmers whose lives were blighted by food scares, children and parent who suffered when satanic abuse was invented in the 1990s and many more.
For the authors the scare of all scares is the global warming theory. They believe that it has the characteristics of early scares - little scientific basis, disconfirming evidence is ignored and a bandwagon effect leads to vastly inflated claims. If you agree with them, then you are looking at a disaster as vast amounts of resources are diverted into fruitless efforts to slow climate change when, of course, these reources could have been used productively. Awful. My guess is the authors are right - why would governments suppress scientists who disagree with them if they were confident they were right?
A must read.
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