Moreover, we must not underestimate the impact of the perpetual manufacture of scares and alarms. A comparison with the old Soviet Union is illuminating. Although large numbers of the enslaved citizenry of the old "evil empire" assumed that any specific propaganda claim made by their masters was a lie, the accumulation of propaganda, the recurrent themes, motifs, assumptions, and subtexts nevertheless still moulded the consciousness of its recipients. These are the "imperceptible" effects identified by Ellul.

What is the subtext of health scare propaganda, and what is the purpose of its manufacturers?

The subtext is, of course, fear. The purpose of the propaganda is to generate anxiety over health, and to brand modern food and lifestyles as not only unhealthy, but a result of the wicked capitalists concerned only with profit. Modern technology and scientific innovations are seen less as blessings than as fraught with danger. The world as a whole is seen as ever more full of risk. The deeper subtext is to disempower ordinary people. The expert, especially the medical authority, is imbued with an aura of objectivity and benevolence. If the ordinary person is confused, even cynical, this too serves its role. The feeling that something is wrong, that risks abound, even if we cannot be sure which are real and which false, still empowers the allegedly benevolent expert. The nagging impression persists that "we are at risk". This is the message of alarmism. The endless harping on the threat to "children and young people" is a similarly crude appeal to the most atavistic levels of emotional functioning. It is designed to provoke not only fear, but hysteria, and to close the mind to rational thought. This is precisely the role of propaganda. Its purpose is not to convey knowledge, or stimulate thought, but to mobilize malcontents for action.

What we (and other writers) have referred to as "health fascism" and "food fascism", although having an ancestry going back to the 18th and l9th centuries [110], emerged most strongly in the current "post-socialist" era. As the grand narrative of Marxism has self-destructed in theoretical confusion and in practical disaster for its victims, health fascism emerged as a significant force. Why should this be? The answer turns on a class analysis. Marxism was never really an ideology of the "proletariat", but of its manufacturers, the intelligentsia. The masses have only ever been the metaphorical and literal cannon-fodder of the intelligentsia, and the intelligentsia, who formed the political and administrative ruling class, were the only beneficiaries of Marxist rule. Many forms of class analysis tend to see class interest only in economic categories. They are generally blind to the class interest of the intelligentsia, of what has been termed the "new class". [111]

Health fascism simply replaces many of the functional categories of Marxism with health-oriented ones. The result is still anti-capitalism, which sees ordinary people as prone to "false consciousness" and unable to make truly free or wise decisions for themselves. Thus, the State must dictate to the masses for their own good, and suppress the wickedness of the profit-motivated "barons". Once again, the experts are to rule benevolently.

In some respects health fascism is cruder than old-style Marxism which at least adopted the mantle of science and progress, and was frequently imbued with a technocratic vision and optimism. Health fascism is more in keeping with the contemporary retreat from reason manifest in "post-modernism", "social constructionism", "hermeneutics", "decoristructionism", environmentalism, and the whole contemporary witches- brew of unreason.

Marxism and other forms of older socialism, for all their errors, at least dealt primarily in a rational conceptual world, with issues of equality and justice, with economic analysis and political philosophy. But the propaganda of health fascism is, as one French critic has pointed out, almost religious in nature, playing with deeper realms of human insecurity and fear. It is more reminiscent of the earliest forms of what Marx called "Utopian Socialism", and of the myriad groups of millenarian religious cults in the middle ages. [112] The alleged dietary "plagues" of the West are portrayed as punishment for our sins, punishment for our very affluence and arrogance. As Pascal Bruckner has written:

"Failures and distresses are collected because they serve as a clear warning - you have enjoyed yourselves too much ... Meat eaters are morally inferior ... Blessed are those who eat bulgur wheat and sorghum, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven! ... Meat is the root of all the evils of the West, and livestock suck the blood of the earth! But leeks, carrots, and celery will ensure the reconciliation of mankind!" [113]

This new religion has a large, and growing, professional priesthood of health activists, claiming to act in the public interest while actually pursuing an agenda hostile to market processes and individual liberty. Professor Berger, of Boston University, describes this stratum as part of the "new class", which, he says, "depends directly or indirectly upon government subsidisations and thus has a strong vested interest in the expansion of government services". [114]

A large literature on the sociology, anthropology and economics of risk has emerged in the last few decades, much of it very illuminating. To draw fully on it would lengthen this paper intolerably. Suffice it to say, what emerges most clearly is that the world, contrary to the assertions of the scaremonger of every sort, is becoming ever more safe. The way to increased safety is not the fearful and obsessive fear of risk and the attempt to overcome it by state regulation, but the allowance of full scope to freedom, free choice, and innovation. Freer is safer - as well as more prosperous, more comfortable, and more just. [115]

The Complexity and Corruption of Science

Other writers on the "cancer industry" question the premise that underlies virtually all the cancer scares: the dose-response relationship. Thus, is the effect of a substance on health linear, i.e.: is there a harmful response no matter how low a level of exposure to a substance, or is there a safe threshold, a cut-off point below which a substance has no harmful effects - or even possibly beneficial ones. In the notorious Alar scam it subsequently emerged, in the words of Dr. Le Fanu:

"That to get the dose equivalent to that fed to the rats which proved Alar's `carcinogenity' [a human being] would have to drink 19,000 bottles of apple juice." [117]

There is now a growing American literature challenging the assumptions of orthodox cancer research, but unfortunately it is little known and not widely distributed in Britain. [118]

Another fundamental challenge to the idea that perfect safety could ever be achieved is the existence of "biochemical individuality". As the leading proponent of this approach, Professor Roger Williams demonstrated, there are massive physiological differences between people, so that what is beneficial for one person might be deadly for another. One person's nutritional requirements might be very different from another's. Thus no drug can ever be totally safe. For someone it might have a deadly side-effect. Human variation and diversity are inherent and inevitable, and so are the subsequent risks that follow from that fact. [119]

A disturbing aspect of the new health religion is that science is distorted in order to keep the flow of taxpayers' money coming in for research. Epidemiology, for example, was until about 1950 the study of the pattern of infectious diseases. However, because most infectious diseases have been eradicated, epidemiologists now search for associations between "diseases of civilisation", (meaning heart disease and cancer), and 'risk factors', which are either personal characteristics (such as age, sex, race, weight, height, diet, habits, customs, and vices) or situational characteristics (such as geography, occupation, environment, air, water, sun, gross national product, stress, and density of doctors). As the late Dr. Petr Skrabanek, then reader in community health at Trinity College, Dublin, explained, this enabled epidemiology to become a self perpetuating process:

"The association game has three possible outcomes: positive association, negative association, or no association. As any of these three outcomes are generally deemed to be `interesting', `controversial', or `in need of further research', they all get published. 'No association' is an uncommon outcome, since in most studies at least 'a tendency towards' a positive or negative association can be shown. Considering how many cancers exist, and how many items of diet can be entered into the game, the number of possible combinations is staggering and opens new vistas for the generations of epidemiologists to come." [120]

For instance, epidemiologists have found that cabbage consumption is associated with both decreased and increased risk of cancer; and coffee consumption has been associated with both increased and decreased sexual drive and reproductive capacity. In a single edition of the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985, one article showed a significant negative association between oestrogen-replacement therapy andcoronary heart disease, while another article showed a significant positive association!

Not only have entire divisions of science, such as epidemiology, been subordinated to the health activists' goals, but they also habitually violate the conventions of scientific procedure and statistical analysis in order to exaggerate their case, thus undermining scientific objectivity. Several reports published by FOREST examine the statistical sleight-of hand lurking behind the old adage: "Figures can't lie; but liars can figure". In particular, Dr. John Luik in Through the Smokescreen of "Science": The Dangers of Politically Corrupted Science for Democratic Public Policy, exposes the deception practised by proponents of "passive smoking"; and Professor Finch, in Lies, Damned Lies ... A Close Look at the Statistics on Smoking and Health, describes the LaLonde doctrine: that government is entitled to make pronouncements and policy on cancer and smoking without waiting for the evidence of research.

Yet no human activity could be further removed from the fundamental methods and techniques of propaganda than science. The scientific method, as we understand it today, is usually dated from Galileo, a founder of modern empiricism, who emphasised the need to search for answers in nature rather than in the works of Aristotle. The most distinguished philosopher of science of this century, Sir Karl Popper, contends that scientific theories can never ultimately be proved to be true; rather they can only be subject to refutation in the light of new evidence. It follows that we can therefore never be really certain about a scientific theory.

For the progress of science to continue, it behoves every scientist to be scrupulous in maintaining the highest standards of probity, honesty, and integrity when pronouncing on subjects pertaining to his or her work. It is clear that the work of the health activists is propaganda rather than true science. They attempt to make all public discourse "one-sided", to "exclude contradiction" by censorship even in learned journals, and the stigmatisation of critics and opponents.

The practice of various forms of deception in science is widespread and of long standing. The American writers William Broad and Nicholas Wade, in their survey of fraud and deceit in science, argue that these practices are an inevitable result of the current dependency of scientific endeavour on finance from the state:

"Few scientists today can leave it to posterity to judge their work; their universities may deny them tenure, and the flow of grants and contracts from the federal government is likely to dry up quite quickly, unless evidence of immediate and continuing success is forthcoming." [121]

The Popperian philosopher the late William W. Bartley III has argued that the academic world, as the "marketplace of ideas", is far less of a real market than the marketplace for the production of goods and services [122]. In the latter, market forces and common law standards maintain real quality and a high degree of honesty. The academic world, he argues, resembles far more a feudal order. Corruption, nepotism, obscurantism, intellectual "cartels", suppression of dissent and competition, fraud, plagiarism, theft, false advertising, lies, slander, "conspiracies of silence", deceit, etc, are all far more common in academia than they are in business. Woe betide the scholar who bucks predominant medical orthodoxy. Research funds, academic appointment or advancement are controlled by "medical barons" who will allow no threat to their favoured doctrine. I regret that the rather strict British laws of libel prevent us from elaborating further on this point.

Whether or not a separation of science and state is a realistic prospect in the current political climate in the Western world, where the state is continually extending its grip over virtually all forms of human endeavour, is highly debatable. What is vital, however, is that thehonest journalist and the informed citizen must now recognize that, in the words of the late Professor Petr Beckmann: "degrees and academic career are no longer guarantees of honesty, truthfulness, or even competence". The natural sciences have now been drawn into the political struggles of our times, and hence grievously corrupted. It is thus the responsibility of all individuals who wish to judge the merits of any political conflict into which science has been conscripted to acquaint themselves with science and scientific reasoning. There is no alternative, unless we wish to be led by the nose into the sort of statist and authoritarian order into which paternalists and collectivists have failed to dragoon us by other means.

What is indubitable is the absolute dependence of the development of scientific endeavour on the integrity of every scientist. Let us leave the last word on this topic to one of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Sir Peter Medawar, a winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on tissue transplantion:

"The most heinous offence a scientist as a scientist can commit is to declare to be true that which is not so; if a scientist cannot interpret the phenomenon he is studying, it is a binding obligation upon him to make it possible for another to do so. If a scientist is suspected of falsifying or inventing evidence to promote his material interests or to corroborate a pet hypothesis, he is relegated to a kind of half world separated from real life by a curtain of disbelief; for as with other human affairs, science can only proceed on a basis of confidence, so that scientists do not suspect each other of dishonesty or sharp practice, and believe each other unless there is very good reason to do otherwise." [123]

The Corruption of the Media

"A Roper and Environmental Protection Agency study, in 1990, on risk found a tremendous divergence between the opinions of experts and those of the public. A list of 28 different risks was evaluated by 75 risk experts and ranked in order of seriousness. A public poll of the same risks was conducted by Roper. Not only did the two rank orderings not agree, but the rankings appeared to be virtually reversed. There was, in short, an inverse correlation between the real threat of environmental risks and public perceptions of those risks. The study found, however, a close correlation between the public ranking and media attention afforded the risks. In other words, the more attention devoted to the risk, the more the public perceived the risk as a serious threat to themselves." [124]

Many specialist correspondents and members of the media, with a few honourable exceptions, are lazy, and thus happy to be fed press releases by politically correct lobby groups. Some are intellectually second rate, and unable to understand technical criticisms of simplistic propaganda (Oh the stories we could tell!). Some are explicit ideological allies of the health activists, and work with them to maximize their campaigns and to stifle or discredit any opposition. Many just share the assumptions of the "New Class", that paternalism is justified, that only businessmen - and not scientists, health activists or bureaucrats - have vested interests.

Professor Vincent Marks, who is both professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Surrey, Guildford, and head of the department of clinical biochemistry and nutrition at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, is highly critical of the attitude of much of the media towards scientists whose scientific findings contradict the entrenched myths of the health activists:

"Some of the most notorious of today's hucksters have the effrontery to accuse scientists whose work is of the highest ethical and internationally recognised standards, but of whom they disapprove, as being in the pocket of those who fund their research. The intention is to make such workers appear unreliable and untrustworthy witnesses. This attempt by the apocalyptic and unscrupulous to divert attention away from the real issues is similar to that used by the pickpocket to distract the attention of his victim whilst relieving him of his wallet. In this game of character assassination it is generally not the quality of the scientist's work that the hucksters attack - since this is often beyond reproach - but the investigator's personal integrity. This sort of behaviour, which has no bearing on the subject matter under discussion, is anathema to scientists and similarly reputable people. It is, however, commonplace among utter journalists and others who work on the basis that if you throw mud, some of it will stick.

"I, for example, was reviled in the press when I first described, under the title of 'Muesli Belt Malnutrition', a condition resulting from the imposition upon young children by their overly anxious, usually middle-class, literate, but misguided mothers, of feeding regimes that were totally unsuitable for them. I was accused of being in the pay (pocket) of the sugar industry, the confectionery industry or even the food industry as a whole, as though the only possible reason for exposing problems caused by ignorance is financial." [125]

On another occasion, Professor Marks gave a talk on the nutritional aspects of sugar at a public meeting:

"I concluded then, as now, that there is very little convincing evidence that increased consumption of sugar (sucrose) is really responsible, in the population as a whole, for producing any disease apart from caries of the teeth' ... I was reported, however, as saying that sugar in the diet causes disease." [126]

Given Professor Marks's experience, it is hardly surprising that journalists, even in the 'quality' press, give prominent coverage to the most outlandish claims by the health activists. Although most of these well-publicized health scares do not even last long enough to qualify as "nine- day wonders". Most of the public and members of the political class tend to "read by headlines". Thus a climate of opinion is created which is favourable to ever-increasing regulation and legislation from Brussels, Whitehall and Westminster. There is a small but growing literature on the political corruption of science, and on the political agenda of "health fascism", but it is still minuscule and underfunded compared with the health fascist lobbies and with the mostly publicly-funded scientific and medical establishment in general.

The Puerility of the Business Response

In practice, most business responses to attacks are feeble and inept. Their tendency is to engage in what can only be called pre-emptive cringing. They lean over backwards to be "reasonable". Instead of confronting, refuting and defeating their enemies, they produce platitudes. They have no conception of the nature of the opposition they face from enemies determined to cripple or destroy them. They "compromise", when compromise only encourages their opponents, and opens the door to the next restriction. They rely on PR hacks who have little understanding of the power of political ideologies and no idea how to combat them. They think things can be sorted out with behind-the-scenes "deals" with politicians - who cannot be trusted and will succumb to whosoever exerts the most pressure. The reality is that a few lobbyists' lunches with politicians, and a few donations to the funds of political parties, are as nothing compared with the force of a fanatical, "idealistic", and well-organised political campaign. Industry thus wastes money on puerile PR which provides no lasting relief from its tormentors.

The pattern has been repeated in industry after industry. For example, the alcohol industry funds a fatuous organization called The Portman Group, which provides no principled opposition to their enemies, but postures as an embodiment of "responsibility" and rectitude. Its visibility as a defender of freedom for drinkers and the industry that caters for them is virtually non-existent. And it has predictably little effect on the growing anti- alcohol lobby.

At the same time the food industry is playing with the idea of accepting "voluntary guidelines" on advertising, blind to the disaster these have been for the tobacco industry by opening the door to a ceaseless onslaught of further restrictions and regulations.

Even the Advertising Association has come out in support of the Government's Health of the Nation targets, although advertising is the principal butt of every health fascist and anti-business campaign. The destruction of commercial free speech, advertising, is absolutely essential if the propaganda of health fascism is to be effective. The Advertising Association, above all, should trumpet the truth that it is not the role of government to mould the lifestyles and choices of its citizens. Instead they cooperate in the cutting of their own throats. By making such a concession to The Health of the Nation, they have thus undercut any principled argument and are left with only "pragmatic" arguments about exactly how much of their business will be destroyed.

The idea that defenders of free choice and free economy can rely on generous financial support on business interests confronts the reality that the corrupters of science and enemies of liberty have privileged access to both the media and to the financial largesse of the State.

The Moral and Political Critique

As the always perceptive journalist Minette Marin has put it:

"The flight from personal responsibility is probably the central moral phenomenon of the late-20th century. If your toddler drowns, while unattended, in his own nappy bucket, clearly, according to conventional wisdom, the Government must do something about nappy buckets, and pass a law or something. If your child drowns, while unattended, in a DIY garden pool, there must be a large official warning on all garden pool kits, not to mention a support group and counselling for all concerned. This is the message of Radio 4, and other concerned and caring bodies. The Government, or somebody, must be blamed, or if all else fails, one's parents and their secret crimes ..."

"When a culture abandons individual responsibility, which is to say the self's power over the self, it leaves a power vacuum that someone else will be quick to fill. Someone else will take control over the individual. That way lies totalitarianism. I cannot understand why people are not more afraid of it."

There can be no compromise in the struggle against health fascism. Either individuals are, in John Locke's words, "proprietors over their own selves", or they are wards of the state. Once we allow dictation to individuals "for his or her own good", there is no limit to tyranny. Indeed as the great American judge Louis D. Brandeis declared in 1928:

"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent ... The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

To what extent the motives of the health fascists are really "well-meaning" might be disputed. As H. L. Mencken warned:

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."

Health fascism and state paternalism are simply a reversion to a more primitive stage of society. The similarity with the religious paternalism and persecution that deformed so much of history is striking. In a secular age, those who believe they are endowed with truth and virtue see it as their right to preserve the bodily, rather than the spiritual, welfare of others, whether the victims like it or not! But the "saving" of souls or bodies by the use of state coercion and censorship is an absolute evil. It is an affront to true morality and at war with all decency. It is a denial of justice and inalienable human rights.

FOOTNOTES

109. Keith Waterhouse, "Filter-Tip of the Iceberg", Daily Mirror, 24th April,1986.

110. See Dr. Stephen Davies, The Historical Origins of Health Fascism, FOREST, London,1991.

111. See B. Bruce-Riggs, ed., The New Class, Transaction Books, New Brunsarick, New Jersey,1979; Nigel Ashford, Neo-Conservatism & the New Class, Libertarian Alliance, London,1986.

112. On the phenomenon of millenarianism see Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarianism, Harper Torchbooks/Harper 8Z Row, New York, 1961.

113. The Tears of the White Man: Compassion As Contempt, The Free Press, New York,1986.

114. Peter Berger, "Towards a Religion of Health Activism", in Health, LifestyLe and Environment, Social Affairs Unit/Manhattan Institute, London,1991.

115. See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London,1966; Implicit Meanings, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London,1975; Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory, Routledge, London,1992.

116. Robert Matthews, Cancer Reports Are 'Junk"', The Sunday Correspondent, 5th October, 1989.

117. James Le Fanu, EnvironmentaL Alarums: A Medical Audit of Environmental Damage to Human Health, Social Affairs Unit, London,1994.

118. See Edith Efron, [March 1984), "The Big Cancer Lie", The American Spectator, 17(3), [1984), "Behind the Cancer Terror", Reason, 4[9), and her magnum opus The Apocalyptics: Cancer and the Big Lie, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984.

119. Biochemical Individuality, Iohn Wiley, New York, 1956.

120. Petr Skrabanek, "Risk-Factor Epidemiology", inBerger et al, Health, Lifestyle and Environment. See also Peter Lee, "The Need for Caution in Interpreting Low Level Risks Reported by Epidemiologists", in James Le Fanu, Preventionitis: The Exaggerated Claims of Health Promotion, Social Affairs Unit, London, 1994.

121. Betrayers of the Truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986. See also Robert Bell, Impure Science: Fraud, Compromise and Political Influence in Scientific Research, John Wiley, New York,1992. Jean Rostand, Error and Deception in Science, Hutchinson, London, 1960.

122. W. W. Bartley III, Unfathomed Knowledge, Unmeasured Wealth: On Universities and the Wealth of Nations, Open Court, LaSalle, Illinois, 1990.

123. Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science, Oxford University Press, Oxford,1985.

124. Mark Mills, "Reactions to Health and Environmental Risks".

125. Vineent Marks, Is British Food Bad for You?, Institute of Economic Affairs Health and Welfare Unit, London, 1991.

126. Vincent Marks, "Exploding the Myths About Sugar", in Anderson, Healthy Eating: The Evidence.

127. For various critical perspectives on determinism see Dennis H. Wrong, "Human Nature and the Perspective of Sociology", Social Research, Vol. 30, No. 3, Autumn 1963; Idem, "The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology", American Sociological Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, April 1961; Benjamin Schwartz, "The Socio- Historic Approach", World Politics, Vol. VIII, No. 1, October 1955; Murray N. Rothbard, "The Mantle of Science", in H. Schoeckand J. W. Wi gins, eds, Scientism and Values, Van Nostrand, Princeton, New Jersey, 1960. Chris Tame has also dealt with the question in "Change and Pseudo-Change in Sociology", The Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. XIX, No. 1, June 1977 and "The New Enlightenment", in The 'New Right' Enlightenment, Economic and Literary Books, Sevenoaks, Kent, 1985.

128. Minette Marin, "Signs of the Times", The Sunday Telegraph, 6th February, 1994.

A more detailed series of references is available from FOREST on request.

THE AUTHORS

Chris R. Tame

A former Director of FOREST, who has previously worked for the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Freedom Association, and Channel 4's "Diverse Reports". He also founded The Alternative Bookshop in Covent Garden and is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance. He appears regularly on television and radio.

He has contributed to a wide range of both academic and political journals, including The Jewish JournaL of Sociology, Science and PubLic Policy, Economic Affairs, The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Il Politico, Wertfrei, The Freethinker and The Journal of Libertarian Studies. He has also contributed to such books as The Politics of Crime Control, J. M. Robertson: Liberal, RationaList, Scholar, The Case For Private Enterprise, and The 'New Right' Enlightenment. He edited The Bibliography of Freedom for the Centre for Policy Studies and was consultant for the television series "The New Enlightenment". He has delivered lectures to Universities and scholarly conferences in Britain, the USA, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Chris Tame is a non-smoker and very light drinker whose hobbies include jogging, roller skating , and weight training. He has belts in three different martial arts and currently trains in TY-GA Karate.

David Botsford