Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A useful antidote to unreason, 7 Mar 2007
Dick Taverne has worked in industry, law and government and is now a Liberal-Democrat member of the House of Lords. In this useful book, he looks at the connections between science and democracy and at fundamentalism's threats to them both.
His theme is, "If you abandon any concern for evidence or pretence at reason, you open the door wide to more dangerous charlatans, the peddlers of racial hatred, or those other devotees of the irrational, the religious fundamentalists who seek a return to the days when religious dogmatism ruled and freedom of thought was suppressed."
In his chapter on medicine, he praises osteopathy for being properly regulated in Britain, unlike most other kinds of alternative medicine. He notes that some alternative practices, like aromatherapy and Indian head massage, are pleasant and harmless.
But Taverne condemns Ayurvedic medicine and homoeopathy for diverting patients away from good medical practice. He points out that anyone with cataracts who chose the Ayurvedic remedy - `brush your teeth and scrape your tongue, spit into a cup of water and wash your eyes with this mixture' - would not get better. Similarly, homoeopathy, based on the `law of infinitesimals' - the more a medicine is diluted, the more effective it will be, i.e. less is more - would not help anyone with a serious illness.
He notes that herbal products are unregulated (unlike pharmaceutical drugs), so users risk adverse effects. Tests on the most popular herbal products, arnica and echinacea, proved that they don't work and are no better than placebos.
Taverne then looks at the scare about the MMR vaccine, started by Dr Andrew Wakefield's speculations that autism might be due to bowel disease, which might in turn be due to the vaccine. Wakefield produced no evidence, instead calling a press conference to denounce the vaccine. The media danced to Wakefield's dramatic tune and ignored all the proof that the vaccine did not cause autism.
In a section on genetic modification, Taverne makes a good case for the safety and utility of GM foods. Even America's finest lawyers cannot find evidence of damage to health, and absence of evidence of harm is evidence of absence of harm.
On global warming, he again warns against media hype. He points out that all the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's global warming predictions depend on its unbelievably high forecasts of economic growth in the Third World.
In Taverne's last chapter he writes, "politicians do in fact compromise, listen to the other side, and are willing to modify their own position in the light of public discussion and public reaction." We know that members of the House of Lords can be a little divorced from reality, but did Lord Taverne not notice Thatcher or Blair?
As he notes, "Authoritarian institutions ... press on with mistakes long after they have begun to produce unintended and harmful consequences." Mistakes like privatising our National Health Service, devolution, EU membership, occupying Iraq, deindustrialisation, destroying the apprenticeship system? Perhaps he should check his own assumptions against the evidence.
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23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Possibly only four and a half stars., 9 Feb 2007
This is one of a number of books recently to explore what many consider to be a very worrying growth in unreason. Taverne is obviously a sincere man, even to those, like me, who have not always shared his political convictions. His views certainly deserve attention. In my mind `unreason' is associated with the words prejudice, superstition and ignorance. I look forward to a time when the various consequences of unreason are viewed in a similar light to the unreason of racism. They are intellectually and morally the same.
I have experienced unreason myself when, recently, in a British university, a postgraduate student expressed the view that she would rather see a good proportion of the world's population die unnecessarily (through want of vaccines) than countenance any use of GM technology; this, despite having no understanding of the processes, applications or risks involved. She was, sadly, not an exception. Taverne has addressed the issues of GM well, I think, but as an example of a general malaise. I particularly like his treatment of organisations like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Soil Association. They seem to have abandoned objectivity and are likely to do considerable harm as a result. I think his remarks on organic food, which has been the subject of some very unflattering research, are also sound and need saying.
This is an excellent book, easily read, sufficient to make people think and perhaps encourage them to look more deeply into some of the issues raised. I think they will find much evidence to support most of what Taverne says and certainly I am convinced by his general thesis. Unreason has pushed mankind into dark ages before and will do so again unless we can counteract it. However, I have some sympathy with the reservations of an earlier reviewer (Is this book leading the march? 16 Jan 2007).
Hormesis is a fairly well known phenomenon, but it is probably the exception rather than the rule, i.e. it is characteristic of certain chemicals but not others. My reading is that Taverne qualifies his remarks so that they are correct although they may overstate the case. I am not sure of the beneficial effects of Arsenic (p73) but I do note that, for example, copper, molybdenum, and nickel are essential in small doses but toxic in larger doses. I, also, would like to see more about the studies of the effects of low doses of radioactivity. One of his references is available on the web [...] and makes interesting reading but I need to dig deeper to be convinced.
Contrary to the reviewer's comments on GM, there is a natural way to transfer genes from the genome of one species to another. The transfer of genes from bacteria to figs has almost certainly happened, as has the transfer from bacteria to humans. In fact one of the main objections to GM has been just this issue. Those transfers to us that have survived are generally very beneficial, though rare. It is very probably that many more harmful transfers have taken place, but they have not survived or become non-functional by mutation. The essential difference between GM and natural gene transfer is that we have control over the former but not over the latter.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and believe its central message needs saying loudly and often. Perhaps some arguments are overstated in an effort to avoid the necessity of a more technical and detailed treatment. That is a relatively minor quibble and a price worth paying. It doesn't, for me, detract significantly from the strength of evidence.
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32 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A splendid, rational and long overdue book, 21 Jun 2005
It is accepted among educated, liberal-minded people that alternative medicine, organic farming, and the precautionary principle are good, and that GM crops, eco-fundamentalism globalisation and so forth are bad. None of these assumptions stands up to close scrutiny. This book subjects these topics to such scrutiny.
Taverne is not against environmentalism - indeed, he says that he took up bicycling for ecological reasons and still prefers it for its speed, exercise and convenience. But he is well-informed, and writes well, about the way that many credos are accepted without question.
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