Ignoring science at our peril

THE MARCH OF UNREASON: SCIENCE, DEMOCRACY, AND THE NEW FUNDAMENTALISM

By Dick Taverne

Oxford, $29.95, 318 pages

REVIEWED BY HENRY I. MILLER

“Drunk as a lord” hardly applies to Dick Taverne — or Lord Taverne, since 1996 when he was made a baron — the sober, polymathic and persuasive author of “The March of Unreason.” Although not himself a scientist, Mr. Taverne, a Queen’s Counsel (an especially learned barrister appointed to advise Her Britannic Majesty), former member of the British Parliament and currently member of the House of Lords, offers a spirited defense of science and its evidence-based approach to public policy.

He argues that “in the practice of medicine, popular approaches to farming and food, policies to reduce hunger and disease and many other practical issues, there is an undercurrent of irrationality that threatens the progress that depends on science and even [threatens] the civilized basis of our democracy” and that we ignore this trend at our peril. In making his case, Mr. Taverne demolishes many modern foibles and myths, as well as the radical “eco-fundamentalists” who promulgate them.

He notes the paradox that as people live longer and safer lives, they seem to be increasingly obsessed with societal risks of all sorts, and that as society devises better prevention and treatment of disease and produces more nutritious and varied food more efficiently, more people turn to alternative medicine such as homeopathy and quack remedies, and denounce the most precise and predictable methods for the genetic improvement of crop plants. Remorselessly and effectively, he skewers the mania for organic food, the popularity of astrology and other forms of mysticism, and the widespread but baseless bias that “nature knows best.”

Mr. Taverne is not averse to alternative medical treatments when there is evidence to support their use, but as Oxford University evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has pointed out, most often they “refuse to be tested, cannot be tested, or consistently fail tests.” This is certainly true, for example, of the vast majority of herbal dietary supplements, which enjoy huge popularity in the United States and Europe.

Many of these products, which are not very different from the infamous 19th century snake-oil preparations, are known to be toxic, carcinogenic or otherwise dangerous. Few have been shown to be effective for anything, and serious known side effects include blood-clotting abnormalities, high blood pressure, life-threatening allergic reactions, abnormal heart rhythms, exacerbation of autoimmune diseases, and interference with life-saving prescription drugs. The American Society of Anesthesiologists has warned patients to stop taking herbal supplements at least two weeks before any scheduled surgery in order to avoid dangerous interactions with the drugs used for anesthesia. And yet many people forego proven prescription drugs in favor of these preparations.

Mr. Taverne uses the saga of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine to illustrate the social damage that can be wrought by the rejection of evidence-based medicine. In 1988, Dr. A.J. Wakefield and his colleagues described a case series of 12 patients at a referral clinic in England, all of whom presented with inflammatory bowel disease and autism. They hypothesized that in some children the MMR vaccine provokes inflammation of the intestine, which permits toxins to leak into the bloodstream, and thence into the brain, where they cause the damage that shows up as autism. Panic ensued, with the anti-vaccination lunatic fringe — helped by the sensation-seeking media — orchestrating a campaign against MMR. Assurances by governments that the triple vaccine was safe were ignored; and where vaccination rates have declined, there have been outbreaks.

Mr. Taverne characterizes as “a monument to irrationality” the trend toward consumers’ buying overpriced organic food, promoted by advocates whose “principles are founded on a scientific howler; it is governed by rules that have no rhyme or reason, and its propaganda could have an adverse effect on the health of poor people.”

In the United States, for example, the rules that define organic products are nonsensical, in that organic standards are process-based and have little to do with the actual characteristics of the product. Certifiers attest to the ability of organic operations to follow a set of production standards and practices that meet the requirements of the regulations.

Paradoxically, the presence of a detectable residue of a banned chemical alone does not constitute a violation of this regulation, as long as an organic operation has not used excluded methods. Thus, regulators seem to reward effort and intent, whether or not the “integrity” (for lack of a better word) of the product is compromised. That’s rather like saying that as long as your barber uses certain prescribed tools and lotions, your haircut is automatically of high quality.

Moreover, because organic farming is far less efficient than conventional farming, organic food costs more (to say nothing of requiring more land put into farming), and the hype from markets like Whole Foods puts pressure on the less affluent to buy more expensive fruit and vegetables that may actually be of lower quality. Higher prices mean lower consumption, and consequently fewer of the benefits conferred by a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Finally, organic producers’ insistence on avoiding gene-spliced varieties will prevent consumers of these products from benefitting from nutritional and safety improvements down the row — er, road.

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