The Myth of the Modern World
Scientific rationalists are fond of pointing out that the modern world is
primarily a scientific and technological world. It's all very well being a
romantic and a dreamer who complains about the environment and about pollution,
but where would you be without a car to drive you to your office, without your
mobile phone to call home, or without your personal computer?
Who do
you have to thank for these bounties? Why, science of course. And who do
we have most fear? Naturally, it's the crackpots and weirdos who dabble in
taboo subjects.
This view of the world was articulated by astronomy professor and
"skeptic" the late Carl Sagan who wrote;
"We've arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements
profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things
so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a
prescription for disaster."
Sagan gloomily concludes, "The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of
light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
Most recently the same myth was dusted off and given an airing in the May/June
1999 issue of Skeptical Enquirer, the magazine of
CSICOP, by Matt
Nisbet, who wrote;
" . . . The great achievements of science and technology
we enjoy today owe much to the traditions of the Enlightenment."
"The scientific invention of cinema and television merged
music, drama, visual setting, and narrative into an assault on the senses and
emotions of mass audiences worldwide. Culture and society were forever changed.
. . ."
This myth has been recycled so often that almost
no-one questions it. But what are the real facts? We live in a
technical and scientific age right enough, but who created it? The
white-coated guardians of science, protecting the guttering flame of hard-won
knowledge from the gathering demons of new-age irrationality, as Sagan and
Nisbet seem to think?
Luckily, this is not a question that we have to speculate
about philosophically -- it is one that has a concrete, quantifiable answer.
How often, in the
past 100 years, has publicly-funded institutional scientific research of the
type conducted by Professor Sagan and his fellow members of CSICOP, resulted in
major scientific and technical innovations? And how often have such discoveries
come from the 'crackpot' loner in his 'skunk works', derided and ostracised by
the likes of CSICOP? Even a
superficial review shows an overwhelming trend in favor of the latter.
Bell and the telephone; Parsons, Tesla and the
Turbine; Edison and the electric light, and recorded sound; Marconi, Tesla and
radio; the Wright Brothers and flight; Carl Benz and the automobile; The Lumiere
brothers and cinema; Otto Mergenthaler and the Linotype machine; Armon Strowger
and the automatic telephone exchange; George Eastman and celluloid photographic
film; Fritz Haber, the historian who taught himself chemistry and fixed
atmospheric nitrogen; Pollen and automatic fire control; Farnsworth, Baird and
television; Farnsworth and nuclear fusion; Whittle and the jet engine; Chester Carlson and Xerography; Eckert
and Mauchly and the commercial computer; Edwin Land and Polaroid Photography;
Christopher Cockerell, the electronics engineer who invented the hovercraft.
Even where the innovator belongs to a recognised
institution he or she is often a loner who achieves success by swimming against
the currents of orthodoxy, like Alan Turing and the first computers, or even
Watson and Crick who had been told to drop their study of DNA but continued it
as 'bootleg' research.
Of course, one can also compile a long and
distinguished list of discoveries in institutional science, especially from the
great universities like Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Princeton, and especially in important basic
fields like atomic physics and astronomy. But, somehow, it is difficult to draw
up a list that carries quite the same diversity, the same romantic air of
excitement and innovation and one that has so obviously influenced every single
aspect of twentieth century life so fundamentally.
Anyone who switches on the electric light,
switches on the television, makes a phone call, watches a film, plays a record,
takes a photograph, uses a personal computer, drives a car, or boards an
aircraft has the lone eccentric to thank, not institutional science.
These things were arranged not by guardians of the flame like
Carl Sagan, but in most cases, despite scientists who think as Sagan
thought.
The Myth of Longer Life
But what about medical science? Haven't the
breath-taking discoveries of the past century cured many of the worst diseases
that beset mankind? Do we not stand a much better chance of surviving
illness today thanks to science? And aren't we living longer as a result?
The answer is profoundly shocking to anyone
who takes it for granted that the billions we have spent
on medical research have made a big difference to the
incidence of disease and death. First, life expectancy at age 45 has barely
changed since the beginning of this century. The statistical increase in
life expectancy overall during that period has come about because there used to
be a high incidence of disease and death in babies and children which has been
eliminated by measures such as smaller families, better hygiene, birth in
hospital instead of home, antibiotics, and health education.
Most of these preventive factors were in place and fully effective 30 or 40
years ago. Their effect has been such that life expectancy at any age has not
changed significantly in the past 20 years. Yet, in that 20 year period,
Britain has spent around Ј2,000 million on medical research.
Turning to specific areas of medical research, what progress has been made in
combatting our biggest killers such as cancer and heart disease? Once again the
answers are deeply disturbing.
Dr David Horrobin, then Director of the Efamol Research Institute in Canada,
writing in the New Scientist in 1982, said;
"Lay organisations whether charities or
governments, do not fund medical research for the sake of culture. They provide
money because they believe that practical benefits will follow. It is gradually
dawning on the donors that for the past 20 years practical benefits have not
followed. During that time there have been no substantial improvements in
morbidity or mortality from major diseases that can be attributed to public
funding of medical research. The much vaunted successes in some relatively rare
cancers, such as Hodgkins' disease, derive from refinements
of discoveries that were made in the mid-1950s. The only substantial advances
have come from the pharmaceutical industry. Even there, the foundation is so
shaky that the two biggest successes, the beta blockers (now widely used in
treating hypertension) and the histamine-2 anatagonists (effective against
stomach ulcers), had to come from the mind of one man, Jim Black".
Horrobin is not alone in his assessment and
neither have things changed materially in the decade since he wrote these words.
Take the fight against cancer, for example. In the new England Journal of
Medicine in 1986, Dr John Bailar of the Harvard Medical School and Dr Elaine
Smith of the University of Iowa Medical Centre asked what progress we have made
against cancer in the three decades from 1950 to 1982? Their conclusion was
that;
"We are losing the war against cancer,
notwithstanding
progress against several uncommon forms of the disease,
improvements in palliation, and extension of the
productive years of life. A shift in research emphasis,
from research on treatment to research on prevention,
seems necessary if substantial progress against cancer is
to be forthcoming."
The two researchers found that in the United States from 1950 to 1982 the
overall rate of death due to cancer had actually increased by 8.5 per cent and
this during a period of unprecedented expenditure on research and clinical
investigation.
These findings, of course, contrast sharply with the picture painted by
governments and by some research funding agencies, and the results were hotly
disputed. But the U.S. General Accounting Office, in April 1987, published
figures that confirmed there had been little or no improvement in patient
survival for the 12 most common cancers from 1950 to 1982, despite expenditure
of $1,000 million a year on research.
The picture is no different in the United Kingdom. There has been some welcome
progress in understanding how cancer attacks the body and a few of the more
uncommon forms have shown dramatic evidence of improved treatment, such as
leukemias and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. But there has been almost no change in
very common and widespread forms of the disease such as cancer of the breast and
lungs in women, or prostate and bladder in men. At the same time, the incidence
of cancer has increased considerably, offsetting the gains that have been made.
Amongst British men, for instance, there were 2,721 deaths per million from
cancers of all types between 1971-1975: compared with 2,970 deaths per million
in 1981-1985, an increase of 9 per cent. For women, the increase over the same
period was even higher, at 14 per cent.
In the February 1991 Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Dennis Burkitt,
who discovered the link between cancer and lack of dietary fibre, wrote that,
'Little real success has been achieved,' and that 'most cancer research is
misdirected.' Burkitt called for a new strategy focussing on prevention because,
'medicine has waged a major war against cancer, concentrating on earlier
diagnosis and improved therapy. The war is not being won.'
