Why We Can't "Outgrow" War

James Carroll asks in an opinion column in the Boston Globe Monday 1/25 if the human race can outgrow war. http://tinyurl.com/yeek4a2. Accepting his Nobel Peace prize, Martin Luther King said we could, that we should, and that in the face of weapons of mass destruction, we must; “If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.” (Full speech at http://tiny.cc/T2mv8) But King’s word “survive” captures the main reason why his honorable plea for peace is naïve, and why the answer to Carroll’s plea for reason is “No, we can’t.”

Large scale violence happens for the same reason that most violence does. When we are threatened, we often protect ourselves with physical force. And it’s not something we even think about. It’s instinctive. Whether threatened as individuals on the playground and the streets, or as tribes across larger territories, turning the other cheek is not how we are wired to react to threats. Deep in our neural architecture and chemistry, probably in our very genes, we have a powerful set of instinctive subconscious systems that help us detect and respond to danger, whether it’s a direct physical threat, a threat to our resources, or even a challenge to our basic ideas about social structure. These precognitive systems have evolved to help us survive. They fire up before thinking and reason even have a chance to contribute to our response to risk. And as the threat continues, between cognition and instinctive emotion, the edge definitely goes to the latter.

In nearly every animal known, including the human animal, the first hint of danger triggers the Fight or Flight or Freeze response. (More commonly known as the Fight or Flight response, animals that perceive a threat also instinctively freeze, so I’ve taken the liberty of renaming the phenomenon.) Before thinking even has a chance to get going, we respond to danger by instantly rearranging our bodily systems and metabolism to either fight, flee, or freeze.

One of the things those initial changes do is magnify the power of instinct over reason as our response to the risk continues. We not only use instincts first and thinking second, but in an ongoing risk response, we use emotions and instinct more than reason. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, who helped pioneer the research that identified the amygdala as the part of the brain where fear begins, says of the neural systems that control our response to risk, “While conscious control over emotions is weak, emotions can flood consciousness. This is so because the wiring of the brain at this point in our evolutionary history is such that connections from the emotional systems to the cognitive systems are stronger than the connections from the cognitive systems to the emotional systems.” (p. 19, the Emotional Brain, http://tiny.cc/DeqLG)

Ending war would require that reason conquer these self-protective instincts. That’s not entirely out of the question. We do have the capacity for thinking our way to a non-violent response to threat. And our powerful thinking cortex may yet evolve to become the more dominant contributor to our risk response system, developing smarter and more effective ways to respond to risk than our older hard-wired instincts which, so far, have worked pretty well. But for the foreseeable human future, when it comes to the perception of and response to danger, thinking comes second and instinct comes first. Even King seemed to acknowledge this in his speech when he said “…we have ancient habits to deal with...”

Two other Nobel Peace Prize winners offered their answer to Carroll. President Barack Obama said “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason (my emphasis).” (full speech at http://tiny.cc/3MMJ4) Obama talked about a “just war”. Which the Prince of non-violence himself, Mahatma Ghandi, also invoked when he said “Fighting a violent war is better than accepting injustice. So, really there is no contradiction in fighting a just war, and believing in non-violence.”

The problem is, what is just to the U.S. feels like injustice, and threat, to radical Islamists. What was just to France and Britain after the carnage of World War One didn’t feel like justice to Germans struggling to survive, so we had World War II. Nationalist tensions in the Balkans, conflict over power among tribes in Kenya, or over whose religion will “win” throughout history…the evidence of how we instinctively fight when we are threatened makes for a long tragic list that will surely grow. Until the time comes when we aren’t threatened by competition over resources, or ideas - and who can foresee that day - despite the attractive rational appeal of peace, our more dominant animal survival instincts insure that violence will continue.

Do we care more for some people than others

The unfathomable devastation and loss of the Haiti earthquake has sparked a huge outpouring of concern. Greater, in fact, than that evoked by natural disasters, including earthquakes, when they happen in places further away. Why does the Haitian disaster evoke so much more concern than massive killer earthquakes or natural disasters in Turkey or Bangladesh or China, people just as poor and powerless as those in Haiti? Shouldn't the same number of people anywhere evoke the same care?
Or are there things that are different with Haiti?

Can it simply be we are somehow more moved because Haiti is closer, which makes those people more "real".

Could it be that we relate more intimately to people, some of whose relatives live in the U.S.?

Could it be that because it's closer, and "our" media can get there, that the greater amount of coverage personifies the risk more. The risk perception literature suggests that when a risk is personified - is portrayed in human terms - it raises more concern than when it's abstract (climate change).

Could it be because the greater coverage has made us more constantly as well as intimately aware? The literature finds that the more readily we can bring a risk to mind, the more dramatically it troubles us.

Can it be that we're more aware of how impoverished Haiti is than poor parts of the world further away? Another finding of the risk perception research is that unfairness - bad things happening to people who can't protect themselves - makes risks seems worse.

The scale of this tragedy is impossible to imagine. But so was the earthquake disaster in Szechaun China that killed nearly 70,000. So was the 1991 typhoon that killed 125,000 people in Bangladesh and left millions homeless. Those tragedies, and others further away, evoked great concern, but nothing like we're seeing now.

It's not just about the numbers. Risk perception never is. Risk is a subjective thing, not quantitative. It's a matter of how things feel, and this terrible tragedy somehow feels especially awful.

The Risk of Fear of Risk (Nuclear)

The last surviving double hibakusha has died. Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who had the incredible fortune of surviving both atomic bombings in Japan, has succumbed at age 93 to stomach cancer, after leading an otherwise healthy life since he was in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later. His story, and those of all the survivors, known in Japan as hibakusha, teach us many things. One of them is that ionizing radiation from nuclear energy is indeed a carcinogen. But it’s not nearly as potent a threat as many people believe. Another lesson is that our fear of nuclear radiation may actually be making things more dangerous, not less.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki created a horrible human experiment from which we have learned just what this type of radiation can do to human health. Nearly 90,000 hibakusha have been followed by epidemiologists for nearly 65 years. Scientists compared them to a non-exposed Japanese population, to see what the radiation exposure did. The current estimate is that 572 hibakusha have died prematurely from radiation-induced cancer. To many, that is a surprisingly small number.

Research by the international Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) http://www.rerf.or.jp/ also found that the developing children of pregnant hibakusha women suffered horrible birth defects. But, awful as those impacts are, that’s about it. Studies by RERF and many others have found little other long-term health damage, even among the 54,000 hibakusha who were close to the explosions and were exposed to extraordinarily high levels of all sorts of radiation. (Ionizing radiation comes in various sorts of radioactive bits and energy waves, each of which has a different penetrating power and thus, danger.) Not even genetic damage. “Thus far, no evidence of increased genetic effects has been found,” the RERF scientists say.

The World Health Organization estimates of the health effects from Chernobyl rest on what those atomic blasts in 1945 taught us. Based on a meta analysis of the epidemiological research done post-Chernobyl, the WHO says that of several hundred thousand people exposed to potentially dangerous levels of ionizing radiation, over the entire lifetime of that population, roughly 4,000 might die prematurely from cancer caused by the radiation. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html

Again, tragic. But again, a smaller number than many people assume.

But there are other reasons why nuclear radiation is scary. It’s invisible, which makes us feel like we can’t protect ourselves, and a lack of control contributes to fear. It causes cancer, a particularly painful end result, and the more pain and suffering something causes the more afraid of it we are likely to be. It’s human-made, and that makes it scarier than natural radiation risks, like the sun (which kills an estimated 8,500 Americans per year from skin cancer. www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/500809web.pdf).

Atomic bombings, and events like Chernobyl, are large scale and sudden, and catastrophic events tend to freak us out more than chronic killers, like skin cancer, or the air pollution from burning fossil fuels, estimated to cause tens of thousands of deaths each year in the U.S., 3 million globally according to the WHO.) The huge amount of attention these catastrophic events receive - rightfully - tends to burn the fear deep into our memories, raising our sensitivity to any similar risks when they come along.

Risk is subjective, a matter of both the facts and our feelings. Despite the evidence from the hibakusha and Chernobyl, nuclear energy scares many people, who resist it as one of the solutions to climate change, or a low emission way to reduce local air pollution. Their questions - “What about another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island,” “What about terrorist attacks on nuclear plants near big cities,” “What about the waste?” are all fair concerns that must be addressed. But, as we have learned from the experience of Mr. Yamaguchi and his fellow hibakusha, we should also honestly look to what science can tell us about this risk, or any risk, and keep the actual level of danger in mind as we weigh what to be afraid of and just how afraid we need to be. Otherwise the choices we make, both as individuals and as a society, may feel good, but may actually make things worse, not better.

Risk Is In the Eye of the Beholder

This May, the dredging of the Hudson River finally began. After nearly two decades of insistence by environmentalists that the PCB-contaminated muck be scooped off the river bottom and hauled off, it’s finally going away. At least, away from the Hudson River. Of course, “Away” to some is “Here” to others. What’s interesting is that this material, which prompts such intense concern in environmentalists in the Northeast, is barely causing a stir in the community where it will end up. Most of the folks near the disposal site on the Texas/New Mexico border who will suddenly be neighbors to millions of tons of PCB-contaminated river bottom don’t seem all that worried. Same stuff. Dramatically different perceptions. Why?

Maybe it’s just the fact that PCBs can do more harm in a dynamic environment like a river than they can in a secure landfill. In the river the PCBs can harm the aquatic environment and get into fish that people eat. In the landfill, which is lined and below which are several hundred feet of impervious clay (and no groundwater below that) the possibility of exposure to the environment, or people, is practically zero.

But try locating a low-risk facility like that near a lot of communities and, scientific realities aside, the answer would be a resounding “NO WAY!” It’s a safe bet that none of the environmentalists in the Northeast who wanted the material dredged out of the river would have allowed it to be disposed of anywhere near their cities or towns. Yet just five miles from the disposal site sits Eunice New Mexico, population about 2,500, only a handful of whom are worried about the sort of place that would have a lot of other people freaked out.

Why is something that stirs such fierce concern in some, not threatening to others? It’s a great example of how the meaning of the word “risk” is less a matter of scientific fact and more a matter of perception and perspective.

To some, the very word “chemicals” evokes fear, and conjures word associations with “danger” “cancer” “toxic” or “deadly”. This is the risk perception phenomenon of Stigma. The word “chemicals” has been branded with sweepingly negative connotations. In addition, chemical risks are for the most part undetectable by our senses, which leaves us feeling powerless to protect ourselves, and that raises our fears. Also, people commonly fear risks imposed on them by others, especially by industry (the PCBs came from General Electric operations decades ago). And many people are culturally predisposed to a “We’re all in this together” communitarian, government-intervention kind of social organization, the kind of social structure required to solve big environmental problems. Subconsciously people feel that environmental issues like the Hudson PCBs, and climate change, are rallying calls that strengthen the way they think society is supposed to work. So they tend to play those risks up.

Then there are folks like those in Eunice, such as lifelong resident Mayor Matt White, with whom I recently spoke. He notes that “chemicals” means something different to people born and raised in a town with 50-60 oil wells, where the “real” risk is hydrogen sulfide gas brought up with the oil that has killed one or two people in the past few decades. They have a familiarity with at least this sort of chemical risk that puts the overall feeling of chemical risks, including PCBs, in a less worrisome perspective. They also depend economically on the health of the oil industry and, indirectly, the chemical industry that buys that oil. So the benefit of the wells outweighs the risk they accept as part of the bargain. The contaminated dredgings will mean an additional 15-20 jobs at the disposal facility, jobs that pay $40-50,000 a year. That’s an additional part of the risk-benefit equation in Eunice, a tradeoff which always colors perceptions of risk.

And Mayor White describes his community as a conservative group of people who have a more libertarian view of government’s role, more independent-minded folks who are less inclined to think government should go butting in all the time. To these Individualists, sweeping environmental problems, including like climate change, call for a social response that cuts against their independent-minded grain, so they often play such risks down.

There is no right or wrong here, just valid reasons why the same risk can look one way to one person and different to the next. Feel one way to one person and feel different to the next. That’s what’s really going on under all those fierce arguments about environmental risks after all. They are battles over perspectives, battles over underlying worldviews. The facts are just the weapons by which the battle is fought. The facts aren’t never the reasons for fighting it in the first place. It’s how people see those facts.

In this case there was no battle. Both perspectives “won”. They got what they wanted. But there is a valuable lesson here for all the times such issues get contentious. “Risk” is in the eye of the beholder. There is no “truth”. The facts can look quite different from different perspectives, and anyone arrogantly claiming that their view of the facts is “right”, is arrogantly denying the valid concerns of the other parties and pouring gasoline on the fire. Solutions will be a lot easier to reach if the parties to these conflicts respect the reasons why people feel the way they do about the issue, and account for those feelings and worldviews in the steps proposed for moving forward.

Uh Oh Nano, Part 2.

(The following essay was written 2 years ago. It is being posted now in connection with research released this week in Nature Nanotechnology showing that people's cultural self-identification also contributes to their perceptions of risk, in this case the risks that may arise from nanotechnology. For a summary of that research and a citation to the original journal article, see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081207133749.htm. For an earlier post on nanotechnology, see the second post at http://onrisk.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=

Nanotechnology, the capacity to manipulate materials at atomic and molecular scales, holds promise bounded only by the human imagination. But if this promise is to be fully realized in ways that respect potential harms to human and environmental health and safety, serious and ongoing consideration needs to be given to the way the public will react to nanotechnology and all its specific applications. For despite it’s benefits, if public apprehension builds, the potential of nanotechnology could be severely limited. The findings of the field of research known as risk perception offer valuable insights into what that public reaction might be. Understanding those potential reactions will allow proponents of nanotechnology to respect public concerns and address them through more effective risk communication, and advance the prospects of the entire field.
The Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus observed “People are disturbed, not by things, but by the view they take of them.” Indeed, researchers including Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischoff, Sarah Lichtenstein, and others, have found that risks seem to have shared characteristics which, quite apart from the scientific facts and statistical probabilities, play a key role in making us more or less afraid. These affective/emotional characteristics are a fundamental part of how we frame our worries. They essentially form the subconscious backdrop by which we “decide” what to be afraid of and how afraid to be.
Perhaps the most important of these characteristics is the matter of trust. As leaders in the field of risk perception and risk communication have found, the more we trust – the less we fear. And the less we trust – the more afraid we are likely to be. Trust will almost certainly play a key role in the acceptance of, or resistance to, nanotechnologies.
Trust is determined by many factors. It is determined in part by who does the communicating. The facts being presented could be the same, but the trustworthiness of the communicator will help determine how worried the audience will feel. For example, people who learn about nanotechnology from the chemical industry, which is less trusted according to many polls, are more likely to worry than people who learn about it from health care professionals like doctors or nurses, more trusted professions.
Trust is also established through honesty. BSE affords a good example. In Japan, after the first indigenous infected cow was found, the government promised there would be no more. A second cow was found just days later. The government then said they had created a ban on feeding ruminant protein back to healthy cows – which is how the disease spreads – only to have the press learn and report that the “ban” was only voluntary. The press also reported that the government had kept secret an EU report rating Japan at high risk for BSE. These less-than-honest statements by the government badly damaged trust and fueled much greater fear in Japan than in Germany, where, within about a month of the discovery of the first indigenous infected cow, two cabinet ministers were sacked and changes were proposed to make agricultural practices more natural and less mechanical. Beef sales rebounded in Germany quickly, unlike Japan, partly because of the different degrees of honesty on the part of the government.
Trust also grows from an organization’s actions. Again BSE affords an example. In Canada and the U.S., after the first infected cows were found, the governments were able to point out that they had long ago instituted a feed ban and other restrictions to keep the risk low. As much as citizens might not have trusted the government in general, in this matter the responsible agencies had demonstrated their competence in keeping the risk low. This demonstration of competence probably played a role in the relatively minimal impact on consumer beef sales experienced within each country.
Trust is also established when an organization respects the reality of the public’s fears, even though there may be no scientific basis for those fears. In the U.S., authorities withdrew muscle meat from the market that had come from the slaughterhouse that processed the BSE-infected cow. This despite the scientific consensus that muscle meat is not a vector for BSE. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it was acting “out of an abundance of caution…”. In other words, they were acknowledging and responding to the reality of the public’s fear and doing something that did not reduce the physical risk, but reduced public apprehension. The implicit message in such actions is that the agency was not being defensive, but was being responsive to public concern. That kind of action encourages people to trust such an agency, more than when the message is “There are no scientific reasons for your fears. The facts as we see them says there is no risk. So we are not going to act.” This potentially damaging message has already been heard from a small number of scientists in the area of nanotechnology.
Trust is also established by sharing control. In the case of nanotechnologies, this could include shared control over the writing of public health and environmental risk regulations, or shared control over the development of societal and ethical guidelines. The more that people feel they have some control over their own health and future, the less afraid they will be. The same risk will evoke more worry if people feel they have less control.
Trust is also built by openness. In the development of nanotechnologies, this should include dialogue with various stakeholders, a fully open exchange of scientific data, open government regulatory development, and open discussion of societal and ethical issues, among other areas. The more that people feel they are being deceived, lied to, or manipulated, the more afraid of a risk they are likely to be. Openness reassures them that they can know what they need to know to keep themselves safe. An open process is inherently trust-building.
Trust will be difficult to establish as nanotechnologies develop, because the driving forces behind such development will be principally commercial, industrial, corporate, and government, and the politically and profit-driven sectors of society are, de facto, perceived to be out for their own good more than they are out to serve the common good. So special attention and effort must be paid to establishing trust in everything that a government, a business, or a scientist does while working on commercial nanotechnological research, development or application.
But there are other risk perception characteristics that could bear on public acceptance of, or resistance to, nanotechnologies.
People tend to be more afraid of risks that are human-made than risks that are natural. Nano is almost certainly going to perceived as a human-made technology.
We tend to worry more about risks like nanotechnology that are hard to comprehend because they are scientifically complex, invisible, and not yet completely studied and understood. This could well invoke calls for a stringent application of the Precautionary Principle, and proponents of nanotechnology would be well advised to give serious consideration to such calls until a reasonable amount of safety data is developed.
We tend to worry more about risks that are imposed on us than risks we knowingly choose to take. Nanotechnologies will provide finished materials in some cases, which could appear in the label of a product to alert the consumer and give them choice. But in many cases, nano substances will serve as intermediates or raw materials or catalysts, substances which can not be labeled, and which therefore could evoke concern because people are going to be exposed to them without any choice.
We worry more about risks that are new than the same risk after we’ve lived with it for a while. While carbon black and some nano materials have been around for a while, many nano materials and products are new, with different behavioral characteristics than anything we’ve ever known. And of course the precise ability to manipulate things on a nano scale is new. This too could feed greater public apprehension about this technology.
And we tend to worry more about risks from which we personally get less benefit, and vice versa. For some nanotechnologies, for some people, the personal benefits may well outweigh the risks. But when they don’t – or when the benefits principally accrue to someone else - fear and resistance could rise.
It is important to respect the reality and the fundamental roots of these perception factors. They can not be manipulated away or circumvented with a clever press release, website, or a few open public meetings and dialogue. Human biology has found that the brain is constructed in such a way that external information is sent to the subcortical organs that generate a fear response before that information gets to the part of the brain that reasons and thinks “rationally”. In short, we fear first and think second. No press release can undo that biology. It is quite likely that, because of some of the characteristics of nanotechnology listed above (human-made, hard to understand, imposed, new, lack of trust in industry), that if the first way people hear about it involves some hint of threat or negativity, that the initial reaction many people have will be worry and concern.
Moreover, the brain is constructed such that circuits stimulating a ‘fear’ response are more numerous than those bringing rationality and reason into the cognitive process of risk perception. In short, not only do we fear first and think second, we fear more, and think less.
Again, this suggests the likelihood that first impressions many people will have of nanotechnology will be predominated by caution and concern.
Fortunately, both the biology and psychology of risk perception have been fairly well characterized. Insights from those fields can guide the design of research to find out how people are likely to react to nanotechnology as it becomes more common, is introduced into their lives, and as it gets more and more attention in the press, a trend already beginning in many places. Research that understands how people are likely to react is the first step toward designing risk management strategies, including risk communication, to address public concerns.
It is imperative that such research be done soon, so it can be used to develop risk management and risk communication strategies that will maximize public understanding of nanotechnology, and public participation in the process of its development and implementation. With these steps, the potentials of this remarkable field can be more fully realized while respecting public concerns and insuring public and environmental health and safety.

WORLD DESTROYED!!!

Scientists from around the world are eagerly awaiting the first experiments this summer at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, which will smash subatomic particles together to try to replicate conditions in the universe a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Some say the experiments could create a black hole and destroy the earth. Scientists dismiss those fears as irrational. It's a classic collision of the two ways we humans try to sort out the risks we face.



This just in, from Geneva, Switzerland.
The world has been destroyed, consumed in the infinite gravity of a black hole triggered by an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. All life on earth was extinguished and the earth itself was crushed down to the size of an atom.
However, scientists running the experiment say that, as predicted by the laws of quantum physics, our former world and all life as it existed were instantly replaced with identical copies. “What's the big deal? Nobody even noticed,” said Dr. I. M. Smart, a leader of the science team conducting the experiment. He added "It's just as we predicted. People have to start trusting scientists and stop worrying when we tell them they're safe."
Scientists say the experiment identified a new condition of matter, which they have named the Significant Major Unknown Gyration, or SMUG. “We’re very excited,” Dr. Smart said. “Discovery of Smugness has taught us important new things about the creation of the universe, even if it did require the fleeting destruction of the world. That’s just how science progresses.”
The experiment survived several lawsuits seeking to avoid the destruction that occurred this morning. The plaintiff in those suits, Walter Whiner, could not be reached for comment on the outcome of the experiment. His wife said he disappeared at 4:13 a.m., precisely the moment the experiment began.
Police report that a number of other people are missing. Officials in Cincinnati, Ohio say the entire staff of The Creationism Museum disappeared during a conference entitled “Darwin was a Communist”. Police in Washington, D.C. are searching for Bette B. Scared, founder of “Vaccines Cause Autism”. Australian police say they are searching for Bea Afraid, author of “The Only Safe Risk is ZERO Risk” and a well-known opponent of genetically modified food.
Dr. Smart denies any connection between the disappearances and the momentary destruction of the Earth caused by his experiment. “Under the laws of super strong theory we predict with a 99.99% confidence interval that they should look for these people in Dimension X,” he said. Smart added "We call it The Irrational Dimension. Which isn't so different from where we think they've been living all along.”

Following the momentary destruction of the world, attorneys rushed to file several class action lawsuits. The first was entered at court just 45 seconds after the destruction event by Attorney Sue Everyone of the law firm of Screwem, Ligh, and Profit, who said “This is the most egregious case of arrogant scientists run amok in the history of mankind. It doesn't matter that we may have unlocked the mystery of how the universe was created. My clients, who include anyone on the planet who was alive at 4:13 this morning, were harmed when a nanosecond of their lives was taken away from them." Everyone is claiming infinite punitive damages.

Officials at the Large Hadron Collider say their work will continue. Critics have already filed legal action to stop an upcoming experiment which they say could set the Earth on fire. Scientists say their work is safe. They call the critics irrational. The critics say the scientists are arrogant and aren't taking the risk seriously.
The court hearing on the upcoming experiment will be held next month on Friday the 13th.

The Conflict Between Nuclear Fears and Nuclear Facts

Mark Twain said "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."

We worry about a lot of things in this threatening world, and as Twain suggested, sometimes our worries are based more on our perception of the facts than on the facts themselves. So what's a government to do when people think they have been harmed by something, and they want the government to compensate them, only the evidence says they're wrong.

Well the Japanese have just answered that question with a resounding "Pay them anyway."

This is about the survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are known in Japan as the HIBAKUSHA, people who lived within about two and a quarter miles of ground zero or visited those areas in the days after the blasts. There are roughly 250,000 of them still alive. Their average age is 64.

HIBAKUSHA rightly get all sorts of special government benefits. Those who suffer from five diseases connected with radiation are also eligible for special medical benefits. In 2001 the government established science-based standards to determine who qualifies, since many HIBAKUSHA, who lived further from the center of the explosions, received practically no radiation dose at all. That science-based approach basically said that the further away from ground zero you lived, the less radiation you were exposed to, and the less likely it is that radiation caused your illness. (Remember, lots of elderly people get cancer, like skin cancer or prostate cancer, and radiation has nothing to do with it.) Under that standard 99 out of every hundred atomic bomb survivors who applied for special medical benefits were turned down.

300 of them sued the Japanese government, and those lawsuits got a lot of attention in the press. Political pressure built on the government. Then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was already in political trouble, so he promised a new system.

That new system was just announced and, basically, it says the faqcts don't matter as much as people's concerns. Now any HIBAKUSHA who is sick gets paid, no matter how far they lived from ground zero, no matter if they received any radiation at all. As one member of the government panel that wrote the new rules said "Fear is particularly high about radiation. It's more important to support the HIBAKUSHA regardless of the lack of scientific evidence."

That FEELS good, FEELS fair. But think about it. By that standard governments should be paying people who are worried about electric power lines, or artificial sweeteners, or silicone in their breast implants, or autism from vaccines, or brain tumors from cell phones…or any number of other risks which many of us fear, fears not supported by the facts.

Worrying too much can cause stress, and stress hurts our health. So unlike many of the things we fear, the risk from fear itself is real, and needs to be respected in government policy. But the Japanese policy goes so much further than that. They've basically said that emotions trump science, and in a world in which so many of us are worried about so many things, a policy like that could turn out to be a truly troubling thing.