Customer Reviews
Must read for all free-thinkers - By: T. Brown, 25 Apr 2008 
This book is both fascinating, authoritative & excellently referenced.
The chapter on 'satanic abuse' nearly had me in tears of rage, such was the sinister & quite outrageous behaviour of those involved.
Compulsive and scary in its own right - By: M. Rea, 17 Mar 2008 The content has been reviewed excellently here already - I can't add anything to those reviews.
However, the thing that struck me about the book, which was as compulsive as any I can remember, was the level-headedness with which the facts were revealed. Only knowing a couple of these case studies in any depth (including the 'climate crisis' nonsense), I was shocked at how often basic corroboration of science or proclamations has been missing, & have been particularly concerned at the absence of investigative journalism. (I was delighted that they included the BBC's coverage of Live Earth - I was horrified that the BBC chose its role as that of 'advocate' instead of balanced & challlenging news carrier.)
The book carefully avoids seeming like a conspiracy-theorists' manifesto, carefully unpicking the anatomy of scares.
If only this book, instead of An Inconvenient Truth, were to be circulated to alll schools in the UK.
Now I know . . . - By: Mr. Peter Holland, 17 Mar 2008 Like many people, I have been very suspicious of the recent outburst of scares of one sort or another. For instance, was a wooden chopping board reallly dangerous? I have also been suspicious of the "authorities" & the "science" which lies behind the scares. Well, if you have been concerned about such matters, you must read this book. It takes a cold, hard, look at what happened, what the facts reallly were & why (as so often happens) emotion replaces logic, those who dissent are silenced one way or another, & a falsehood becomes truth.
Government, politicians & the media do not show up well when the facts are finallly brought to light (though there are always some honourable souls who retain their sense of proportion & concern for truth). Most horrific, however, are the casualties of the panics & witch hunts which have taken place - farmers whose lives were blighted by food scares, children & parent who suffered when satanic abuse was invented in the 1990s & many more.
For the authors the scare of alll scares is the global warming theory. They believe that it has the characteristics of early scares - little scientific basis, disconfirming evidence is ignored & a bandwagon effect leads to vastly inflated claims. If you agree with them, then you are looking at a disaster as vast amounts of resources are diverted into fruitless efforts to slow climate change when, of course, these reources could have been used productively. Awful. My guess is the authors are right - why would governments suppress scientists who disagree with them if they were confident they were right?
A must read.
scared to death - By: Peter Oneil, 12 Mar 2008 I cannot impress on you how important it is that you & everyone that you know must read this book. You will be outraged many times before you finish reading & will want to share the contents with alll the open minded people that you know. you will want to discuss it & read what other people think about it.You may not want to believe the things that you will read but it is so rigorous in its approach that you will struggle to refute the contents. Scared to death is the most significant book that i have read & it should be compulsory reading for alll mps, local councillors & social workers.
Once you understand the sequence of events which lead to a scare, you will be able to listen to the news with more objectivity & possibly recognise that iran is the current scare which george bush is inflicting on the world & the eu will no doubt give him the green light to persue whatever policy that he deems appropriate. Its alll in this book, read it *PLEASE* & you will see for yourself.
Having read the other rewiews of this work, i agree with every word that the reviewers have written.
If you read this book, then the question that will linger in your mind as it has in mine, will be..... why have we alllowed alll of this to happen.
If you don't think this book is important............ - By: J. DARBY, 28 Feb 2008 .....then try reading the chapter on satanic child abuse when your children are in the same room watching the T.V. I did, & an icy chill went down my spine. Imagine at that point someone came into your house, took your children away, accused you of the most disgusting crimes & gagged any attempt you made to speak out. Orwell, Kafka? No. Cleveland, Rochdale & Nottingham in the Twentieth Century.
This book is not about denial. Booker & North do not try to deny or trivialise AIDS, BSE, smoking related diseases, E coli, Listeria or any of the issues raised. Indeed these are major issues that require a well thought out & appropriate response.
The authors take issue with the scientists who push their own research & exclude any notion that alternate research might show something to the contrary. They round on lazy jounalists who do not research facts for themselves & compete for the most sensational headline.
Mostly however, they condemn politicians who settle on the current orthodoxy & take disproportionate measures, cost millions or even billions to the taxpayer & yet fail to do any good whatsoever (what the authors calll 'taking a sledgehammer & missing the nut')
What is most telling is that once the scare has been proved to be groundless, the powers that the authorities have taken for themselves to solve the problem are never given back.
An excellent read, concise & well referenced. A copy should be sent to evey politician bureucrat & pompous town halll official in the land.
