Health

Are small food producers responsible for the food poisoning epidemic? - this talk was broadcast at various dates during December 2003 on the World Business Report programme of the BBC World Service, as part of a series of six talks by Edward Goldsmith.

The gene for unemployment - There is an growing tendency to blame human ills - physical and psychological - on 'defective' genes. But is it our genes that are defective? Or is it rather the pathological environment in which we live? Deprived of community, eating nutritionally impoverished foods, surrounded by industrial pollution ... the raw conditions of life for billions of people make a healthy and happy existence impossible. How convenient for industry to blame all this on our defective genes - and then to sell us 'solutions' in the form of biotechnology. Editorial for the Doomsday Funbook (February 2006).

Unhygienic? Or just small scale? - an article for The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006), written in June 2001. "Throughout the world today governments, in accordance with WTO legislation, are imposing costly installations on small food producers on the premise that their activities are not hygienic, which few can afford and which thereby pushes many of them out of business", yet "it is the big intensive food producers, not the small ones, that are responsible for the epidemic of food poisoning and, probably, for the growing incidence of other diseases as well."

Unhygienic - or just small-scale? (short version) - this essay explores the way in which food hygiene regulations are pushing small, safe, traditional high quality food producers out of business by imposing inappropriate and wildly expensive requirements - while industrial food producers reap the benefits.

Unhygienic - or just small-scale? (long version) - first published in The Ecologist Special Report June 2001. Republished in Rivista di Biologia (Biology Forum) Vol. 94 No. 3, September / December 2001 pp. 511-533. This essay explores the way in which food hygiene regulations are pushing small, safe, traditional high quality food producers out of business by imposing inappropriate and wildly expensive requirements - while industrial food producers reap the benefits.

Hell on Earth: mankind and the environment - Humanity has transformed the planet almost unrecognisably, now we talk of re-engineering ourselves to fit ... how we can miss the point so dramatically? Published in The Ecologist Vol. 30 No. 7, October 2000.

Gaia and the global corporations (extended version) - "Development involves methodically destroying the real world or the world of living things in order to substitute in its stead a totally different world; the surrogate world or world of human artefacts ... ". This article, based on Edward Goldsmith's keynote address at the International Forum on Globalization in April 1998, was published in Caduceus magazine issues 42 and 43, winter 1998 and spring 1999.

Technology - a false religion - a review of Why things bite back by Edward Tenner. "Edward Tenner's book is truly blasphemous. Its thesis is that our technological efforts to manage the world of living things are not working out too well. At first they may seem magically successful, but then comes what Tenner calls their 'revenge effect', which at best transforms acute problems into chronic ones, at worst gives rise to all sorts of new problems, often more serious than whatever problem was targeted in the first place ... ". Published in The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 5, September / October 1998.

My fears about GM food crops In this introduction to "The Monsanto Files", The Ecologist's special issue on Monsanto, Edward Goldsmith engages with the problems of corporate control of the food chain as well as the potential health issues associated with genetic modification. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 5, September / October 1998.

The real causes of cancer - "Cancer is now a disease that afflicts one woman out of three and one man out of two, and everybody knows in their hearts what the main causes are: exposure to carcinogenic chemicals in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe, and ionising radiation ... However the 'Cancer Establishment' ... will not admit it so the cancer epidemic is blamed on such things as faulty genes, viruses, eating fatty foods and drinking alcohol ... ". Unpublished, September 1997.

Cancer: are the experts lying? - yes they are, in denying the role of carcinogenic pollution, both chemical and radioactive, while supporting implausible theories which pin the blame for cancer on cancer sufferers themselves.

Open letter to Judy Maciejowska - this powerful letter, dated 8 March 1995, was written to Green Party activist Judy Maciejowska

The medical-industrial complex - a review of Health and the global environment by Ross Hume Hall, 1990.

The ecology of health - modern health services have failed to deliver the promised goods, argues Edward Goldsmith. He attrributes this failure to the "chemical warfare" approach to treating disease and our decision, as a society, to subordinate health needs to the imperatives of the economy and industry. Originally published in The Ecologist Vol 10 Nos. 6/7, July-September 1980, then in La Medecine à la Question 1981 (France). A revised version was later released in 1988 as Chapter 4 of The Great U-Turn.

The scapegoat principle - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 10 No. 3, March 1980, by The Editors. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

The importance of being average - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 9 No. 8/9, November / December 1979. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). To calculate average exposures to pollutants, and average susceptibilities to their ill-effects, is all very well. Except that "Mr. Average does not exist. He is but a figment of the statistician's imagination."

The future of tree diseases - What has caused the epidemics that are currently decimating our trees? The factors involved are intimately linked to economic development - and the only hope for our trees lies in de-industrialisation. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 9, Nos. 4-5, August 1979.

Blind mans buff - this article published in the Ecologist Quarterly of Spring 1978, argues that "Seek not, and ye shall not find" is the new mantra of the industrial - scientific research complex when it comes to the possibility of discovering inconvenient truths about the dangers of pesticides, food additives, agricultural antibiotics, radiation, and sugar.

Asbestos and cancer - presenting the overwhelming case for the total prohibition of asbestos. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 8, August 1973.

We are all addicts - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 18, December 1971. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "I once saw a film of a European doctor teaching Samoans how to brush their teeth. Particularly striking was the fact that their teeth were white and shiny, while his were black ... "

What of Britain′s future? - this prescient article was originally published as the concluding chapter of Can Britain Survive?, published by Tom Stacey, London, 1971, and Sphere Books, London, 1971 (paperback). The book is a selection of articles from The Ecologist, together with original papers and articles from other periodicals, collected and edited by Edward Goldsmith while Editor of The Ecologist. The article was reprinted two years later in The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 11, November 1973, with the following introductory paragraphs.