 | | his whim, his business interests and the future of the nuclear industry; all of these being pretty much the same.
|
| | He said he doubted very much the story of 2,000 dead and large areas laid waste and desolate, never to grow a blade of grass again. He deplored the scare stories in the media that death was raining down from the skies all over the world. He drank a glass of milk front of camera, and said there was more to fear from cholesterol than radioactivity. He said he thought the death toll would be more like thirty-fivevery modest for a major industrial accident (though of course tragic for those concerned: families, etc.) and naturally there would be a statistically calculable increase in cancers in those countries subject to fallout but certainly no more than would be produced by atmospheric pollution consequent upon the continued burning off of fossil fuels. These things had to be balanced.
|
| | Look, Carl May said, this argument that we should all live as long as we possibly can is barmy: who wants to live an extra five years in a walking frame anyway? Better an earlier death, be it cancer or heart attack, than a later one. It was an old-fashioned sentiment which favoured length of life over way of life, quantity over quality. You found it the other end of the spectrum, when it came to how societies regarded birth: the old school, emotional, religious, said no contraception, no abortions, let the disabled live: the more life the better, regardless of quality of life. A younger, more reasonable, generation said no, let's have quality not quantity. Freely available birth control, worldwide family planning, sterilizations, vasectomies on demand, terminations all but compulsory for those diagnosed before birth as handicapped, every child a wanted childand so forth, Carl May said, while Friends of the Earth, a Bishop and the Minister of Energy tried to get a word in edgeways.
|
| | Friends of the Earth managed, "What about childhood cancer? Leukaemia?" and Carl May replied briskly if this nation really cares about the lives of its children it will stop driving about in carshow many get killed a year on the roads!and increase family allowances: if it cares about cancers in the old it will ban cigarette smoking and free hospitals for the potentially healthy and those who have not brought their troubles on themselves.
|
| | Now look, said Carl May, people will work themselves up into a state about anything, especially if it's new. They thought the building of railway lines would destroy the nation, they thought TV would destroy its culture, they thought vaccination killed. ("They were right, they were right," muttered the Bishop.) Nothing much to fear from radiation, compared to other dangers, compared to crossing the road, compared to smoking. A burst of intense radiation could kill you, sure. So could an overdose of aspirin. Nuclear power stations were, if you asked him, even more crippled by safety regulations than they were by the unions, and that was saying something. The unthinking and uninformed always fear an unseen enemy. From reds under the bed to radiation in the head, the public gets the wrong end of the stick, is ignorant and hysterical and impossible.
|
| | He stopped. Everyone in the studio was startled; even the camera crews were listening.
|
|
