AT LONG LAST, the official report into the events leading up to the terrible
tragedy of BSE has been delivered to Parliament. Already, more than 80 people in
Britain have died after prolonged suffering with variant CJD contracted by
eating infected beef. Millions of cattle have been slaughtered to contain the
epidemic,which has cost the government and the beef industry £4 billion.
Many more people might yet die in Britain. And across Europe the disease
continues to spread.
The report from Lord Phillips is on a scale to match this appalling tragedy:
16 volumes long, it took two and half years to complete at a cost of £27
million. It has a cast of hundreds of civil servants, politicians and
scientists, and dissects the twists and turns of a decade of policy-making in
extraordinary detail
(see pages 4 to 9).
But despite the vast scale of the report it contains only one truly important
message: secrecy and paternalism make for bad government and bad science. Again
and again, the report shows that it was the unwillingness of politicians and
civil servants to “alarm the public” that led them to stifle the open discussion
that would have made it possible to deal with BSE more quickly and effectively.
The overwhelming official distrust of the public’s ability to deal with risk
consistently forced them to provide false reassurances about the safety of
beef.
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As Phillips put it: “Ministers, officials and scientific advisory committees
alike were all apprehensive that the public would react irrationally to BSE. As
each additional piece of data about the disease became available, the fear was
that it would cause disproportionate alarm, would be seized on the by the media
and by dissident scientists as demonstrating that BSE was a danger to humans,
and would lead to a food scare.”
It is this patronising attitude among those who govern and the
infantalisation of the governed that must change. We cannot allow any more, as
Phillips puts it, for the public to be “sedated by the official presentation of
risk”. People don’t need facile reassurances; they need information and the
chance to make up their own minds. They need openness.
It sounds simple enough. But bringing it about will require profound changes.
Openness requires information to be made freely available to everyone as fast as
possible. It requires decision-making processes to be made transparent. And,
most important of all, it requires governments and the governed to become
comfortable with the notions of uncertainty and risk.
Consider any one of the major scientific issues of our time: nuclear power,
global warming, genetically modified foods, new vaccines and antibiotics, mobile
phones, radiation from power transmission lines, air pollution, pesticides…
Everywhere you turn, new technologies and changes in the way we live will
introduce risk. Science can rarely provide the certainties needed to banish
those risks totally. Public and politicians must understand and debate risk and
benefits, agree when too many uncertainties remain and when the precautionary
principle must take priority.
A policy of openness has many mundane but important implications. Advisory
committees cannot be stuffed with the great and the good; they must include the
lay public and the doubters. Experts from abroad should always be brought in to
add an impartial voice. And relevant scientific information cannot be held back
by the publication schedules of journals. But the biggest change needed is
cultural: the public must be trusted with the whole truth.
So much is obvious from the Phillips report. But what are the chances we will
see such a shift? There are some welcome signs. John Krebs, head of the newly
established Food Standards Agency, insists: “We have made a clean start on
openness and public accountability. Our research and advice is open to scrutiny.
And when there is uncertainty and risk, we say so.”
But that is just one voice. The Labour government is turning out be even more
secretive, untrusting and out of touch with the public than those that came
before. The Freedom of Information laws it promised to deliver quickly are still
struggling through Parliament, and have already been too watered down.
Real changes are needed. We must continue to call for free access to
information on every issue where science and technology affect the public.
Everyone who has been made angry or lost faith with government over the BSE
tragedy should be vociferous in their demands. Every scientist whose expertise
might matter on any of the issues we now confront should insist on making their
voices heard.
The government has been warned. If there is no change in culture there will
be no trust, no progress and eventually there will be another tragedy like that
of BSE.
