Chapter 7

Chapter 7 titled Metaphoric Illnesses: How Not to Criticize the Establishment focused on Gulf War Syndrome, breast implant disorder, and finally the great vaccination scare which occurred in the 1980s and 90s.  The chapter begins with what Glassner calls "we also create certain illnesses, what I call 'Metaphoric Illnesses,' to help us come to terms with features of our society that we are unprepared to confront directly."(Glassner 153) The biggest of these metaphoric illnesses being neurasthenia in the nineteenth century. Neurasthenia was supposed, to be brought about by women emancipation and new technologies; it helped backup fears, political ideologies, and prejudice. Gulf War Syndrome (GWS)..... well the stories goes that vets serving in the Gulf War came in contact will biochemical weapons and that they caught disease; not only disease but a disease that could pass on to their children and at one point was rumored to be contagious. Both of these were refuted, one by a study "comparing 3,998 infants born to Gulf War veterans and 41,463 babies of other military personnel, the researchers found no evidence of an increase in the risk of birth defects for children of Gulf War vets." (Glassner 157) The Gulf War Syndrome was used as a roundabout way to talk about shortcomings of our military during the war. The book then jumps to Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) which is much like it sounds, people getting sick from common chemicals such as cleaners and perfume. One statistic given by Michael Haederle from the Los Angeles Times in 1996 stated that "MCS afflicts anywhere from 15 to 33 percent of the population."(Haederle 161) The MCS scare is used much like the GWS scare whereas instead of attacking the military it attacks consumer goods and both attack medic. This criticising of the medical industry is somewhat absurd considering how much knowledge was gained by medical professionals. The next topic is another critic of medical science, breast implant disorder. This disorder or so it's called refutes any and all studies that prove silicone breast implants cause no illnesses in women with simple anecdotes about there pain. Something that these women miss is that "with a million women with silicone implants, hundreds of thousands will become ill by chance alone."(Glassner 165) The implant scare caused a loss of jobs and caused people to delay needed medical treatment. The only groups that made money were law firms and TV shows.  The reason behind the breast implant scare comes from a dispute between Republicans and Democrats on an issue called tort reform. The next subsection covers a case similar to the breast implant scare but the ending was all around positive or so I thought. The case in point is the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine pandemic or otherwise known as the Whooping cough pandemic which started in in 1982. The DPT scare was stopped and even reversed due to Congresses enacting legislation in 1986 which fixed 4 problems at once: first, it prevented a public health crisis, shielded important drug companies from unavoidable litigation, assuaged parents, and freed courts of interminable and highly adversarial trials. Sadly this was not the end of the scare; it continued years after and developed promptly in the 1990s. A scare needs two things to continue past what would arguably be its expiration date; one being it "taps into current cultural anxieties, and it has to have media-savvy advocates behind it."(Glassner 177) The Vaccine scare had both and proved as Glassner says "Whatever else advocacy groups may achieve through fear campaigns about metaphoric illnesses, they rarely facilitate the advance of medical science."(Glassner 179)

Article of Relation:

The article I chose was provided to me by a classmate of mine Jonathan. The article comes from The Independent and was written by Katie Forster on May 11, 2017, over vaccines and if they are safe for children. The article takes a different route than the chapter in the aspect that Forster is defending the use of vaccines. She uses permanently logos and ethos with a very small amount of emotional appeals. She also degrades the opposing argument by drawing comparisons to past occurrences and conspiracy theories. The article brings up lots of studies, professional views, and specific vaccines and what their side effects are which improves the writer's ethos because by stating flaws or problems you eliminate bias which then makes the audience listen and trust what the writer says. Some of the organizations used include the World Health Organisation and the Food and Drug Association both of which are top-notch medical research institutions. One thing that Forster does in the article to destroy the opposing argument is shine light on their bias used in both studies and when trying to disprove the argument that vaccines are not only safe for children but save thousands of lives. I am aware that I rambled on during my Chapter revision and that my article revision is extremely short. HERE is the link to the article. But, this does conclude Chapter 7 of the Culture of Fear. Hope you enjoyed and that you're keeping up on my front page blog.