Mans inhumanity to man....further evidence....

Fear is a powerful motivator, and that applies on every level from individual right up to nation state. It causes a range of reactions, from paralysis to paranoia, from aggression to xenophobia, but one of the major problems of a fear response is that it encourages irrationality in terms of decision making. By this I am suggesting that decisions can be made from a fear position that do not match to generally accepted conventions of ethics and morals. An example of this was highlighted in a documentary last night in channel 4's "True stories" series. The program featured the people of a region of Khazakstan who were deliberately exposed to radiation during atomic weapon tests in the 1950's. Post World War II the Americans and Russians engaged in an arms race as a consequence of the American use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There were two aspects of this arms race, the first was the drive to build and test bigger and bigger weapons with higher yields, and the second was to take these bigger weapons and understand the implications in terms of damage in the short, medium and long terms, both in terms of damage to land and property, and also in terms of biological damage. In America bomb tests were carried out in unpopulated regions of New Mexico, particularly at the White Sands Missile Range, but in Russia a decision was taken to carry out tests in areas of Khazakstan with an indigenous population. Research has subsequently been carried out into the effects of radiation and contamination on that population, particularly into the effect on radiation on mutation rates through pregnancy.

The programme featured local people demonstrating with Geiger counters the massive radiation levels still found in an area used for grazing animals and sourcing drinking water. It also showed a local Doctor and gynaecologist espousing genetic passporting, genetic screening and essentially a programme of eugenics and birth control to prevent the mutations entering the gene pool permanently. It was clear that these were people who had been left with a situation about which they had little if any control, and were left to simply try to make the best of an extraordinarily difficult situation. Mothers to be had learned not to inform anyone of their pregnancy until 20 weeks to prevent the possibility of being forced into an abortion, so they are missing out on a significant amount of pre-natal care and putting themselves and their unborn babies at risk as a direct consequence of bomb test carried out 50 years ago.

I don't see that there is a soultion to this situation in the short to medium term, but we have to, as a species, do everything that we can to make sure that our leaders and our communities are not driven by fear. By acting from a position of fear we make the wrong decisions, and pay the price for generations.