ABSTRACT
For Elizabeth Whelan, the public’s fear of cancer seems to have spawned a new disease, more malignant than cancer itself. This new illness, cancerphobia, menaces the social body just as certainly as its progenitor imperils the physical body. Now evidently of epidemic proportions, cancerphobia can be traced to an antitechnology irrationalism, a backwater chemical anxiety, a cold-sweat fear of modem living. Whelan perceives the carriers of this newest social pathology as “prophets of doom,” the source of the misinformation on cancer which “directs” the policies of the regulatory agencies concerned with health. The consequences are said to be far reaching. Industry suffers from “more regulation, higher costs, fewer jobs, and limited production.” Consumers experience “high prices, higher taxes, fewer products—a diminished standard of living.” Aligned against these hazards is a new breed of public- health educator—the scientist-consumer, lending perspective to the uncontrollable mass of public confusion.
