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Unintended consequences

Posted on 17. Feb, 2009 by NW1er in Health, People

To celebrate Darwin’s 200th birthday, Professor Sir David King, formerly the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, and Professor Richard Dawkins, all round advocate of science, delivered a riveting presentation on, “Can British science rise to the new challenges of the 21st Century?” I was fortunate enough to get tickets for this event so took a trip out of the “NW1 shire.”

Sir David looked at seven key aspects of human existence, highlighting how they are all intertwined and undermined by our coal burning tendencies: Food production, climate, biodiversity, health and education, water resource, energy security and conflict and terrorism. At its core, the presentation identified that we need to globally reduce carbon emissions by 50% in the coming years, while at the same time embracing technological and scientific progress to meet 21st Century challenges, if we want to avoid the significant risks associated with an over-heated planet.

This was not a presentation that would resonate with proponents of ‘Frankenfood’ or non-vaccination for infectious diseases. The eminent Professor suggested that global governments must understand what science has to offer and embrace scientific developments when making regulations. Interestingly, he identified the Chinese Government to be one of the most progressive in this area. As an example of short sightedness in governance, the lecture opened on the Tsunami of 2006 and discussed how the scientific community had warned of such a disaster as early as 1979 and had repeatedly suggested that an early warning system be installed in the Indian Ocean. But such pieces of kit aren’t cheap, weighing in at about $30 million, and so the governments of the region decided to wait until it was too late; the system has now been installed.

Moving on to other issues, the former advisor to the Government turned to H5N1 and suggested that whilst the probability of this virus mutating in to a human form is low, our “just in time delivery” approach is probably not the most suitable way of managing risk and preventing disaster. Sir David highlighted that should H5N1 affect the human population, every country would be infected within three months, and within the same period of time, approximately 300,000 people would die in the UK. And the social impact would not stop at death – fear would spread among the workforce, certain sections of industry would shut, people would stop attending school, to name but a few issues. From a communications point of view, companies should ask themselves if their internal issues management systems are ready and prepared to deal with such a disaster – how would you continue to motivate your staff to work, your clinicians to go to the lab, whilst at the same time informing them about the best behavioural approach to minimise their risk of infection and balance all of this against employment law issues? And then imagine if your company was for some reason at the heart of a negative bird flu story – the twitters would light up, bloggers would be bashing keyboards and (mis)information would travel quickly. Long-held corporate reputations could quite plausibly be at stake.

Unfortunately, the presentation did not get any lighter: If policy makers continue to respond slowly to the predictions of science, as well as the potential solutions that it offers, then escalating climate change may well spark ‘resource wars’ (This being the notion that countries may invade other countries to secure access to diminishing resources – ranging from metals through to land and water). An interesting point here: Did you know that farming beef requires significantly more water than any other meat, and producing all meat of course requires vastly more water than stables such as rice? It is predicted that as the global economy progresses and the developing world aligns to the standards of the West, then the demand for meats will become much higher – even as global warming means far less fresh water will be available. Of course we can desalinize salt water, but this process in itself devours energy. With our current system of power generation, energy = something burning in the world. The challenges are huge, the technologies required to fix them are complicated, but at its core, human behaviour has to change.

And that, I think, is the challenge for the 21st Century – getting society to break free from ingrained habits, developed across generations, that bias our thinking, rate limit our steps and mean that as a species, we tend not to think of the bigger picture. The challenges we face are global and the solution we require is a global approach – but this, somewhat, goes against the nature of human behaviour – to compete and to secure competitive advantage for oneself and ones genes. We will have to work hard to change behaviour and PR has a role to play in this transformation. It is vital that scientific understanding is clearly communicated to the public so that informed conversations can be held and, ultimately, social norms can be positively shaped.

And of course the media has a role to play here, let’s look at one example brought up in the Q&A section for this lecture: MMR. Within a very short time period, we have seen herd coverage in the UK for measles brought to near breaking point and an epidemic recently broke out. How did we get here? Well, the story will be familiar to many readers – a bad piece of data was published, a bandwagon was formed, and influential groups jumped on board, resulting in parents not vaccinating their children. This is a very real example of how miscommunication can lead to serious health consequences, and not just at an individual level, but to our society as a whole.

Data is key, scientific progress is crucial and open-minded policy-making is vital. Yet sitting underneath these issues is communication; ensuring that fair, balanced, transparent and accurate information and arguments are conveyed so that all different audiences can make an appropriate assessment. And I am confident that people will make the right decisions when presented with the data – we have evolved as a species, physically, intellectually and in terms of our reasoning power – so let’s communicate the information that is needed. If we think back, Darwin was derided at first – people did not accept his ideas. With time and conversations, consensus changed. Let’s just hope we achieve this quicker where climate change is concerned.

Tags: disease awareness, public health