The Politics of Cancer is his contribution to the debate over the future of the environmental health movement. In it he has pulled together a monumental amount of information on specific carcinogens, on the scientific background to cancer, and on the “scientific” and “non-scientific” opposition to regulation. He...
Tag - book review
Death on the Job is a relatively short (196 pages) reference for workers, health professionals, and lay advocates, summarizing what everyone — industry, government, unions — is doing about occupational health and why. Berman's original research and radical perspective combine to make this a valuable work for those of...
Overall, Brian Martin's book provides a valuable tool for demonstrating how scientific work is tied up in social and political forces. The book should be of particular value in academic courses which deal with the nature of the scientific process and I hope it will serve as a model for analyses of topics such as...
Marx generally argued that the demands of capitalist production would create increasing antagonism between workers and managers, culminating in the rupture of existing social controls. The fact that this rupture has not happened has led Marxists to question how capitalist control is actually maintained in the...
The Food and Nutrition Group of the Boston chapter of Science for the People has revised our alternative curriculum for high school students entitled Feed. Need. Greed (first written in 1974). Our goal is to raise the awareness of students and teachers to the "why's" of food production, to the effects of diet on...
Statements like: "the 'superbug' that last year destroyed $45 million worth of cotton is now attacking the nation's 42,000-acre supply of winter lettuce, destroying 10% to 20% of the early plantings'' and "It's threatening maybe 50% of the crop and if we don't get some kind of control, lettuce could go up to $2 a head"
If you drive through the New River Valley region of southwestern Virginia -the Virginia Highland-you will see as beautiful a land as you could ever imagine. A rural land, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains on one side the Alleghenies on another, you'll see rolling hills and gentle valleys, forests on the steep...
One of America's first physicians could not convince his patients that they should pay for his services. They thought it appropriate to pay for the drugs that he supplied, but not for his attention and time. It seemed natural for one person to care about another, not to charge for it. This incident, related in Barbara...
Rapid technological change has in the past been accepted as the quickest and best method for developing a better society. Recently, widespread use of the electronic computer has rekindled the hopes of many people interested in using technology as a force for positive social change. Theodor Nelson's dual book, Computer...
Listen! We just read an incredible book. It's called The Night Is Dark and I Am Far From Home, and it's by Jonathan Kozol. Kozol demands that we gaze unflinchingly at the source of our feelings of impotence about changing society- the public school system. As Paul Simon once observed, "As I look back on all the crap I...