Sick Society (2008)

Book Review from the August 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine by Stan Cox (Pluto Press £14.99)

This book examines the impact on workers, consumers and the whole planet of the production of medicines, food and various chemicals. Cox’s scientific expertise makes it more than just another volume about the destruction of the environment.

 

India is a major manufacturer of bulk drugs (raw materials for various pills and tablets), mainly for export. One consequence is that factories producing these bulk drugs pollute their local environment, leading to greater ill-health among residents. One study found that cancer rates were eleven times higher in villages near such factories than those further away. Perhaps this is a global version of a tendency that Cox notes for the US: the most heavily polluting factories are found in the poorest areas, where inhabitants and local government will be more concerned with supposed economic benefits than with environmental damage.

The dominance of factory-style methods in animal rearing makes it far more likely that food will be poisoned in some way. For instance, meat is often contaminated with faeces when it leaves the slaughterhouse. The rearing of poultry has become a vast labour-intensive machine, with repetitive strain injury being prevalent among workers who perform the same small series of actions hour after hour. Cox quotes a neurosurgeon who attempts to repair some of the damage done to these employees: “They become washed out of their humanity. Lives and families are devastated. If the company can demoralize, harass or degrade an injured worker, they will do it.”

In addition to pollution resulting from the production of medicines and food, there are plenty of other ways in which our environment is poisoned. For instance, Teflon makes saucepans easier to clean, but when heated it can give off perfluorochemicals (PFCs). These have entered the bloodstreams of humans and animals in many parts of the world, and are likely to stay around for a very long time, yet their safety is at the very least controversial.

In his final chapter, Cox looks at why production of items that seem to be useful is so often bad for us. Referring to Marx’s Capital, he argues that capitalism without growth is impossible, so it’s the capitalist need for profit that is responsible for the poisoning of the planet and its people. It is hard to see much merit in his proposal that we should develop small organisations that will form part of an unspecified system that will succeed capitalism. But it’s harder to disagree with his conclusion that we cannot have both capitalism and a liveable planet.

Paul Bennett