Reporting Recombinant DNA

Do you remember, perhaps, how apprehensive you were on New Year's Eve? As soon as the clock struck 12, the computer date problem was going to disrupt the financial and distribution systems, if not in America then in the rest of the world. Terrorists were expected to strike but experts were unsure whether New York, Washington, or London would be the target. As gloomily as Faust waiting for Mephistopheles' arrival on the stroke of midnight, we were made to wonder what calamitous apocalypse would mark the transition from one millennium to the next.

In assessing the reporting of the recombinant DNA debate, it may be helpful first to consider how other types of risk are reported and analyzed.

Who is to blame for all the time wasted worrying about Y2K mishaps? The press was the bearer of the message, but it came from credible experts who were warning of serious disruptions. Nor is it clear that the warnings were entirely misplaced, since they played the useful role of a self-defeating prophecy. Only after the event was it clear that there was less to worry about than many experts thought was the case.

Talking out risks is the way society nudges itself into taking appropriate action. There is doubtless an element too of people liking to be scared just a little, and of journalists liking to tell stories laden with alarm and menace. Still, when experts in all quarters of industry and government express alarm about a subject like Y2K, there is little that reporters can do but reflect those perceptions. The power of the press is an often heard phrase, but the Y2K problem illustrates, I think, a more realistic truth: the power of experts and activists to mold press coverage.

Sometimes, of course, press coverage is molded by public concerns in defiance of expert opinion. Take the case of Gulf War syndrome, the mysterious illness suffered by veterans who served in the 1991 campaign against Iraq. Gulf War syndrome is of great medical interest because it is the only known disease whose cause varies according to the patients' country of origin. Among British veterans the syndrome is thought to be caused by soldiers inhaling dust from depleted uranium rounds. Chemical weapons are favored for the Czech version of the syndrome. And pyridostigmine bromide, an antidote for soman, is the currently favored suspect for the cause of American Gulf War syndrome.

This is not to discount the reality of the symptoms the veterans have, only to note the disjunction between the public's view of what has caused them and that held by some scientists. Many in the public and Congress believe the veterans are suffering from some specific malady with a specific cause. But epidemiologists can find no significant difference in most categories of illness reported by Gulf War veterans and by veterans who did not serve in the Gulf. It is hard on this evidence to know whether any syndrome exists, let alone what its cause might be.

There is, of course, a difference of perspective here: anecdotes are the lifeblood of journalism, because they allow an abstract issue to be personified in a way that readers can relate to. For the epidemiologist, anecdote is usually preceded by the word mere, a single data point that by itself admits no inference.

Though the epidemiologists' view of Gulf War syndrome probably does not at present command the attention it deserves, it doubtless will in time if the various investigations of specific causes draw to a close without finding anything. So this could be a case where the public's perception of a given risk is lagging somewhat behind that of the experts--which is unfortunate, maybe, but no particular cause for scandal.

A third example of the reporting of risk comes from genetically modified crops. The crops drew very little attention in the United States until recently, but were assailed in Europe to such extent that U.S. exports were jeopardized and Monsanto...