Editor's Introduction-- Environment: The White Noise of Health

Morris argues that the major threat to human health is no longer a cataclysmic event but the ubiquitous smaller threats from a deteriorating postmodern landscape. He uses Don DeLillo's novel White Noise as a literary depiction of the dangers of the inherently unstable relations among humans, technology, and the natural world. He offers Richard Selzer's Down From Troy as a valid critique of the inhumanity of modern hospitals. Morris calls for a rethinking of our priorities in which policy analysis and cost effectiveness currently drown out the pain experienced around the world.