Scare tactics

In the Brent-Spar incident, petroleum products distributors rode the wave against Royal-Dutch Shell. During the French nuclear tests, non-French wine producers had a field day. Now in the case of "mad cow" disease, countries are using the scare as (badly) disguised protectionism.

It has all the known ingredients of a scare. Can you imagine the amount of additional funding the scientists that created this scare are going to get? The AIDS scare bunch did not lose any time in the wake of the "mad cow" scare to spread that some 20,000 AIDS tests were flawed.

I believe the old way to scare the uninformed -- pressing a button and starting a nuclear Armageddon -- carried a bit more weight. It also provided better raw material for comedies. I recommend to your readers Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Peter Sellers' The Mouse that Roars.

OSVALDO COELHO

Bandung, West Java