Research Catalog

Title

You've been had! : how the media and environmentalists turned Americans into a nation of hypochondriacs / Melvin A. Benarde.

Author

Benarde, Melvin A.

Publication

New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiv, 308 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

"With all of the negative media about environmental threats over the last four decades, is it any wonder that most people believe disaster is just around the corner? But despite what the media would lead us to believe, annual reports from the Surgeons General show that Americans are the healthiest they have ever been, are becoming healthier, and are, in fact, the healthiest people on the planet. In You've Been Had! Melvin Benarde aims to set the record straight and to counteract the culture of complaint and worry with an unbiased account of the scientific facts - facts that suggest we are anxious and frightened about the wrong things. Contrary to media reports, he argues, the environmental factors that most adversely affect our health are those that are within our power to alter, such as smoking, diet, drugs, stress, guns, speed, and our sedentary lifestyle."--Jacket.

Subject

• Environmental health
• Environmental health > Responsibility
• Quacks and quackery
• Consumer education
• Mass media in health education
• Environmental Health
• Health Education
• Mass Media
• Quackery
• Communications Media

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [287]-298) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

List of figures and tables -- Preface -- Top of the charts -- Our microbial world -- Food, glorious food -- Food, cancer, heart disease -- Troubled air -- Clean energy: power from atoms -- Hazardous waste, hazardous thinking -- The sleeping giant -- Notes -- Index.

ISBN

0813530504 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

2001048401 ^

OCLC

47863263

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library