|
I'm not sure what to say on this one.
It certainly played with my emotions more than most. I don't really contribute that to the fictionalized excerpts more just to the fact that this was non-fiction and what happened to those ladies is (and was) completely unacceptable. I know it was a very slanted take on it though and while I would have preferred a more even approach to it (more science please) I don't think that would have changed my feelings towards the companies. Maybe some of the individual players.
The epilogue/postscripts were definitely the most shocking part of this. I knew going in that awful things would happen to the "girls" but I didn't expect that some of the companies would continue operating into the 80s and that some of the sites still aren't cleaned up entirely.
On the whole, it brings up things like asbestos and leaded gasoline and tobacco and other slow killers and the question of what else is out there? Are GMOs really that healthy for us? What about cell phones and all the RF radiation that we are exposed to? Everyone says GMOs are healthy and that wi-fi won't hurt you but then again, radium was used as a health tonic long before the downsides were acknowledged. Do we really know that messing with tomato plants to make them resistant to X or Y doesn't have unintended consequences and we just can't see them yet? Why are allergies becoming more common and more extreme? Is it caused by one of the things we keep hearing "aren't dangerous" but has long-term effects we may never be able to identify?
I don't know. But I'm a little more worried about it than I was. I absolutely do not think that corporations and people in generally have changed so that they are altruistic. They will continue to ignore and whitewash health issues as long as they can get away with it and are making money. Why do we need a cancer epidemic or people literally disintegrating before we make things safer?
|