>>One might be so bold as to suggest that a mass psychosis seems to be gripping the USA...<<
I guess it is all a matter of perspective <g>:
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European Health Reports Create 'Culture of Fear'
Myriad Scares Confound Continent
By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 1, 2001; Page A01
LONDON -- A bowl of cornflakes can kill you -- not to mention a ham sandwich or a T-bone steak. Getting vaccinated can kill you. Flying economy class can kill you, and business class isn't much better. The rubber duckie in your bathtub can kill you (and your children). And put down that cell phone, before it kills you!
Such is the woeful catalogue of warnings that confronts Europeans these days as the continent veers almost weekly from one health panic to the next. From Belfast to Belgrade, wealthy, well-educated Europe is regularly swept by frightening reports of new dangers said to be inherent in contemporary life. The lack of scientific basis for many of the worries doesn't stanch the flood.
Americans have health concerns, too, but not on this scale. The year 2001 is barely eight weeks old and already public opinion and public officials here have been rattled by alarms over risks -- proven and not -- from genetically modified corn, hormone-fed beef and pork, "mad cow" disease, a widely used measles vaccine, narrow airline seats said to cause blood clots and cellular phones said to cause brain damage.
"If these stories were true, we should all be dead by now," quipped Mart Saarma, a biologist at the Helsinki Institute of Biotechnology.
Saarma attributes the "culture of fear" to carry-over from genuine health problems, trends in environmentalism, anti-Americanism and a pessimistic strain in the European psyche. "It is a matter of emotion here," he said...