By Marilyn Bardsley
July 16, 2006
Culture of Deception
If ever there was a need for clear and accurate information about the spreading and rapidly mutating avian influenza, it is now as the threat of a pandemic looms increasingly large. At a time when governments and individuals around the world are making preparations to battle a potentially life-altering disaster, there is no need for a group of bureaucratic elites to decide what information people are capable of handling.
The U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO) has published its guidelines for the communicating of information about disease outbreaks, but these guidelines have not prevented a deliberate culture of deception from dominating the statements WHO makes to the press.
It has been suggested that WHO does not want people to panic, hence they are not candid when significant events in the evolution of a pandemic are unfolding. What is wrong with this rationale?
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| WHO seal |
On a scale of death, destruction and disaster, Hurricane Katrina would be a minor event compared to an H5N1 influenza pandemic. Would anyone suggest today that state and local governments on the Gulf Coast should have played down the potential for destruction before Katrina hit? So that people wouldn't panic? Then why deceive the world about a pandemic that would kill tens of millions? Why not be truthful so that people and governments have the maximum time available to prepare?
Next Page
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