ABSTRACT
In the previous chapters, I have outlined the structural elements within the medical and legal fields that present barriers to the recognition of new knowledge. However, in this chapter, I show how the medico-legal response to knowledge about emergent disease can be implicated in a broader risk-management pattern in this society. In the first section, I illustrate how the unfolding story of MCS and the history of asbestos-related disease are reminiscent of a global trend, whereby claims of toxic crime or negligence are often dismissed as ‘unproven’ until there is a visible crisis. In the second section, I contrast this to recent sweeping reforms in criminal law, where controversial ‘proof’ about risky individuals is used to justify a swift and pre-emptive response. I show how the difference in the visibility, recognition and perceived urgency of these problems is justified not because one is riskier than the other, necessarily, but by a neoliberal logic that constructs them in this way. Thus, in the final section, I illustrate how the dismissal of emergent diseases by medico-scientific decision-makers on the basis of ‘insufficient proof’ must be understood within the context of a broader neoliberal approach to uncertainty and precaution.
