In the same vein:
"At the same time we have, ironically, come to fear the world around us as never before. In the absence of real risks, we invent new and often quite fanciful ones. The better off in our society, who have the least to really worry about, are most prone to this novel neurosis of our age – fearing instant death from the contents of their dinner plates, unless chosen with obsessive care, and 'unacceptable' physical decline from failure to follow every faddist trend recommended by their personal fitness trainers. We fear that our children are constantly in danger from strangers – despite the fact that the vast majority of child abuse occurs within the family – and feel compelled to ensure their safe arrival at school by transporting them in people carriers – while at the same time decrying the depletion of fossil fuels and 'unacceptable' levels of environmental pollution – and we wonder why our children are getting fat. In this constant state of irrational fretfulness we start lose our faith in anything which looks like science – preferring to put our faith in the 'Emperor's Clothes' of homeopathic and other forms of 'complementary' medicine, while withdrawing children from rational and safe vaccination programs aimed at preventing an epidemic of measles following irresponsible scare mongering in our newspapers."
"Our flight from rationality is evidenced in other panics which currently preoccupy us. The development of biotechnology, for example, which holds real promise for the eradication of famine in much less fortunate parts of our planet, is resisted by the fit and well-fed for fear that we shall release Frankenstein's monster – despite the fact that Americans having been eating this stuff for over a decade without a single ill-effect. As the extremists among them plan their activist campaigns using mobile phones, they see no irony in trying to convince us all that the aerials and masts which facilitate such coordinated action will fry our brains – and particularly our children's brains – again despite the absence of any real evidence for such beliefs. They are the same people that once argued that steam trains would asphyxiate all their passengers if they travelled at more than thirty miles per hour, and that dangerous electricity could leak from uncovered light fittings. The trouble now is that people believe them."
"It is in the context of this post-rational era that the notion of 'lifestyle correctness', founded largely on narcissistic health ideals, has come to shape the direction of people's lives in ways which once characterised the power of formal religions. In place of faith in the creeds and tenets of the established church, we now follow slavishly the equally false promises of the health promotion professions – those who would have us believe that if we lead the 'good' life we will have unending life and beauty."
This is just a conversion neurosis, guilt of their excesses modified to fear. And fear that approaches paranoia.