Sheldon Rampton is best known for the 3 books he co-authored in 1995-2001: Toxic Sludge Is Good For You; Mad Cow USA; and, Trust Us, We're Experts, and as editor of PR Watch. But this was his first book written in the mid-1980s, and should be considered a valuable collectors item. Its a beautiful collaboration between Rampton and photojournalist Liz Chilsen, a how-to book for building people-to-people "sister city" relationships among citizens in the US and Nicaragua, then under attack by the Reagan Admininstration's proxy terrorist army, the Contra. The Contra were in fact led by former members of the dictator Somoza's brutal National Guard resurrected with US money and weapons and CIA direction as "freedom fighters" to (successfully) destroy the Sandinista Revolution. (A chapter in Toxic Sludge examines the US propaganda strategies in the US and in Central Americar.) This is an inspiring "how-to" book for anyone trying to figure out what can be done at the local and personal level to promote peace and understanding between the US and the third world. The prose is informative and the pictures precious. Amazingly, through all the trials and tribulations and passage of time, the grassroots-based US-Nicaragua network is alive, well and thriving, and just as Rampton predicted, doing much more for people in that dirt-poor and exploited nation than anything attempted recently by the callous US government.

You can get paranoid over anything--there is no vaccine for Hepititis C (unlike B), which can cause liver cancer in 40 years and can be spread by needles in hospitals, and speaking of liver and 40 years, certain non-fatal species of malaria lay dormant in a human liver for 40 years before becoming active ... further, you can catch malaria (the fatal kind) by visiting an international airport in the USA where overseas transients and mosquitoes are found (so-called "traveller's malaria").

According to the FDA and USDA, there are no known cases of BSE in the USA, and this book attempts to prey on people's fears to the contrary. Even the European scare arguably was overblown (since no clear nexus between rendering and BSE has ever been found, and some of the victims of BSE were too young to have been affected by prions).

But, you can believe what you want to believe, and some people believe in Roswell aliens...

Like kuru, scrapie and CJD, BSE ("mad cow disease") is a Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE), a fatal neurological disease transmitted by prions. That is, the infectious agent is a defectively folded prion protein, not a living pathogen like a virus or bacteria. It can survive being incinerated, or being buried for years in the ground with only a modest reduction in its disease-causing ability. The epidemiological model for the danger of BSE is kuru, a fatal but otherwise rare neurological disease that was common among New Guinea highlanders back in the 50's and 60's. Kuru reached epidemic proportions due to the practice of human cannibalism, usually of the brain. The regional government finally banned the practice, which (eventually) led to the decline of kuru incidence.

So what's this got to do with hamburgers? "Rendering" is the innocuous term for the practice of grinding up left-over animal organs, tissues, spinal cords etc that are considered unfit for human consumption, then selling it as Meat & Bone Meal (MBM) or Tallow. Agribusinesses use MBM as cattle and pig food and fertilizer (like on vegetables...); tallow has many uses including in the pharmaceuticals and cosmetics industries. Rendering is cow cannibalism, as it were, which is believed to have amplified the incidence of BSE in Britain, just as cannibalism amplified kuru in New Guinea. If you have never heard of rendering then you need to read this book. The British experience of CJD should have been a lesson to US politicians, bureacrats, cattlemen, and the FDA, because the "new variant" of CJD that has killed numerous British persons is actually a prion disease derived from the BSE prion, that is, from cattle. That is, people have died from from eating prion-infected beef.

It is also worth noting that CWD, or Chronic Wasting Disease, is another prion disease currently becoming a major health problem in wild cervids (deer, elk and so on)--and potentially in the people who hunt and eat them. Large, prion-infected deer populations have been reported in several states, including Wisconsin and Colorado. As of today (14 July 2002), Wisconsin opened deer season several months early & intends to keep it open all year, in order to decimate a population of 25,000 prion-infected deer. Guess what? The NBC news report did not mention that CWD is a prion disease related to BSE, probably because they didn't know (& didn't bother finding out). But guess what else? Prions rather easily jump species boundaries: mink to cattle, cattle to human, squirrel to human....Once opened, its a real Pandora's box that sets one's mind to wandering.

[To really be in the know, try a Web search on "cattle rendering" and read what you find. It's enough to make you sick. Cow and pig tissues are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry and in many products intended indirectly for human consumption: hog feed, chicken feed. It is also used in pet food--to think that even my cats might be eating this stuff. There was also a report of a British vegan--a *vegan*, mind you, for a dozen years--who inadvertently got CJD from her pet cat food.]

Despite the flambuoyant title, this is a well-researched and closely reasoned book. It is also well-written and an exciting read. The frightening thing is how unknown these dangers are... This may or may not be the final word on the subject (an update on progress since 1997 would be nice), but it is certainly an eye-opener. If you don't do anything else, read the quote from Nobel laureate Carleton Gadjusek on page 218 (Gadjusek solved the Kuru mystery). In my opinion, the broad public health and policy implications of prion diseases and the practice of rendering make this book a must-read for every informed citizen.

Certainly a must read for today. Despite the alarming and out-there subject, it was quite well-written (genuinely a page turner for me), convincing, and horrifying! It seems to take just such water in the face to wake up us British/Americans from our protect-the-economy-at-all-costs mentality, as the book illustrates. (The British are only now admitting to mad cow in humans--reminding me a little of the tobacco industry here, but the danger is so much worse).

As a public relations major, I must say that I did not really appreciate the attack Stauber and Rampton have launched against PR. However, I understand their positions as journalists and "Toxic Sludge" is, after all, an impeccably researched and well-written book. An easy read for those who are interested.

This is a great introduction to the tactics and influence of the PR industry. It could have gone in to more depth, offered more analysis, and been more 'objective' whatever that is, but that wasn't the point. Toxic Sludge brings attention to an industry that has been manufacturing the consent of the public for corporate america and other monied interests. I think it was weakest in it's suggestions about what to do to combat the PR Industry. Their assertion that the only successful activism is NIMBYism is not only wrong but dangerous in that it doesn't lead to a larger movement to reign in corporate power. This book is a must read for anybody who wants to understand where the media is coming from and what corporations are doing to manage their image.

This is a valuable and profoundly depressing book. When I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. It describes EXACT situations I've faced personally working for the past 19 years as an local citizen environmentalist in a heavily polluted industrial region of Northeast Wisconsin. The book helped me to realize I wasn't just paranoid or "sensitive." It helped me recognize and cope with the deliberate dirty tricks, orchestrated sabotage, character assassination and obstructionism of linked corporate polluters. Most of my work has centered on counteracting the total BS coming from hundreds of high-paid PR flacks who work for these corporations. These people spend millions on local TV and newspaper ads, editorial board meetings, speaker bureaus, lobbyists at the local, state and federal level, school programs and curriculum guides, political campaign contributions, community & university goodwill grants, grants to nature centers, and scientists willing to prostitute themselves to say whatever the corporations want. They've created several "astro-turf" organizations to give the impression of citizen environmental action IN SUPPORT of the corporate goals. They've used their "astro-turf" groups to divert public attention to other issues, away from corporate pollution. I've actually seen corporate play-by-play guidebooks on how their people should discuss their problems in the most favorable light, meanwhile public health is at continued risk, and they know it.

Some previous reviewers claimed the writers were biased or somehow exaggerating, but I thought the book was remarkably calm considering the outrageousness, the evil, that the book discusses. I'm disgusted that the negative reviewers from the PR and journalism fields (especially those teaching our young people!) don't want to admit the seriousness of the corruption outlined in this book. Perhaps we should ask where their paychecks come from, and why they wrote anonymously.

Ironically, I now serve on a citizen advisory committee created by the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources to set PCB soil criteria for Wisconsin, and this criteria could restrict the landspreading of PCB-contaminated sludges. The sewage treatment plant operators are going ballistic and pulling all kinds of lobbying and legal tricks to prevent the health standard from applying to them or being fully protective of public health --- because they want to keep landspreading toxic sludge on our food croplands. The paper mills have quietly gotten their own exemptions for their sludge, so far. Their PR responses fit this book perfectly, especially the chapter discussing sludge. The criteria battle in the DNR and legislature isn't over, but I predict it will be ugly and full of PR spin-doctoring.

This book is extremely important - it shows clearly that big corporations will go to extraordinary lengths to advance their own agendas at the expense of the consumer. Their tools are fake "grassroots" groups, scientists with undisclosed big financial ties to corporations, and behind the scenes influence on university research to hide results that are unfavorable to them.

We as the public may be skeptical about some of the tactics used by the PR firms, but this book certainly opened my eyes - the practice of outright deceit by means of PR spin is far more widespread than I would have believed otherwise.

Several of the reviews posted here refer to the Alar scare - those who think it was bogus have obviously been swayed by the same PR spin (or are spin doctors themselves) - it's just the tip of the iceberg - there are thousands of chemicals out there, essentially unregulated by an underfunded and impotent EPA. Industry would have you believe that there is no risk.

I prefer to believe those who have no financial incentive to lie.

Buy this book - you will never look at the media and corporate ethics the same way again.

Several reviews below prompted me to read this book. This is not so much a book about pseudoexperts and their opinions, as an expose of the public relations industry and its attempts to deliberately deceive us with "junk science." The authors tell us they "have written this book both to expose the PR strategies used to create many of the so-called experts whose faces appear on the TV news shows and scientific panels, and to examine the underlying assumptions that make these manipulations possible" (p. 4). Along the way, this book becomes a meticulously researched "catalogue of disturbing trends and failures to live up to the promise of an informed, democratic society" (pp. 311-312).

Using the theories of Sigmund Freud, Edward L. Bernays, "the father of public relations," believed that "people are not merely unconscious, but herdlike in their thinking" (p.43), and that the public is "irrational and pliable" (p. 208). In his elitist view, Bernays believed that the "average citizen is the world's most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own 'logic-proof compartments,' his own absolutism, are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction" (p. 43). Similarly, major corporations and "snake oil salesmen" alike are using "the mantle of science" not only "to market all kinds of potions and remedies" (p. 222), but to sell us tort reform, cigarettes, genetically-modified foods, and to tell us that global warming, well, that just isn't happening. The same PR industry is labeling anyone who disagrees with its tactics "infantile" (p. 209), "neurotic" (p. 210), or a chicken little. In their book, Rampton and Stauber are to be commended for encouraging us to question the PR spin doctors behind the Oz-like curtains, and to think for ourselves.

G. Merritt

While the cover art of this book looks kind of hokey, don't let it put you off. This is a very well researched, documented and relatively balanced look at the PR industry and its tactics. It details how PR firms, fueled by their clients (typically corporations or interest groups created by corporations) help stop, retard, and/or generally deaden concerns and/or actions relating to everything from hazardous working conditions and new technologies (like genetically engineered crops) to global warming. This is not a book targeted to "liberals", "consumer advocates" and/or "tree huggers" -- although I'm sure that these audiences will be very receptive to this book. Rather, I am a moderate conservative and voting republican, and found that this book was fascinating, filled with insight and that it transcended ideology. I view this book as a "public service" for the average citizen. Read this book and think twice next time you see an "expert" on the evening news talking up a particular topic -- he or she may very well have significant conflicts of interest and/or may be much less credible than he/she appears!