Is It Safe?

Did you see the 1976 movie Marathon Man? There’s a rather famous bit of dialogue between Szell, played by Laurence Olivier, and Babe, played by Dustin Hoffman.

Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: You're talking to me?
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Is what safe?
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's safe or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about.
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Tell me what the "it" refers to.
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it.
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: No. It's not safe, it's... very dangerous, be careful.

Americans seem to have become obsessed with safety. I blame it on the lawyers and all those frivolous lawsuits. I read a story years ago … and this is the best I remember it, and I may have a detail wrong, but the gist of the story is true … it was about a man who was cleaning his pool with one of those long metal-handled pool skimmer nets, and while skimming leaves out of his pool a bird perched on an overhead electric wire pooped on his pool deck, and this angered the man and he swatted at the bird with his skimmer net. The skimmer net hit the electric wire, electricity came down the metal handle, and he was electrocuted. As a result his wife hired a lawyer and sued the manufacturer of the skimmer net. Her lawyer said that the manufacturer of the skimmer net failed to warn buyers not to stick the metal net into an electric wire. Really. I couldn’t make that up.

There’s an automobile commercial running on TV now where a narrator tells us that at 190 mph the air hitting the windshield will lift the wipers off the glass. Then he asks us, “Should we build a slower car or a better wiper?” When I hear this question I want to shout at the TV, “For God’s sake, build a slower car! ” I say that because I care about safety. I don’t want anyone driving 190 mph on the road I’m on.

However, there’s a difference between caring about safety and obsessing over it.

Thirty one distinguished scientists from fourteen countries reviewed the data and answered the question, “Do cell phones cause brain cancer?”

After great consideration and much shuffling of numbers on spreadsheets, their distinguished answer was: “Maybe. Maybe not.”

There you go. Case settled.

There are other things that we do know cause cancer. There are things that may be even worse for our health than cell phones. Like, processed meat. Bacon. Pastrami. Pepperoni. In fact, all processed meats increase the risk of getting colon cancer. The meat isn’t the problem; scientists say the problem is the sodium nitrite that’s added to the meat.

What else causes cancer? Pickles. In fact, it seems that all pickled vegetables increase the risk of getting esophageal cancer. Scientists believe the fungi responsible for fermentation are releasing carcinogens.

So ordering a hot pastrami on rye with dill pickle on the side amounts to playing Russian roulette with your health. Who knew? As for using a mobile phone to order a pepperoni pizza, you might as well step in front of a bus. Don’t do it!

If you really want to be safe, don’t forget about background radiation coming from rocks and soil. You might want to leave earth altogether and live in space. Oh, but then there are cosmic rays and solar flares to worry about. I guess there’s no escaping the fact: no matter how safe we are, we’re all going to die.

I considered all these facts as I made my breakfast this morning. I considered, also, that my weight is too high and my cholesterol is too high. And then I added an extra slice of bacon to my bacon-and-egg sandwich. As I sat down to eat, I switched on my cell phone. As the Internet philosopher CyberDave has been known to utter from time to time: “Fuckum.”