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f O..~i t! i S"J ,~cFor~,~ Embargoed until 0.00 hours PRESS RELEASE Friday, 24 February 1995 NEW BOOK WARNS OF U.S.-STYLE "FEAR OF LIVING" Societies around the world could be undermined by U.S.-style 'lifestyle police', `thought police' and 'rights brigades', warns a new book Fear of Living* published by AGORA, a Swiss- based think-tank. Author Tana Wells, an American who has lived and worked in Europe since 1976, looks at changes in her native land over the past two decades. What she describes in her no-holds barred summation is "the crazy cast of American culture today." She argues that these crusaders for risk-free living pose a serious threat to modern society by undermining all sense of personal responsibility. • "The trend in America is that every person's life should be free of risk and discomfort and that no one bears responsibility for his own actions. It also implies that we are helpless children incapable of makincr our own decisions and therefore must rely on an ever-vigilant parent - the government or some other authority - to do it for us," explains Wells. "The fear of living doctrine produces a society of would-be totalitarians and complaining victims forever suing others, just as in the U.S.A.," she adds. "Ri!zhts bri~ades", for example, "elevate admirable tenets of civil rights to absurd levels by insistin~ that a fixed percentage of restaurant seating be set aside for obese people and that restaurants should be forced to offer vegetarian dishes. Now that people are accustomed to both `smokino' and `non-smoking' sections, an allergy `rights briaade' also demands that there should • be separate seating for people sensitive to perfumes and scents and that public places including offices should be 'scent-free' to protect victims from 'scent rape'." While individual elements discussed in the book have been examined separately by others, Wells is the first to link these insidious phenomena and to expose the dangers they represent. Fear of living is born out of "paranoid risk aversion, arbitrary standards of 'correctness,' compulsive victimization and a distortion of tort law," Wells asserts. "This quasi-religious crusade for perfect safety and behavioral correctness has serious implications for many aspects of society", and it is stifling progress as Wells demonstrates in an extensively researched compendium of case studies (see BACKGROUND). / cont'd • Fear ofLi>>ing, TWeIIs, GBL 9.95 or S 14.93 or Sfr. 19.90 + p&p, available direct from AGORA . In the US & Canada: c/o P. O. Box 124, Rickreall Oregon - Fax: (503) 623 2715 A Registered Non-Profit Association Founded in the Public Interest Au Chateau • CH-I 1251.4onnaz s/ ,%ior=es, Svitzeriand • Tel: + 41 21 / 803.50.14 • Fax: + 41 21 / 803.50.08

AGORA PRESS RELEASE - Page 2 Wells is concerned that this is one American export the world can do without: "If rich, long-lived healthy Arnerica wants to worry itself with imaginary terrors and undermine the culture of self- reliance that made it successful, that is its own affair. But the cowering culture that fear of living produces is now being exported to countries that cannot afford it, diverting those countries from tackling their genuine problems by squashing the personal responsibility, gusto and enterprise that are so essential to the solutions they seek." In the book's conclusion, Wells says: "When genocide continues in too many parts of the world, when the air outside cannot be breathed without choking in many cities world-wide, and when epidemics of typhoid, cholera and '~ tuberculosis rage in places without adequate sanitation, it is sheer madness to become preoccupied with follies such as 'scent rape' and the hypothetical risks presented by a glass of whisky or a whiff of someone's cigarette. "When children are being systematically executed or are malnourished or sold into prosti- f tution because their parents are too poverty-stricken to care for them, can we afford the kind of attitudes that would devote a million dollars to compensating a fortune teller for her alleged loss of psychic powers?" See Background for additional information on the book series, the author and AGORA. 0 For further information contact: Tana Wells at AGORA W Tel: (+ 41 21) 803.50.14 - Fax: (+ 41 21) 803.50.08 i.~ PO Box 13, CH-1125 Monnaz s/ Morges, Switzerland r.p ~ ~