# Transcript

Frank:

Great, yes, I was going to say about the, well what I perceived as the purpose of the video which was to highlight the different values involved in making the decision about where the radio masts should be and possibly even if there should be radio masts at all. Coming back to John’s previous point, in the last lecture where maybe increased communication with trains might save one passenger out of every 120,000 but if the roadside people, the roadside workers were to die, I think it was one out of every 6,000, then maybe more people would be killed because of this action rather than without doing anything at all.

John:

Oh, did we lose Frank there?

Frank:

No, I just said my piece, really, and I found it interesting that some people would value the view the higher masts would be better to some people because there would be fewer of them, then some people with children might be more concerned about the radiation effects from higher power transmitters. So there was a whole load of different judgments that need to be made but each different technological solution to the problem is going to have its different varied effects and you have to give a value to each one, and assigning values and quantities to those values is very subjective, so that’s where the ethics come in.

Tim:

I think the other side of the argument, which perhaps didn’t come across in the video, is that if we didn’t have any masts there’d be no mobile phone service and what sort of impact would that have on people’s lives.

Peter:

I’ve had a couple of thoughts on this. If you’ve read the forum, I’ve tried to suggest there are more than two possibilities about short and long masts. A combination of the two would be some short and some long. And I don’t know the technology well enough but why not make the train into an aerial and so only the people on the train would be affected by the radiation during the period of their journey.

John:

I’m reminded, they’re going to build a big housing estate almost next door to me, and they said they were going to consult, and they did. They said do I want tiles on the roof of the new houses or slates, and there were another couple of questions like that, did I want wooden cladding or tiled cladding on these houses. I wasn’t asked about the siting of the houses or whether there should be any statements on. So your point, Peter, is that often in an ethical argument, things are, technical possibilities are often missed out deliberately, we don’t want people going in that direction, and one of the things I wanted to get out of that video was there’s an awful lot was not being said there.

Tim:

I think the nub of the radiation issue isn’t what the science says or anything like that. It’s the fact that if you build a mast, anyone within reach of that mast is subjected to the radiation whether or not they choose to. It’s the removal of the element of choice from the individual.

John:

So there’s an ideological statement that you think individuals should have that choice and you’re removing freedoms so a good basis for building ethical arguments it seems to me.

Janet:

Yes, just going back a point or two, just the thing that struck me most about the brief video was that there was absolutely no argument about whether the masts were needed; it was simply what kind of masts do you want.

Tim:

I don’t think I necessarily believe that there’s any reason why we shouldn’t have the masts. I’m just saying that the real issue isn’t the case of whether science says the radiation is or is not harmful. It’s the fact that nobody has a choice. So if you personally believe that it’s harmful, even if that belief is misplaced and unfounded, it’s still a belief you hold and you’re not able to choose to absent yourself from the radiation. It’s a bit like the issue with smoking in public places, isn’t it, if I don’t smoke, why should I have to suffer other people’s smoke? And now, of course, we don’t because of legislation that’s come in.

Janet:

Yes, I’d agree with that but again then there has to come a point at which you have to think about how reasonable the objections are. I’m not saying that people who object to masts are unreasonable but in any kind of argument you’ve always got to consider the balance between those who want the masts, let’s say, and those who feel threatened by it.

Tim:

Yes, I completely agree and it’s how, as a society, we find the balance between those who want the benefits of mobile phones, which is a very large proportion of the population now, and those who are afraid that the dangers of the radiation as they perceive it. Perhaps at this point it ought to be fair of me to point out that I worked in the mobile phone industry, I’ve built hundreds of these base stations, so I have been involved in all sorts of debates with people over the years. Many of whom, of course, didn’t want the base stations being built near their homes.

John:

There’s one thing I don’t want to lose that kind of appeared in a comment was that it’s people’s beliefs, it’s people’s fears sometimes that are an influence on, of course, how they react. Naturally it is. The question is if we’re constructing an ethical argument and we don’t have those fears, should we take other people’s fears into account. I guess you’d have to say that fear itself can be harmful and certainly discomforting and so fear is perhaps something else we ought to add in to our list of things that might be included in ethical debate.

Peter:

There’s also an awful lot that I personally don’t know about this. I mean how serious is the radiation risk, is it directional, is there protection against this in directions that you don’t want it to go in, is there a range on it, etc., etc.

Renee:

I was just going to say the same as you there that it depends whether it’s something that’s affecting you personally at the time and I also feel that you need a lot more information to make decisions but I’m one of these people that just wants to gather lots of information and not always make the decision.

Tim:

Normally questions such as location and height of a mast is dealt with in planning terms and general planning principles would say that people on a train are only affected, if that’s the correct word, by a mast for a very brief moment in time as they go past it. So they’re only affected in terms of their visual impact or possibly the radiation if you believe that there’s a problem with that. Whereas people that live next to it are exposed to it constantly and that’s obviously a very different matter.

Janet:

Yes, just following up on what was said before that it all seems to come down to information again and how authoritative the information is that’s being presented and quality of information.

Tim:

I’m not entirely sure that I would agree with that because one of the real problems with any information about whether it’s mobile phone radiation or pollution in the environment is that science isn’t clear and never will be clear, so I think there are actually some value judgments in there.

John:

The other thing is there is always limited time and limited opportunities for putting across the case and, of course, things will be missed out.

Janet:

Yes, I agree that a lot of these things do involve a certain amount of value judgment and my concern is that it isn’t always easy to distinguish between authoritative or good quality information and people who are irrationally stirring up fear.

Judith:

I thought the motor presentation was quite interesting because, on the surface of it, the video looked as though it was purely factual. It was telling us facts about the difference between high and low masts and the amount of power. But if you looked at the way it was presented, we had the radiation I think was shown in red and red is like a kind of danger signal to us so there were some messages there. And also the cityscape was shown quite distant from the railway track implying that there weren’t any people living close and they wouldn’t be affected.

Frank:

Similarly to that point and picking up on Janet’s point, this is where the final vocabulary can actually work against us where advertising and people trying to sway the public opinion can actually tune very much into the final vocabulary and sway people’s judgment just by knowing what buttons to press.

Tim:

Yes, I would agree with that and there’s been some highly irresponsible media coverage about all sorts of issues. The MMR vaccine that John was talking about earlier is one that springs to mind where the scientists behind that I think have now been fairly comprehensively discredited.