MR KEENAN’S latest letter on fracking is a reminder of how careful one needs to be about understanding and use of language in this sort of battle.

After almost 30 years of experience of chemical battling at many levels, may I offer some warnings?

First, is this an area of science- based policy or policybased science? It is important to know. It affects the language used.

Evidence-based proof, in policy-based science, means evidence approved by officialdom.

Anything else is ‘anecdotal’.

An Andover council meeting about mobile phone masts once offered an interesting example. Told that evidence submitted must be evidencebased I asked if this meant officially approved and in that case if we submitted the Russian research would this be accepted.

Silence, and exchanged looks, then the chairman said cautiously, “You would need to ask your MP.”

Pesticide victims at endless meetings and conferences were looked in the eye by HSE speakers and others who assured us that ‘there is no evidence’. As I once pointed out in a radio interview: “We are the evidence”.

But by the selective scientific standard of policy-based science we had to prove causation and that is where reality and policy separate.

‘Pesticides are not harmful therefore you cannot have been harmed’. ‘Anecdotal’ will be applied not just to victims but to experts and doctors who support them.

“Tests are being done (or have been done) to prove that they are safe,” we are told about pesticides, GM crops, vaccinations, etc.

This is the difference between science-based and policy- based. Science does tests to find out if things are safe.

Science is the pursuit of truth, of enquiry, of curiosity, of observation, of accurate recording and accurate information.

Policy is control and brainwashing.

HSE and the DoH told the public in 1990 of Tributyl tin oxide that the committee found no evidence of risk to human health. They told those who ‘need to know’ that it is a neurotoxin, a skin and lung irritant and has an extremely high mortality rate.

Asked, at a meeting arranged by my MP, if they could explain this discrepancy, HSE’s Dr Foster said, “We tailor our information to our audience.” Believe them they do. They adjust the evidence as well. TBT vanished from records of my case.

Evidence-based proof is unachievable by victims as as long as the evidence must be officially approved, and only theirs accepted.

Fracking is new to Britain, so for evidence we need to turn to the US. For this I recommend a new book ‘The Real Cost of Fracking’ by Michelle Bamberger (a vet) and Robert Oswald, professor of molecular medicine at Cornell University, and the recipient of Fullbright and Guggenheim fellowships.

Both serve on the advisory board of Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy.

It is a book about the human and animal victims of fracking, and is a good starting point. Before you fight something, you need to know if it is necessary and this will leave you in little doubt. People, pets, farm animals, crops and water supplies and the air you breathe are all part of the fracking affected world.

These effects are lasting and often vicious.

The three layers of official silence about fracking are the withholding of information, the curious lack of investigation by official agencies, nondisclosure of anything that is revealed and the effective silencing of victims.

Any findings and disclosure of problems usually comes from the individual or non-official sources, and the local press.

Local papers, as New Zealanders found in the fluoride battle, can be a wonderful ally, as was the Southern Daily Echo, in Southampton’s battle.

Margaret J Reichlin, Upper Enham