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By shining a light on the problem of unintended consequences, Edward Tenner makes sense of a world of screwups and misguided ambition. Simply put, Tenner's premise is that man inadvertently causes bad things to happen when he tries to implement an invention, introduce a drug, use a computer program -- you fill in the blank. No matter how good or wonderful the item or deed, inevitably it will have some bad consequence. Call it the Chaos Theory of Human Endeavor.
Tenner covers the gamut, from the overuse of antibiotics and its potential hazards to the emergence of chronic diseases despite the end of infectious ones. He points out that the Exxon Valdez was only a greasy drop in the bucket compared to what's tossed overboard the world's sailing vessels every day. (The Valdez clean-up was worse than the initial damage, he points out.) He chronicles various bone-headed attempts to introduce both animal and plant species into a new environment, and he looks at how hardware and software affect wetware (that's me and you) in the office.
It may seem obvious that the "better" things get, the worse they get. But Why Things Bite Back anything but simplistic. It is that rare bird, an elegant and graceful exploration of something essentially flawed -- human ingenuity.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.