Imagination

Double Blind starts strong, but character and plot development struggle by the novel's end. Still, Edward St. Aubyn masterfully explores many of the themes found in Fear of Beauty and Allure of Deceit including philanthropy, the human desire for control, and the corruption of immense wealth. 

Francis is an ecologist, intent on returning large patches of land to the wild. He meets Olivia at an Oxford conference and immediately falls in love: “They had only spent one night together, but it had the tentative intensity of a love affair rather than the practiced abandon of hedonism.” The couple assists Olivia’s good friend, Lucy, who discovers she has brain cancer shortly after starting a new position finding worthy innovations for her billionaire boss, Hunter. Hunter is spoiled, surrounded by sycophants and regularly fueled by drugs until he falls in love with Lucy.

Olivia and Francis start spending time with Lucy, Hunter and wealthy friends – and the book’s easy banter examines how Hunter and other philanthropists influence career scientists, and the more forthright scientists can temper impulsivity, waste and extremism. When Hunter first meets Lucy and tells her about his foundation, she responds: “To a foreign eye, America has so much philanthropy and so little charity. Most people have to kill themselves to prove that they deserve ordinary kindness, while a tiny group of people never stop boasting about how generous they are – as long as it’s tax-deductible.” 

Like Allure of Deceit, the book captures how charity is more about donor image and contentment than support for recipients. Early on, Hunter is interested in funding only big, splashy ideas and he dismisses problems like schizophrenia because the illness only affects 1 percent of the population, most of whom are poor. Lucy rejects such thinking, but she, too, is impatient with science’s narrow specializations, mindless quests for tenure and secure funding.

Olivia is the most traditional and serious scientist of the group while Francis may be the most intellectual, at one point noting “The point was not to assert beliefs, but to remove the rubble of delusion that constituted almost all beliefs.”  Yet he remains defensive about the anecdotal nature of his research and meager income. He is annoyed by career biologists, alluding to the depressing work of documenting the decline of species and referring to dissection labs as “random murder.” In an early conversation with Olivia, Francis - who felt “the weight of ecological doom … sometimes so great that he had felt the pressure of misanthropy and despair” early in life - “couldn’t help noticing the strangely cheerful, almost rivalrous way they had discussed the death of nature.”

When Olivia and Francis first fall in love, he expresses aspirations similar to those of Henry David Thoreau, and she expects him to devote the most time caring for their expected child. But wealth, career recognition and control are alluring, and Francis succumbs to the temptations presented by another billionaire who donates a massive sum to an international ecology project that she expects Francis to lead. The relationship between Francis and Olivia may not survive his constant introspection about the human role in natural wilderness – and his tendency of “identifying with one non-human animal after another.” But Olivia is practical: “babies weren’t born to redeem or justify other people’s lives, they were born to have their own life.” 

In the end, a schizophrenic twin may express more contentment and self-awareness than the most educated characters. That man has secured his first job working in a kitchen, funded by – of course – another wealthy philanthropist who lost his own son to suicide. The young man's goal is pursuing a life that comes close to being ordinary with the ability, as Sigmund Freud once wrote, to transform “hysterical misery into common unhappiness.”  At one point, the schizophrenic character tells his therapist:  “Sometimes things are more powerful when you know they’re not true, because you have to imagine them so hard….” 

A determined imagination is useful in setting life goals and finding contentment.

Hero

Some readers often express surprise that my mystery novels, Fear of Beauty and Allure of Deceit, tackle the challenges of Afghanistan and the Middle East from the perspective of families living in a small and isolated village.

"The most powerful force in the universe is a mother protecting [her] children,"contends Marc Edwards, the environmental engineer from Virginia Tech University who identified systematic contamination of the Flint water supply and helped residents raise the alarm. He shows a photo of a mother bear fiercely protecting her cubs. "And even if you don't care about children's health, and I think you should and you should get out of the field, and if  you don't, you don't want to mess with this force because she will go out of her way to track you down and mess you up."

Edwards spoke at a public forum presented by WKAR on his role in the Flint water crisis. To save funds, the city under state emergency management shifted its water supply away from Lake Huron to the Flint River in April 2014. By summer, residents were complaining. Six months later, in October, a General Motors plant discontinued using the city's water. By January 2015, state office buildings in Flint arranged for special water deliveries for their use.

Meanwhile, state officials kept assuring residents the water was safe. 

Lee Anne Walters is a Flint mother who noticed her children had rashes during summer of 2014 after they took paths or left the family's pool. That started a series of trips to the doctor and a pattern of worry. City tests found lead, but officials suggested the problem was with the home's plumbing. In February 2015, Walters contacted Miguel Del Toral of the US Environmental Protection Agency Midwest Water Division and Marc Edwards, an environmental engineer at Virginia Technical University. Blood tests showed her four children were exposed to lead. Edwards tested the water  and found lead levels - more than 13,000 parts per billion and more than twice the level the EPA classifies as hazardous waste. The city had switched water supplies and in failing to treat the water with an inexpensive anti-corrosion agent had virtually ruining the pipes, Del Toral informs the state, and expresses concern that the entire city could have the same problem.

Lead is a toxic metal, especially dangerous for children, that can cause many health problems - neurologic, hematologic, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and renal, reports the World Health Organization.  No level of exposure is deemed safe.


The mother, the EPA staffer and the professor assumed that state environmental officials would do their jobs and take immediate action. A city of almost 100,000 people was slowly being poisoned with lead and other contaminants. The complaints were many, yet state and local government officials resisted raising an alarm.

State environmental officials scoffed at residents who complained about brown water and repeatedly insisted the water was safe to drink. EPA regional administrator Susan Hedman reprimanded Del Toral in July 2015. In August, Edwards spent his own money to conduct wide-scale and independent tests of Flint water with the help of students. By September, he announced that the corrosion problem is community-wide with his tests showing that one out of six homes in Flint showed high levels of lead. In September pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha announced a spike in Flint children with elevated blood lead levels. Another month goes by, and in October, the city advised Flint residents to use only cold tapwater for drinking or cooking. State officials accuse Edwards and others of turning the issue into a "political football."

By mid-October 2015, Flint returned to the Lake Huron for its water supply. But pipes were ruined. The governor declared a state of emergency for the county in January 2016. More than 18 months had passed before the the public received a complete warning, and Edwards suggests that action would have taken much longer had the story not hit the newspapers. The contamination may have been caught relatively early because state officials were so callous and didn't even try to fake caring for Michigan residents.

Such unethical behavior is tolerated in the United States every day, Edwards warns, and he describes Walters, the Flint mom, as "ten times the scientist" over anyone at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

Edwards is firm about the scientist's role: "Science is about seeking the truth and helping people, and if you're doing it for any other reason, you should look find another career." He urges students, "Do your job, be a human. Revolutionary."

Public goods like water, essential for survival, are taken for granted. "In the US, Clean Water Is No Guarantee," and as I noted in 2011, "During an economic recession, protecting water supplies takes a back seat to industries that promise jobs....Americans may soon regret favoring one commodity [oil] over the other [water]."

Thanks to the tireless work of Walters, Edwards and Del Toral - the EPA has since done a turnaround and issued a memo urging managers of public water supplies to implement the Lead and Copper Rule, adding agents to prevent corrosion of pipes, and inform communities about problems in a timely way. Even so, the country can expect other problems and contamination of water supplies. A culture of corruption has infiltrated American society, and no one is safe until such systems are fixed and ordinary people find the courage to do their jobs and speak out about problems, rather than looking the other way and waiting for someone else to take on the unpleasant task.

Too many political, academic and business leaders try to evade basic truths while protecting their own careers. An investigation is underway.

Update, March 4: The Guardian newspaper examines emails in Michigan and suggests all staff in the governor's inner circle knew of complaints about corrosion and contamination. Some staff members chose to ignore the complaints and other questioned the veracity. The complaints bounced back and forth among staff members with no action or urgency.

A good reminder for any employee. If there is a suspicion of wrongdoing or danger, especially for vulnerable people, do not limit reports of concern to one supervisor. The employee may get fired or reprimanded, like Del Toral, but that is better than later being regarded as callous, incompetent or criminally liable.