Kafka Comes To Cardston, Alberta

By Charles W. Moore

In Franz Kafka's novella, "The Metamorphosis," the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning to discover that he has been somehow transformed into a giant cockroach. Gregor's parents, whom he financially supports, become irritated when he won't open his locked bedroom door and go to work. His employer is summoned, and admonishes Gregor: "I thought you were a quiet, dependable person, and now all at once you seem bent on making a disgraceful exhibition of yourself." Everyone insists that Gregor come out and perform as usual. Gregor doesn't know what to say.

Eventually a locksmith is called. However, when Gregor's family and boss see his condition, they are repulsed. The boss screams in horror and flees. His mother collapses in a paroxysm of self-pity. His father attacks him. Driven back behind his closed door. Gregor is shattered. "I'm in great difficulties, but I'll get out of them again," he pleads. "Don't make things any worse for me than they are."

Only Gregor's beloved sister tries to be compassionate, but even she soon grows impatient with his chronic condition. Eventually Gregor dies, much to the relief of his family. His dried-up cockroach body is tossed unceremoniously into the trash by a malicious old cleaning woman who had enjoyed tormenting Gregor by poking at him with a stick.

Kafka's allegory came to mind when I read this week about the plight of the Cameron family, who moved two years ago from industrially-polluted Cambridge, Ontario, to Cardston, Alberta, in hope of finding clean-air relief for their Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.

Instead, they encountered heavy pesticide and herbicide spraying in the park next to their home and on neighbors' lawns, a situation that is potentially life- threatening for Tom Cameron, 34, the most severely afflicted member of the family, who reacts to the chemical sprays with convulsions, swelling, nausea and itching. Last July, the Camerons succeeded in getting a court order for the town to desist from all spraying in the park and on nearby streets.

According to the family lawyer, quoted by the Canadian Press, "The judge felt the risk to the Camerons was so substantial that a spraying program wasn't more important than the health of these people, particularly when the adverse consequences could result even in death."

However, the Camerons' neighbors have responded with no more compassion than did Gregor Samsa's fictional parents and boss. Some are heavily spraying their lawns with herbicides, presumably in aid of persuading the family to get out. One neighbor complained of dandelion seeds blowing from the Camerons' unsprayed lawn. "It's put a hardship on the whole neighborhood," she explained.

"You would think they're from Mars," commented another, with regard to the family's practice of bundling up and wearing gas masks when they go out in the neighborhood. Perhaps they look a bit like giant cockroaches.

The Camerons have filed a lawsuit against the town, which reportedly responded with an offer of $600, if the family agrees that pesticides can be sprayed throughout Cardston. "So they are going to pay us $600 for the privilege of killing us?," Tom Cameron commented.

The CP report says the Camerons have received hate mail suggesting they get out of town, and have been ridiculed in the local newspaper.

Full disclosure here. For the past 25 years I've personally fought a mostly losing battle with chemical sensitivities. I'm not as ill as Tom Cameron, and I've never encountered quite the magnitude of malicious reaction to my situation that he has, but I've run into enough naked hostility over the years to be familiar with the phenomenon.

Our culture does not cope gracefully with chronic illness, especially if it demands long-term inconvenience or behavioral change in others. Most people are quite willing to visit your bedside during an acute illness, with sincere good wishes for a speedy recovery. ItÕs when you canÕt manage to either get better or die with decent haste that their empathy begins to falter. Death before oneÕs time is romantic; lingering in poor health for years as a graphic reminder of everyoneÕs most morbid fears is bad form.

The government and the medical establishment have been banefully slow to respond with research initiatives addressing chemical sensitivities, and the chemical companies that fund much medical research have a vested interest in promoting the belief that MCS is more psychiatric in nature than a response to being poisoned by their products. A 1991 Chemical Manufacturer's Association briefing paper stated that "The primary impact on society would be the huge cost associated with legitimization of environmental illness."

Denial is the operative word when it comes to this affliction. Nobody wants to face the implications of it being "true" that our comfortable, affluent, comfortable, convenient way of life is making people sick. They don't want to give up "living better through chemistry." The very suggestion that we might be asked to do without some of the props of late 20th-Century consumer culture scares the living daylights out of people. It makes them feel threatened and angry, and reflexively resent the messenger of this dreadful news -- the EI sufferer.

Much better to drive the loathsome cockroach back behind closed doors and wait for him to expire quietly and conveniently out of sight and mind.

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