There is a passage in Richardson Dilworth's “Privatization, the World Water Crisis, and the Social Contract” (PS, January 2007, 49) that requires careful attention. Prof. Dilworth writes:

In a discussion of the human need for pure water, this use of theoretical language familiar in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau is as anachronistic as the citation that follows the passage's second sentence. Over the last decades, research in fields as diverse as human genetics, ethology, primate research, cognitive neuroscience, and social psychology have revolutionized the understanding of human biology and its relation to social behavior (i.e., “human nature”). Prof. Dilworth is free to dismiss sociobiology insofar as some statements associated with this term are not fully supported by empirical evidence. But to recycle Macpherson's explicitly ideological critique of early modern philosophic concepts of human nature is misleading if not flatly FALSE.

Several examples may help.

1. The need for water is a biological necessity for all human beings (and mammals more generally). To view this need as a “construct of a specific place and time” is absurd.
2. Dilworth's statement shows lack of familiarity with research in human biology and toxicology—that is natural sciences with direct relevance to the nature of normal human development and behavior.
3. In defining “human nature,” advances in genetics show the anti-scientific implications of over-extending the concept of the “social construction of reality.” The capacity to learn in a spoken language is innate, as illustrated by species typical localization in the human brain of the language centers that perceive and express speech (see Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate).
4. Variable human traits have also been traced to human nature. For instance, genes associated with ADHD have recently been identified as well as evidence that bodily absorption of lead has similar effects on behavior. Even if “hyperactivity” is sometimes misdiagnosed, to deny all biological information on ADHD would result in failures to treat and understand a naturally occurring condition that—from a scientific view—was probably the most adaptive human phenotype among early hominid hunter-gatherers. Evidence of change doesn't eliminate objective knowledge of human nature and the conditions conducive to a decent human life: even physicists now emphasize the contingencies of time and place (as is especially evident in astrophysics: see Tucker et al., “Black Hole Blowback,” Scientific American, March 2007, 42–9).
5. Given lasting harm to infants and young children from lead or other toxins in public water supplies, Prof. Dilworth's apparent dismissal of scientific evidence concerning water quality is shocking. Those affected by water pollution would have every reason to see it as an ideological defense of all private industries whose releases of toxins enter water supplies.
6. I have personally documented the harmful effects of polluted slag piles from old copper mines that are poisoning both the children of the OujéBougoumou Cree community on Lake Chibougoumou in northern Quebec and the population of Silver Valley, Idaho. Even though corporations had a responsibility for the original pollution, in both cases actions of public officials also raise serious questions. Given the harm to children that's involved (e.g., asthma found in 40% of the children in Silver Valley), I feel a moral responsibility to express outrage at the potential injustices associated with the premises established in Dilworth's article.

Toward the end of his article (pp. 52–3), Prof. Dilworth claims that “the anti-privatization literature … is based on an antiquated construct of human nature derived from folk society in which the corporation is an interloper. A more realistic model of the world water contract would acknowledge that the corporation is a structure inherent to, and thus a legitimate part of, urban society.” Has Prof. Dilworth ever heard that corporations in other industries have often been guilty of polluting public water supplies, which provide a classic case of the problem of public goods (which in this case concerns a resource necessary for the survival of individuals and societies)?

Equally important, Prof. Dilworth seems unaware that problems due to decisions of local or federal governmental agencies often create problems consistent with his own position. To cite an example on which there are a number of publications in scientific journals, substantial harm arises from the use of hydrofluorosilicic acid and sodium fluoride as chemicals replacing sodium fluoride for the fluoridation of public water supplies. This is hardly “an antiquated construct of human nature derived from folk society”—and it has nothing whatever to do with thinking “the corporation is an interloper.” In this case, the issue is due to decisions by the U.S. Federal Government with identical effects whether the owner of a municipal water system is public or private.

The issue of silicofluoride use is a legitimate question for political science. Published data suggest that these chemicals have effects on brain chemistry and behavior that include increased absorption of lead from the environment and increased rates of learning disabilities, substance abuse, and violent crime in communities using these chemicals. A biological consequence like acetylcholinesterase inhibition (found by the German chemist Westendorf) is hardly “an antiquated construct of human nature.” Quite the contrary, that phrase more accurately would apply to Prof. Dilworth's article, which shows a blatantly anti-scientific bias.

With regard to toxins like lead, manganese, and the silicofluorides, one consequence of failure to prevent pollution of a water supply—be it public or private—is tantamount to criminal negligence. Moreover, whether the administration of a local water supply is in public or private hands, a failure to consider the regulatory issues with regard to an element on which human survival depends is shallow and unprofessional.

To see that the public/private and national/local dichotomies Prof. Dilworth emphasizes are irrelevant to the concrete issues facing human use and access to water, all that's needed is to see The Painted Veil, a film in which the problem of local water pollution and cholera in rural China is central. That film provides extensive evidence of harm arising from water under local community control by a population unaware of scientific knowledge. Because similar kinds of pollution can also be a problem for privatized water in many places, The Painted Veil shows that evidence against “folk society” can cut against industrial corporations as well as urban governments. The major issues related to water supplies concern technology and science rather than the form of ownership.

To make matters worse, there's another water problem that is truly international in scope. Global warming poses increasing risk of melting ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic, with the consequence of substantial increases in global sea levels. Industrial pollution is one factor in global warming, but governmental actions are another. Since ice melt may cause a rising sea level that floods New York City, the problems of New Orleans after Katrina should make the point (even after flood waters have receded, the local water supply is terribly polluted). These contemporary events should convince Prof. Dilworth to think of water in a scientific context that renders his focus on public versus private ownership and operation secondary to issues of quality as well as quantity that are genuine matters of life and death to individuals and societies.

Prof. Dilworth should revise his article to reflect the literature on mammalian biological needs (cows, horses, dogs, and cats also need water) as well as the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of the pollution of water supplies (whether owned or administered by a private corporation, a local community, or a national government).