Doug Clark: Can’t hear the bright side, can’t fear it

I believe the goal of every scientist is to keep the rest of us in a perpetual state of panic and paranoia.

The latest example made front-page headlines this week when a newly released study claimed that taking aspirin might make you deaf.

Isn’t that swell?

It wasn’t all that long ago when scientists were crowing about our friend the aspirin. Nobody said boo about hearing loss.

Paramedic – “You’re gonna make it, Mr. Clark. Thank God you swallowed that aspirin.”

“What?”

Paramedic – “I said, ‘Thank God you took THAT ASPIRIN!’ ”

“What?”

Medicine was so much simpler when I was a kid. Whenever I went to the doctor I would automatically place both hands over my rump.

That’s because I knew I was not leaving that Paulsen Building office without getting a shot of penicillin from a hypodermic needle the size of a railroad spike.

Penicillin was the doctor’s answer whether I had swollen tonsils or a sprained ankle.

Now scientists tell us that taking all those antibiotics created resistant strains of superbacteria that will eat us faster than a school of starving piranhas.

Which has turned America into a nation of germ-phobic sissies who can’t even shop normally anymore.

The other day, for example, I had to go to Rosauers for an emergency kettle corn run. Before stepping inside I started scrubbing down like a surgeon preparing for a gall bladder operation.

It’s so weird. Where did all these little tubs of disinfectant wipes come from?

One day they just suddenly appeared at supermarket entrances with the aggressive Girl Scouts who keep trying to guilt me into buying a case of Tagalongs.

I used to worry about terrorists poisoning the water supply. Not anymore. Americans are even too afraid to drink tap water.

No, the way to bring us all down would be to slip a deadly biological toxin into all the supermarket sanitation tubs.

We’d literally wipe ourselves out in a week.

But here’s the real issue: Why do we let ourselves get so terrified?

Global warming. High cholesterol. Swine flu. Aspirin …

Secondhand smoke used to scare us. Now we’ve been warned to look out for thirdhand smoke, and I don’t even know what thirdhand smoke is.

The truth is that human beings are much hardier than the scientist scaremongers would have you believe.

Watch my favorite TV series, “Man vs. Wild,” if you want proof.

In each episode the star Bear Grylls goes to a dangerous remote location where he dines on raw bugs, grubs, slugs, eyeballs and lizards in order to survive.

But in one show – and I am not making this up – Grylls demonstrated how you can keep from dying of thirst on the African savannah by drinking the juice squeezed out of a fresh mound of elephant poo.

(Quite frankly, if it ever came down to dying of thirst or drinking Dumbo nectar, well, it’s been nice knowing you.)

But think about it. If a hearty swig of pachyderm punch won’t kill you, do you really need to fret about catching cooties off a shopping cart handle?