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May 29 - August 19, 2018
In 1898, Bayer launched their new drug, calling it heroin. Aspirin, which physicians worried might cause gastritis, could be obtained by prescription only. Heroin, which was believed to be much safer, could be purchased over the counter.
In the 1920s and early 1930s, heroin’s principal distributors were mobsters Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, and Legs Diamond. (Because all three were Jewish, heroin was often called “smack,” from the Yiddish word schmecher, meaning “addict.”)
Today, 80 percent of the world’s opioid prescriptions are written in the United States, even though only 5 percent of the world’s population lives there.
It’s all about the data.
If you’re going to medicate a nation, at the very least you should base your recommendations on a mountain of evidence, not a molehill.
During the next 20 years, three major studies involving 300,000 people and costing about $100 million determined the relationship between dietary fat and heart disease. The answer: There wasn’t any.
‘You really need a high level of proof to change the recommendations,’ which is ironic because they never had a high level of proof to set them.”
Everything has a price; the only question is how big.
Most people would be surprised to know that even the most dramatic, lifesaving, medical and scientific breakthroughs like vaccines, antibiotics, and sanitation programs have unintended and occasionally tragic consequences.
Breeding had become weeding.
Now the eugenicists had a hard and fast number they could rely on: 70. They determined that anyone with an intelligence quotient (or IQ) score of less than 70 was unfit for procreation. To celebrate the moment, they created a new word: “moron,” from the Greek moros meaning “stupid” or “foolish.”
the false notion that selective breeding could make for a better society would soon allow Americans to cloak some of their worst prejudices in the gilded robes of science.
When the dust settled, 65,370 poor, syphilitic, feebleminded, insane, alcoholic, deformed, lawbreaking, or epileptic Americans in 32 states had been sterilized. California alone was responsible for more than 20,000 of them. Few, if any, Americans rose in protest. It was one of the darkest moments in American history.
Grant had predicted that it would “take centuries” for immigrants to assimilate into the American culture. It took one generation. European immigrants quickly lost their accents, earned their degrees, and rose to prominent positions in business, medicine, and the law. Environment, as it turned out, mattered.
Charles Davenport, who in a letter to Grant urged him to push forward on immigration restriction: “Can we build a wall high enough around this country so as to keep out these cheaper races; or will it be a feeble dam, leaving it to our descendants to abandon the country to blacks, browns, and yellows.” A hundred years later, Donald Trump said, “People are pouring across our borders, which is horrible. We have to build a wall. I build some of the greatest buildings in the world. Building a wall for me is easy. And it would be a wall. It would be a real wall. Not a wall that people walk over.”
AMERICAN EUGENICISTS EMBRACED Hitler’s efforts. Both the Carnegie Institute and Rockefeller Foundation supported a German scientific establishment committed to sterilization and euthanasia. Indeed, IBM provided machinery to help the Nazis sort out family pedigrees to determine who was Jewish and who wasn’t.
“Harmony among peoples comes from the true principles and attitudes of the present,” he wrote, “not from purging the past.”
Beware of scientific biases that fit the culture of the time—beware the zeitgeist.
People then and now seem perfectly willing to ignore the fact that we all come from a common ancestor and are far more alike than different.
“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” Hellman’s comment should serve as a warning for all those who try to shoehorn scientific evidence into their cultural or political biases—
THE LESSON FROM LOBOTOMIES IS far easier to make than to follow: Beware the quick fix.
As malaria rates went down, life expectancies went up, as did crop production, land values, and relative wealth.
One could argue reasonably that DDT has saved more lives than any other chemical in history.
June 2, 1972, Ruckelshaus unilaterally banned DDT. It was a political decision, yielding to public sentiment.
THE LESSON FROM RACHEL CARSON and the banning of DDT reprises an earlier theme—it’s all about the data
In the end, the EPA’s decision to ban DDT wasn’t based on data; it was based on fear and misinformation.
be cautious about being cautious
THE LESSON IN THE LINUS PAULING STORY can be found in the movie The Wizard of Oz: Pay attention to the little man behind the curtain.
Don’t be blinded by reputation. Every claim, independent of a scientist’s reputation, should stand on a mountain of evidence. No one should get a free pass.
The point is that all scientists—no matter how accomplished or well known—should have unassailable data to support their claims, not just a compelling personality, an impressive shelf of awards, or a poetic writing style.
(“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little,” wrote Mark Twain, “it’s that they know so many things that ain’t so.”)
Unfortunately, we seem incapable of learning the most important lesson in toxicology: The dose makes the poison.
(The legal aphorism is that when the law is on your side, argue the law; when the facts are on your side, argue the facts; when neither is on your side, attack the witness.)
“While Galileo was a rebel, not all rebels are Galileo”—no matter how hard they try to convince you that they are.
