Abstract
This is the text of a speech given by noted journalist and editorial commentator Jeffrey St. John at the Tobacco Institute's winter meeting in 1980. Mr. St. John equates public health efforts to educate people about the dangers of smoking with terrorism:
"...[I]n the last decade and a half, an ominous development has surfaced in American society. I call this development The New Terrorism...This New Terrorism campaign first surfaced with the publication on January 11, 1964, of the U.S. Surgeon General's report on smoking. Since then, for over 15 years, the American public has been subjected to an attack against not only tobacco as an agent for causing cancer in human beings, but this campaign has indicted a vast array of products produced or used by the American industrial system and linked to the disease. The nation, as a result, has become almost neurotic that everything they eat, use or wear can cause cancer..."
Mr. St. John further portrays public health efforts around tobacco as the clandestine pursuit by a "powerful elite" to attain a totalitarian regime by terrorizing citizens with fears of death and disease:
"What we have witnessed, therefore, in the last decade and a half since the release in January 1964 of the U.S. Surgeon General's report on smoking is something far more insidious than the disease of cancer. We have, in my judgment, seen the rise of a political movement that has used pseudo science, combined with propaganda, for the purposes of creating a movement with vast political power to regulate, regiment and control the lives of both producers and consumers by a bureaucratic power elite...This powerful elite, made up mostly of lawyers, has managed in a short decade and a half, to achieve its power largely by the use of terror: terrorizing the media, politicians and the electorate by playing on the natural human fear of dreaded diseases like cancer, heart disease and other lethal illnesses..."
This document shows the point of view the Tobacco Institute sought out as subject matter for a keynote speech at an important meeting, and gives us insight into the attitudes held by the Industry itself towards public health authorities like the U.S. Surgeon General.
Fields
- Quotes
One of the finest radio dramas ever created was called "Sorry, Wrong Number." Later it became a motion picture. The plot centers on an unseen psychopathic killer who, by a series of telephone calls, terrorizes his victim by describing over and over again how she is to die. Thus, the telephone is an instrument of terror, so that by the end of the drama the victim is reduced to a state of stark terror, panic and paralysis. The message of "Sony, Wrong Number" is, of course, that the mind can be terrorized just as effectively as the body can be by an act of physical terror with a bomb, bullet or a person being held hostage. The dictionary definition of terror describes it as a "state of fear; fear that agitates body and mind." If an individual can be subjected to terror without physical force, the totalitarian regimes of this century have shown that by a combination of propaganda and the mere implied use of terror, an entire nation can be reduced to a state of compliant sheep, obedient to the will of a single person or party. This nation prides itself on being a society of law and liberty and, thus, free of totalitarian terror. However, in the last decade and a half, an ominous development has surfaced in American society. I call this development The New Terrorism. Almost without pause we have been beset with an escalating public campaign aimed at the minds of millions of Americans about the origins and causes of the dreaded disease, cancer. This New Terrorism campaign first surfaced with the publication on January 11, 1964, of the U.S. Surgeon General's report on smoking. Since then, for over 15 years, the American public has been subjected to an attack against not only tobacco as an agent for causing cancer in human beings, but this campaign has indicted a vast array of products produced or used by the American industrial system and linked to the disease. The nation, as a result, has become almost neurotic that everything they eat, use or wear can cause cancer...
[From Page 5]:
What we have witnessed, therefore, in the last decade and a half since the release in January 1964 of the U.S. Surgeon General's report on smoking is something far more insidious than the disease of cancer. We have, in my judgment, seen the rise of a political movement that has used pseudo science, combined with propaganda, for the purposes of creating a movement with vast political power to regulate, regiment and control the lives of both producers and consumers by a bureaucratic power elite; it is no less a special interest group than business, labor, science or education. This powerful elite, made up mostly of lawyers, has managed in a short decade and a half, to achieve its power largely by the use of terror: terrorizing the media, politicians and the electorate by playing on the natural human fear of dreaded diseases like cancer, heart disease and other lethal illnesses...
[From Page 7]:
One central and ugly fact is that the campaign against cigarettes was the opening shot in a broad and wide-range campaign against the entire private economic system by certain individuals and groups. The goal of such individuals and groups was the accumulation of massive public, that is to say, government power, over our private economic system and to force it to conform with their radical economic-political views. The attack on cigarettes became an important first victory for the consumer movement as a public protector. From the campaign that started in January 1964, we have seen the scenario and techniques pioneered in the cigarette case applied against the auto, food, chemical, textile, petroleum and a dozen other vital U.S. industries. In short, the cigarette industry was the first target and victim for ends that had more to do with bureaucratic empire building than with protecting the consumer, the environment and the health and safety of millions of Americans. In short, the cigarette and anti-cancer crusade became front issues that successfully obscured the larger goals of a New Power Elite that terrorized Americans about the dangers of human diseases and consumer products as the prime justification for imposing public power over the private economic sector.
- Company
- Lorillard
- Author
- St. John, Jeffrey (Syndicated newspaper opinion columnist)
Lectured in 1980 saying that the 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking and health started a "new terrorism campaign" for attacking tobacco as a cancer-causing agent, and causing Americans to become "neurotic" about "that everythign they eat, use or wear can cause cancer."
- Recipient
- Tobacco Institute
- Region
- United States
- Named Organization
- Chicago Tribune
- Congress
- Freedoms Foundations
- George Washington University
- Georgetown University Center for Strategic International Studies
- Harvard University
- Long Island Newsday
- Los Angeles Times
- Mutual Network
- NBC TV
- National Cancer Institute NCI
Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, National Cancer Institute located in Rockville, MD
- New York Conference Board
- Nyew York Times
- Reporters Roundup
- Sorry Wrong Number
- Spectrum
- TI, Tobacco Inst
- Today Show
- US Census Bureau
- Washington Star
- Wall Street Journal
- American Cancer Society
- Associated Press
- CBS-TV
- Litigation
- Stmn/Produced
- Named Person
- Arendt, H.
- Banzhaf, John F., III (Exec. Dir. Action of Smoking & Health (ASH))
Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).Professor of Law at Georgetown. Banzhaf succeeded in using the Fairness Doctrine to get cigarette commercials off television in 1968. See Banzhaf FCC, 405 F, 2d 1082 (D.C. Cir. 1968) (affirming FCC ruling that radio and television stations must devote a significant amount of broadcast time to case against smoking). His telephone number is (202) 659-4310. The big focus in past years has been to force OSHA to enforce smoking bans, per Matt Bars. ASH publishes Smoking and Health Review bulletins. "A leading anti-smoking activist" (Chic. Sun-Times 6/23/93). Action on Smoking and Health is located at 2013 H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006. (Castano Expert List) See Action on Smoking a Health, TTLA Almanac - Names.
- Cook, L.
- Galbraith, John Kenneth (Economist)
- Kilmarx, R.A.
- Nader, Ralph (Consumer Activist)
Consumer activist long renowned for a career of exposing corporate deception and wrongdoing that result in human harm.
- Surgeon General
- Vansickle, J.V.
- Whelan, Elizabeth M., Sc.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., (President, American Council on Science & Health, Anti-Tobacc)
Author of book, "A Smoking Gun: How the Tobacco Gets Away With Murder" (George F. Stickley Co. 1984). President of the American Council on Science and Health in 1984. IN 1997 she was located at the American Council of Science and Health, 1995 Broadway, Second Floor, New York, NY 10023.
- Type
- SPCH, SPEECH/PRESENTATION
- BIBL, BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Subject
- health belief
Document Images
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r
The New Terrorism:
The Cancer Crusade,
and The Political
Corruption of Science
A Speech By Jeffrey St. John
Winter Meeting, The Tobacco Institute
February 29, 1980
Marco Island, Florida
Jeffrey St. John is a Mutual Network news
commentator, syndicated columnist for the
Panax Newsservice and the author of several
published works on domestic and foreign af-
fairs. He is the winner of two Emmy awards
and the George Washington Medal of Free-
dom, Freedom's Foundations, Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania. Formerly, he was a CBS Spec-
trum commentator and an NBC-TV Today
Show business correspondent. He has con-
tributed regularly over the years to the edi-
torial pages of the nation's leading news-
papers, among them The New York Times,
The Washington Star, The Wall Street Journal,
The Chicago Tribune, Long Island Newsday
and The Los Angeles Times.
Page 2: psz80e00
The New Terrorism:
The Cancer Crusade,
and The Political
Corruption of Science
One of the finest radio dramas ever created
was called "Sorry, Wrong Number." Later it
became a motion picture. The plot centers on
an unseen psychopathic killer who, by a series
of telephone calls, terrorizes his victim by
describing over and over again how she is to
die. Thus, the telephone is an instrument of
terror, so that by the end of the drama the
victim is reduced to a state of stark terror,
panic and paralysis.
The message of "Sorry, Wrong Number" is,
of course, that the mind can be terrorized
just as effectively as the body can be by an
act of physical terror with a bomb, bullet or a
person being held hostage. The dictionary
definition of terror describes it as a "state of
fear; fear that agitates body and mind."
If an individual can be subjected to terror
without physical force, the totalitarian regimes
of this century have shown that by a combina-
tion of propaganda and the mere implied use
of terror, an entire nation can be reduced to
3
Page 3: psz80e00
a state of compliant sheep, obedient to the
will of a single person or party.
This nation prides itself on being a society
of law and liberty and, thus, free of totalitarian
terror. However, in the last decade and a
half, an ominous development has surfaced in
American society. I call this development The
New Terrorism.
Almost without pause we have been beset
with an escalating public campaign aimed at
the minds of millions of Americans about the
origins and causes of the dreaded disease,
cancer. This New Terrorism campaign first
surfaced with the publication on January 11,
1964, of the U.S. Surgeon General's report on
smoking. Since then, for over 15 years, the
American public has been subjected to an
attack against not only tobacco as an agent
for causing cancer in human beings, but this
campaign has indicted a vast array of products
produced or used by the American industrial
system and linked to the disease. The nation,
as a result, has become almost neurotic that
everything they eat, use or wear can cause
cancer.
Associated Press correspondent Louise
Cook, who writes on consumer affairs, sug-
gested recently in a 760-word piece that this
campaign should have a label:
"WARNING: LIVING MAY BE
HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH." 1
She listed a vast array of products and sub-
stances that have been cited in recent years as
possible, but not proven, agents of cancer.
She then made this telling observation:
"In 1900 when we knew none of these
dangers, the average life expectancy in
the United States was 47.3 years, ac-
cording to the U.S. Census Bureau. To-
day, it is more than 70 years."z
Now clearly that one fact of national life
throws into question the wholesale indictment
by the consumer and environmental move-
4
Page 4: psz80e00
F
ments of the private industrial system as es-
sentially one that produces hazards to human
life and limb, including the alleged link be-
tween cancer and countless other consumer
products.
Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, a public health spe-
cialist at Harvard University, recently disputed
the widely held contention of the National Can-
cer Institute that, as a nation, we suffer from
the highest rate of cancer in the world and
that presently the U.S. is in the grip of a
cancer epidemic. Not only does Dr. Whelan
maintain that the available evidence contra-
dicts this repeated public assertion but that
the "new number of cases of cancer ... has
decreased since the mid -1940's." 9
Dr. Whelan has been one of the few spe-
cializing in public health to decry the growing
tendency in this nation to "ban everythirig at
the drop of a rat." * Dr. Whelan maintains,
moreover, that she has reviewed the scientific
literature and scientific evidence on the safety
of food additives and pesticides and concluded
that not one single case of cancer or any other
disease could be traced to the use of such
substances. She also accuses the news media
of accepting indictments of food additives,
chemicals and pesticides as agents of cancer
uncritically-and, in turn, politicians for en-
acting laws based on questionable scientific
evidence.
"Decisions are being made emotionally, as
well as politically," she states. "I think part
of the problem is that we are being guided by
laws that really aren't very scientific." 5
Furthermore, Dr. Whelan believes that in
recent years the discipline of scientific re-
search have been corrupted by politics, which
she labeled "political toxicology." 6
This corruption of science by politics has
been due not just to growing human error or
tailoring scientific studies to suit political ears.
But, more important, science in America has
become a captive and a creature of govern-
ment, which regularly showers on it millions
in research grants and millions more for dis-
5
Page 5: psz80e00
covering the cause of and a cure for cancer.
Science, like education that was just elevated
last year to cabinet status level, has become
a powerful establishment, a special interest
group caught up in the complex web of sub-
jective domestic politics. The American Can-
cer Society and other public health groups
supposedly private, non-profit and non-parti-
san have also been pulled into the dangerous
arena of politics.
The American Cancer Society, for example,
announced on November 9, 1979, that it was
charting a new direction and will fund research
projects to discover cancer "time bombs" in
the environment.' The Society suggested that
the area it would search for such "time
bombs" would be the private American in-
dustrial community. In committing itself to
such a course, however, the American Cancer
Society has become the advocate of a partisan
political cause championed by the highly poli-
tical consumer and environmental movements.
It should, therefore, be denied its tax-exempt
status because it has become allied with a
partisan subjective political movement.
What we have witnessed, therefore, in the
last decade and a half since the release in
January 1964 of the U.S. Surgeon General's
report on smoking is something far more in-
sidious than the disease of cancer. We have,
in my judgment, seen the rise of a political
movement that has used pseudo science, com-
bined with propaganda, for the purposes of
creating a movement with vast political power
to regulate, regiment and control the lives of
both producers and consumers by a bureau-
cratic power elite; it is no less a special inter-
est group than business, labor, science or
education. This powerful elite, made up mostly
of lawyers, has managed in a short decade
and a half, to achieve its power largely by the
use of terror: terrorizing the media, politicians
and the electorate by playing on the natural
human fear of dreaded diseases like cancer,
heart disease and other lethal illnesses. The
evidence to support their contention that new
6
Page 6: psz80e00
laws and power must be granted to govern-
ment to solve the problems they claim exist is
open to serious challenge and in some cases
is contradicted by hard evidence. Earlier, for
example, I cited Dr. Whelan's study of cancer
death rates.
However, it will interest you to know that,
although Dr. Whelan decries the corruption
of science by politics and the passage of laws
based on dubious evidence, she is nevertheless
persuaded that cigarette smoking is directly
related to lung cancer. In an interview I con-
ducted with her on Mutual's Reporters Round-
up on March 12, 1978, she maintained the case
against smoking and lung cancer is solid even
though the evidence is based on statistical
population studies and mortality tables. "I
have to tell you," she said, "that's the only
kind of evidence. There is no way that you
can ever link something in a chronic disease
state." 8
Neither Dr. Whelan, nor others who are
sincerely and genuinely dedicated to the pres-
ervation of public health, can bring themselves
to confront a number of rude and ugly facts
made manifest over the last decade and a half.
One central and ugly fact is that the cam-
paign against cigarettes was the opening shot
in a broad and wide-range campaign against
the entire private economic system by certain
individuals and groups. The goal of such indi-
viduals and groups was the accumulation of
massive public, that is to say, government
power, over our private economic system and
to force it to conform with their radical eco-
nomic-political views. The attack on cigarettes
became an important first victory for the con-
sumer movement as a public protector.
From the campaign that started in January
1964, we have seen the scenario and tech-
niques pioneered in the cigarette case applied
against the auto, food, chemical, textile, pe-
troleum and a dozen other vital U.S. indus-
tries.
In short, the cigarette industry was the first
target and victim for ends that had more to
7
Page 7: psz80e00
,do with bureaucratic empire building than
with protecting the consumer, the environment
and the health and safety of millions of
Americans. In short, the cigarette and anti-
cancer crusade became front issues that suc-
cessfully obscured the larger goals of a New
Power Elite that terrorized Americans about
the dangers of human diseases and consumer
products as the prime justification for imposing
public power over the private economic sector.
This indictment is not a matter of opinion
but has been admitted openly by those con-
sumer and environmental radical activists. For
example, as far back as 1969, George Wash-
ington University law professor John Banzhaf,
the man most responsible for removing cig-
arette commercials from the broadcast air-
waves, admitted that his drive against ciga-
rettes was just one phase of a wider campaign.
The Wall Street Journal said, "His real mission
in life, he confesses, is to use the courts to
change the world."e
As with Ralph Nader and other activists,
Prof. Banzhaf is out to transfer power from
the private sector to the public government
sector. But, as we have seen in the last dec-
ade, the costs to producers and consumers to
change the world has been staggering, some-
thing that Nader, Banzhaf and others refuse
to face.
Now as we enter the decade of the 1980's,
the anti-cancer crusade, which has done so
much to corrupt science and subject the Am-
erican consumer and producer alike to un-
accountable bureaucrats in Washington, a new
and more ominous phase of what I term the
New Terrorism appears before us.
Looking back since the U.S. Surgeon Gen-
eral's report of January 1964, what we have
witnessed in the last 16 years is not only the
terrorizing of the American public into be-
lieving that all American business has pro-
duced products that are unsafe for use or
consumption and even lethal to life and limb,
but that all business is engaged in a vast crimi-
nal conspiracy. The credibility of this danger-
ous falsehood has had a decade and a half
8
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1
to sink deeply into the minds of millions of
Americans by a propaganda campaign spear-
headed by the likes of Ralph Nader, John
Banzhaf and others.
Let us be precise about the meaning of the
word propaganda. The dictionary definition
of propaganda is as follows:
"Any organized or concerted group move-
ment to spread a particular doctrine ...
dissemination of ideas, information, gos-
sip for the purpose of helping or injuring
a person, institution or cause."
Furthermore, the late and great scholar
Hannah Arendt in her classic work, "The Ori-
gins of Totalitarianism," maintains that the
powerful weapon in the arsenal of totalitarian
movements is propaganda, because it can
effectively "shut the masses off from real
world."'° It would therefore be difficult to
deny that over the last decade and a half what
the American public has been told about the
nature of business by Nader and others with a
complete command of the communications
media has shut Americans off from the real
world. Hannah Arendt also points out that
totalitarian propaganda can only insult our
common sense when common sense has lost
its validity.31
We were provided an example of this short-
iy before Christmas 1979. Leading a coalition
of consumer, environmental, religious and
union groups, Ralph Nader held a significant
press conference in Washington. At this prop-
aganda briefing, Nader and a group of Con-
gressional liberals announced plans to desig-
nate April 17, 1980, "Big Business Day," with
hundreds of teach-ins and debates across the
country to dramatize and expose what he and
his associates claim is the growing criminality CO
and social irresponsibility of large American ~0
corporations. Nader along with the Fabian ~A
socialist economist, Dr. John Kenneth Gal- ~
braith, unveiled "The Corporate Democracy Q
Act," legislation that would allegedly combat Q
crime in the executive suites and give share-
holders greater rights.12
9
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The ominous implications of this new phase
of Nader's 15-year campaign against Ameri-
can business has unfortunately been over-
looked by businessmen. This new phase of
Nader and of a vast coalition of activist anti-
business groups is nothing less than an attempt
to brand American business in the political and
public arena as one vast conspiratorial crimi-
nal class that can only be curbed by using the
shackles of the all-powerful state. Nader's
proposal for the enactment of federal char-
tering of corporations under the propaganda
slogan, "The Corporate Democracy Act,"
makes this much clearer.
Nader's proposal is a new and revolutionary
idea in the long tradition of American legal
history. No longer are individuals to be held
accountable for possible criminal wrongdo-
ing. But an entire class of American business-
men is to be regarded as a vast conspiratorial
economic criminal group which must be dealt
with as a criminal class. Let me point out that
Nader and his allies have a very good chance
of effecting this unprecedented and totalitarian
move because of their persistent propaganda
against private business.
Nader's attempt to convince the country
that all American corporations and business-
men are a vast conspiratorial criminal class
is similar to the campaign of the Nazis against
the German and European Jews prior to World
War II. Nazi propaganda successfully con-
vinced the German people that Jews were
political, economic, cultural and social crimi-
nals and the cause for most of the ills of pre-
World War II Germany. Like the Nazis, Nader
has constructed a single enemy propaganda
theory that U.S. business is the source of so
many of our problems, assigning blame for all
our social, economic and political problems to
a criminal conspiracy of private U.S. corpora-
tions. This propaganda "Big Lie" effort is not
some harmless falsehood. It is one that has
become enshrined and institutionalized into
fact for many Americans. And having been
the victims since 1964, and even longer, of
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violent verbal propaganda abuse, it is clearly
possible that, in the future, businessmen will
become the victims of actual violence.
Let me now lay before you several pieces
of evidence to support my contention.
Four days after the American hostages were
seized in Teheran, the Georgetown University
Center for Strategic and International Studies
released a report insisting that the growth of
global political terrorism over the last decade
has shifted its focus from political and military
leaders to businessmen. Prof. Robert A. Ki1-
marx, one of the authors of the study, told re-
porters at a press conference the following:
"Based on terrorist activity of the last
decade the U.S. could face an extremely
difficult time in the 1980's as U.S. corpo-
rations and executives increasingly be-
come the targets of terrorists."13
On the same day that Prof. Kilmarx made
that startling assertion, two American busi-
nessmen were released in the Central Ameri-
can country of El Salvador after being held
hostage by the left-wing terrorists for 49
days.l'
Two weeks later, the New York Conference
Board released a study stating that in the last
decade multinational corporations paid out
$150 million in ransom to terrorists overseas,
and the Iranian hostage seizure was only part
of a worldwide increase in political terrorism
with business the primary targets.15 The Con-
ference Board went on to point out that 55
percent of terrorist targets abroad were busi-
nessmen, and while there had been no serious
upsurge of terrorism aimed at businessmen in
the United States, all advanced industrial
societies in the future will be extremely vul-
nerable.
Now it is important to understand that what
distinguishes Ralph Nader and his allies from
legitimate critics of American business is their
violence of language. Like their anti-capitalist,
anti-business counterparts abroad, who have
11
