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The New Terrorism: The Cancer Crusade, 11 and The Political Corruption of Science A Speech By Jeff rey St. John Winter Meeting, The Tobacco Institute February 29,198© 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=TVTodayShow business correspondent. He has con- tributed regularly over the years to the edi- ~ toriaJ pages of the nation's leading news- ~ papers, among them The New York Times, The Washington Star, The Wa/L Street Journal, O The Chicago Tribune, Long Island Newsday Q and The Los Angeles Times. 0 ~ ~ ~

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 pla 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, t}:at 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

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 libert!y and, thus, free of t'otalitarian terror. However, im 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 witK 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'e piece that this campaign, shoul& have a labelt "WARNING: LNING MAY BE 1 HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH." 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 o f' these dangers, the average li f e expectancy in the United States was 47.3 years, ac- cording, to the U.S. Census Bureau. To- day, it Is more than 70 yeors."z Now clearly that one fact of national life throws into question the wholesale indictment by the consurner and environmental move- s ments of the private industrial system as es- sentially one that produces hszards to humam 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 thats 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." 3 Dr. Whellzin has been one of the few spe- cializing in public health to decry the growing tendency in, this nation to "ban everything 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'1 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 welli as politically," she states. "I think part of the problem is that we are being guided by laws that really aren't very scientific."" Furthermore, Dr. Whelan, believes that in, recent years the discipline of scientific re- search have been corrupted by politics, which: she labeled "political, toxicology."e' This corruption of science by politics has been due not'just t'o growing human error or tailoring scientific studies t'o 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- 4 5

covering the cause of and a cure for cancer. Science, like education that was just elevate6 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 groupss 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- d'ustrial community. In committing itself' t'o 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 politicail 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 naturali human fear of dreaded diseases like cancer, heart disease and other lethal illnesses. The evidence to support their contention that new . 4 w laws and power must be granted to.govern- ment to solve the problems they claim exist is open to serious challenge and ini 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, "tha~'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 t'he accumulationi 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-politicaliviews. The attack on cigarettes N 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- Q niques pioneered in the cigarette case applied (Zagainst the auto, food, chemical, textile, pe- (A 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 6

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 justificatiom 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."' 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 L980'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 Washingtonj 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 Americam 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 alli business is engaged in a vast crimi- nal conspiracy. The credibility of this danger- ous falsehood has had~ a decade and a half' + 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 d'efinit'ion of propaganda is as follows: ~ "Any org¢nized or concerted group moue- ment to spread a particular doctrine ... disseminationi of ideas, information, gos- sip for the purpose of helping or injuring a person, institution or cause."' Furthermore, the lat'e 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.11' We were provided an example of this short- :y, 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,"' witK ~ hundreds of teach-ins and debates across the ~ country to dramatize and expose what he and 0 his associates claim is the growing criminalit~ 0 and social irresponsibility ofl large American 0 corporations. Nader along with the Fabian (f'j socialist economist, Dr. John Kenneth Gal- ~ braith, unveiled~ "The Corporate Democracy N Act," legislation that would allegedly combat crime in the executive suites and give share- holders greater rights.'x 8 9

The ominous implications of this new phase of Nader's 15-year campaigrn 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 amattempt 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 mucK clearer. Nader's proposal is a new and revolutionary idea in the long tradition of Arnericam legal history. No longer are individuals to be held accountable for possible criminal' wrongdo- ing. But' an entire class of American business- mem is to be regarded as a vast conspiratorial economic criminal group whicK 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 at'tempt to convince the country that all American corporations and business- men are a vast conspiratoriall criminal class is similar to the campaign of the Nazis against the German andEuropean; 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' 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 growtK of global political terrorism~ over the last decade has shifted its focus from political and military leaders to businessmen. Prof. Robert A. Kil- 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."l3 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." 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.l' 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 seriouss upsurge of terrorism aimed at businessmen in the United States, all advanced industriall societies in the future will be extremely vul- nerable. Now ft is important to und'erstand that what distinguishes Ralph Nader and his allies from legitimate critics of American business is their violence of language. Like their anti-capitallst, anti-business counterparts abroad, who have 10 I1

used violent propaganda to pave the way for physicali terror, Nader's violence of language can be the prelude to violence of action. The propagandist shrinks from, initiation of actual violence, yet he has been and continues to be the catalyst for violence of action against a group smeared as a class of'criminals. Put another way: Violence of language always precedes violence of action. I, do not say that such violence will happen, onHy that it can happen, because the propa- ganda groundwork has been cultivated in this country over the last 15 years. Nader and his allies, especially those in the news media, can't escape the responsibility for what they have helped set in motion. Nbr is it an, ade- quate defense to say that their motives are of the highest order and their cause based on higher moral values. This is the same justifi- cation of those in Teheran who seized our diplomatic personnell A higher moral cause is being served and thus they try to justify ter- rorism. In fact, the propaganda campaign that portrays the Shah as a criminal, and the e- merging Nader campaign smearing U.S. busi- nessmen as criminals, emanate from the same source: It is hatred of' what is perceived as the evils of the private economic system. If'the U:S. news media are not guilty, of sharing Nader's malevolent view of the private economic sector in this country, they are cer- tainly guilt'y of being gulled int'o believing that he and his army of radical allies in the unions, Congress, the academic community and vari'~ ous religious orders are really the representa- tives of a majority of American consumers. In reality, Nader is the field' marshal of an elitist minorit'y; made up mostly of power hungry lawyers, out to secure unlimited power without the confirming grace of popular demo- cratic mandate. They are seeking to impose a radical~ new economic order on this nation by a set of ideas that minimizes free choice and maximizes coercion against U!S. consum- ers and producers alike. Nader and his allies have created a climate of intellectual terror by insisting that every- thing produced by the private economic sys- tem is lethal to human life and limb. In doing so by their violence of language, they set the stage for the actual initiation of violence„ par- ticularly since Nader and his associates have now taken the dangerous step of': enshrining, the fal5ehood that all American corporations and businessmen are criminals who must be shackled with the power of bureaucratic gov- ernmenti The New Terrorism of the 60's and' 70's hass been the prelude to what American Business will face in the 80's. In my, judgment, the issue is no longer one ofl the tobacco industry, the oil industry nor the food industry. The entire economic system is under propaganda seige, and'~ this seige has the potential for turning violent unless all businesses, not just the tobacco industry, face squarely and real- istically the danger before it is too late. It seems to me that some new approaches to this chronic problem are necessary, partic- ularly in the field of communications, over which the critics and enemies of business now have a monopoly. It is no longer enough for the tobacco industry to battle, as it has over the last decade and' a half, its critics and those who seek its submission to the all-powerful state. Businessmen need~to present a broader moral„ intellectual, cultural defense of the en- tire private economic system itself. The New Terrorism of our time is the van- dalizing of those values that cont'ributed to the progress of this nation: personal liberty and private economic ownership of property. These are moral and political values and it is ultimately an intellectual war that must be waged, since, in the final analysis, the enemies of freedom and the open society are intellec- tuals who love power more than they love liberty. The love of power has shown itself to be a greater moral cancer in the history of mankind than the physical disease that has been used to terrorize us into silence and, thus, submission. 12 13

As with the issue of smoking, each of us must be free to choose rather than to have that choice made for us by others who are more concerned with power than with the protec- tion of our health. Despite what has happened in the decades of'the 60's and 70's there is, as we embark onn the d'ecade of'~ the 80's, a sea change taking place in, Arnerican, Society. Men and women in all walks of life have not abandoned their common sense. For that matter, they are not so many sheep to be led to their own destruc- tion by the black Judas goat. A great gulf has opened up between a majority of Ameri- cans who cherish their need to make their own choices and a minority who believe they can make these choices by playing god with gov- ernment. There is a rising resistance in this landi a constructive rebellion that is saying, "Thou shalt not make of this good and great land of': liberty and unlimite6 opportunity a nation of quarreling factions that turn one against another." If the 1'ast two decades have been~ years of tearing down, the 1980's can be years of build- ing up, with a new leadership carrying forth some time-tested old and valuable values. Among those venerated human values is the restoration of courtesy in our daily lives, the rewarding of' achievement for excellence in the unshakable conviction that the uniqueness of this nation, as well as the source of its strength and goodness, has always resided in the capacity to recognize that individuals co- operating voluntarily made America. Surely;, this set of values can and should give us the confidence for the challenges of the 1980's. We are, in the 6nal analysis, up against what Prof. John V: Van Sickle termed "the tyranny of idealisml" espoused by those who have not learned the basic lessons of life: Minding your own business is the most morali and practical business for building a nation's free future. 14 Footnotes 1. Associated Press, May. 11s 1978, New York. 2. Ibid. 3. "The Politics of Cancer," Policy Reuiew, Nieri- tage Foundation, Washington, D.C., Fall 1'979; p. 34. 4. Ihterview; Reporter's Roundup; Mutual Broad- casting, Washington, D.C:, March 112, 1978, p. 5. 5. Ibid., p. 6. 6 Ibid. 7:, United Press International, New York, Novem- ber 9, 1979. 8:, Reporter's Roundup, op., cit:, p, 9. 9:, "Changing the World, Cigarette Foe Banzhaf Sees the Law as Tool to Attack Social Ills," The Wall Street Journal, April 17, 1969. 10:, "The Origins of Totalitarianism."' World Pub- lishing, Times Mirror, New York, 1971 edition, p. 353. 11. Ibid., p. 352. 12:, Coalition Plans to Fight (`Crimein the Suites,'), Washington Post„ December 13; 1979. 13. Associated Press, Washington. D.C., Novem- ber 8, 1979. 14. United Press International. Los Angeles, No- vember 8, 1979. 15. "Call Terror Ogre Eating the World." Confer- ence Board report summary, New York Daily' News, November 25, 1979. 15 I

I The Tobacco Institute 1875 f Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1980