She started with aspirin. Moses had mentioned it in passing, during one of his screeds against the evils of industry.
It was just an experiment. A quick search on Google. Let’s see how crazypants 2.0 is. She typed:
Aspirin, Reye’s syndrome.
She almost immediately arrived at the Aspirin Foundation’s page—which had a clear link to a page about Reye’s syndrome.
Alix read over the page of material, scanning for something to hook onto. At the bottom of the page, it concluded: “There is a lack of convincing evidence that aspirin causes Reye’s syndrome: it may be one of many possible factors but many cases currently reported are probably due to inborn errors of metabolism. It is unclear whether restricting aspirin use by children has a favourable risk/benefit ratio.”
So much for that conspiracy theory, she thought.
She was about to close her laptop, but she could practically see Moses laughing at her.
“That’s it? That’s what Seitz research is? I thought they at least taught you rich kids how to work.”
“Oh, just shut up, why don’t you?” she muttered. But she could remember him in the warehouse, watching Tank skateboard. Him shaking his head and saying, “Whenever I think I’m cynical, I find out I’m nowhere near cynical enough.”
So what would a cynic do? Alix wondered. She immediately abbreviated the question to WWCD.
WWCD?
A cynic wouldn’t trust anyone. She went back to the top of the page and scanned for information on the Aspirin Foundation.
ABOUT THE FOUNDATION led to supporters, which led to:
Bayer HealthCare AG.
When she clicked through, Bayer’s tagline said, “Science for a Better Life.”
Alix’s eyes narrowed. Bayer, huh? She could feel her inner cynic suddenly engaging, despite herself.
Leaving her first window open, she opened and new tab, and searched again:
Aspirin, Reye’s Syndrome…
She hesitated, remembering Moses saying, “You know what they call your dad’s company? The Doubt Factory.”
With a hiss of anxiety, she added the word that the 2.0 crew were so obsessed with:
Doubt
Almost immediately a link to a website called defendingscience.org popped up. It wasn’t as slick as the Aspirin Foundation’s site, but it was interesting. It seemed to be electronic excerpts from a book called Doubt Is Their Product, which some guy had written for Oxford University Press.
Its opening pages began:
Since 1986 every bottle of aspirin sold in the United States has included a label advising parents that consumption by children with viral illnesses greatly increases their risk of developing Reye’s syndrome…
Alix kept reading, and as she did, she found herself becoming more and more appalled.
In the early 1980s, scientists discovered that aspirin was causing Reye’s syndrome in children. Immediately, the Centers for Disease Control notified doctors that children were in danger from the deadly illness that affected the brain and liver and appeared to be connected with taking aspirin when they had a viral infection like the flu or chicken pox.
So far, so good.
Then the government tried to notify the public. The Food and Drug Administration wanted to put a warning label on aspirin bottles. Even though doctors had been warned, aspirin was an over-the-counter medicine: It seemed to make sense that moms and dads should be warned that aspirin was a no-no for their little kids. The parents were the people buying the stuff, after all. There wasn’t a doctor standing in the supermarket aisle to warn them. A warning label made sense.
But then the aspirin industry got involved. They threw up barriers to labeling. They said that the government was being overly activist and that the science wasn’t settled. They fought—and the Food and Drug Administration backed down.
For two more years the government and doctors knew that an over-the-counter medicine millions of parents were buying for their kids was dangerous, but the parents weren’t being informed. It finally took a lawsuit by Public Citizen’s Health Research Group to force the FDA to act.
Eventually—finally—aspirin was labeled.
So who was this guy, this David Michaels, who had written the book? His bio said he was a professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services… and it seemed that someone liked him, because he’d not only served in the government under President Clinton, years back, he was also now serving as the assistant secretary of labor for Occupational Safety and Health Administration, under the current liberal president.
Half of Alix’s friends would have called Michaels a liberal, socialist traitor for that… but she also noticed in his biography on OSHA’s website that the Senate had unanimously confirmed him. Unanimously? Alix was a little surprised at that. She couldn’t remember the last time Republicans and Democrats had agreed on anything. Either they were all asleep at his confirmation hearing or someone actually thought Michaels knew something.
Regardless, a few things seemed to be fairly undeniable.
Reye’s syndrome cases had started dropping from a high of more than 500 cases a year, as soon as the Centers for Disease Control started howling about how dangerous aspirin was for little kids.
After aspirin got its warning label, Reye’s syndrome cases collapsed to around thirty a year.
And, of course, there was one last thing:
3. The aspirin industry had fought against warning labels, tooth and nail. They’d used legal threats and obfuscation and political leverage to delay the process as long as possible.
Alix searched around some more and came up with a 1982 New York Times article. It was fascinating to see into the history of the fight. Right there, on the page, the aspirin industry was vowing to fight the labeling initiative. The Aspirin Foundation of America was quoted:
Dr. Joseph White, the foundation’s president, said studies purporting to link the syndrome and aspirin are “wholly inconclusive.” The foundation also released a statement in Washington saying that the Department of Health and Human Services “acted hastily and without scientific basis” in calling for the warning label. Dr. White has asked for the chance to present the industry’s views before the Food and Drug Administration takes further action.
It was fascinating to see the language White had used: The accusations of rushed judgment. The claims that the decision lacked scientific basis… It was exactly the playbook that Moses and the rest of the 2.0 crew had described.
Fascinating. And then, a little chilling, because the Aspirin Foundation of America had apparently succeeded. They’d kept a warning label off aspirin bottles for four years.
How much extra money did four extra years without a warning label get them?
Enough to justify killing a fair number of kids, apparently.
Alix did some quick math, based on the numbers she’d been reading. If 30% of the Reye’s syndrome cases typically ended in death, that meant that more than a hundred and fifty kids had died each year that aspirin labeling was delayed.
Four times one-fifty, conservatively. Six hundred bodies, so aspirin could make a little extra cash.
“Whenever I think I’m cynical, I find out I’m nowhere near cynical enough.”
“No shit,” Alix muttered.
She closed the computer, feeling unclean.
Aspirin. It seemed like such an innocuous thing.
Alix thought of her mom taking aspirin. She went down the hall to her parents’ bedroom. In the master bath, she found the aspirin right inside the medicine cabinet, along with Tylenol and Advil. Alix looked darkly at the two other painkillers. “I don’t have time for you, too.”