Bill B

I did some consulting in the country of Turkey. One of the women I work with as was one of the most successful CEOs in Turkey.  She was the head of the company that produced formula for children.  I struggled ethically and had eventually to get out of the consulting contract with her, because she said she was in the business of convincing all of the women in Turkey that breast milk is unhealthy. Furthermore, it is a sign of you being culturally backward.  If you are not going to be a backward resident in Turkey you need to get rid of the breast milk and use our formula.  She was fully aware of the negative impact.  I was shocked. I had to bow out of working with her.  I thought this was profoundly unethical behavior on her part.

Mitch

We’ve talked a lot about mental models and where we see the mental models applied. We have become more expansive in our understanding of mental models that we are espousing and the mental model lenses that we are actually looking through. I’m intrigued by the idea of looking at the use of mental models regarding the promotion of alternative sweeteners. Maybe it is a cultural lens.  Maybe it is something about capitalism. How in the world did we go from sugar is bad to a switch toward alternative sweeteners—and not be aware of what we are doing?  How did this happen? How do we as physicians sit in front of our patients and subscribe a pill when we know that what is being eaten, regardless of willpower and judgment, is probably going to make a bigger impact (if we change one thing) than the pill we have recommended to treat the symptoms? How did we get brought into this dilemma? We are wise, knowledgeable professionals—yet it took me a couple of years to uncover the toxicity of fructose corn syrup.  I was blind to this.  How did the dominant mental model about sweeteners get put in place. I have no idea. I think we are getting at the nature and source of this mental model with all of the ideas we have been offering during this forum.

Jeremy

This reminds me. There is a wonderful quote “Good food is medicine.  Bad food requires medicine.”  Mitch, I think you were the first to make this link.  Big agri-business and big-pharma are collaborating in their effort to continue reinforcing that Bad food requires medicine. They will reinforce this platitude as long as they can get away with it. How do the rest of us catch up with the fact that for the past fifty years they have been getting away with this biased statement? They learned from the merchants of doubt—that Jack knows well from the tobacco industry.  Those in the tobacco industry were not ultimately in the business of selling tobacco. They were in the business of selling doubt regarding the harm caused by tobacco. That has continued and proliferated so that now doubt and skepticism regarding science has flourished. Even we, as physicians, are skeptical about the scientific data. What does it mean for the general public if we, as professionals, are recognizing the corruption of science? What I don’t think the general public is learning is that business interests seem to be corrupting the academic scientific realm. That is leading to a diminishment of faith and trust in science–which is alarming.  The diminished faith and trust could be deadly for all of us regarding certain things like climate change.  I would suggest that obesity is the climate change of medicine. It is one of these highly complex challenges that don’t lend themselves to easy solutions.