THE SOCIALIZATION OF MUCKRAKING
99
declares that it has no jurisdiction over the manufacture and dis–
tribution of cigarettes. Although the cigarette has long ago been
outlawed by medical science, .cigarette manufacturers are permit–
ted to advertise heavily in the medical press, which from time to
time prints scientific articles proving beyond question that cigarette
smoking shortens life and that the vice is an important contributing
cause of the illnesses and diseases which doctors are employed to
prevent and cure. In the case of the Philip Morris Company, the
Journal
of the American Medical Association and its editor, Dr.
Morris Fishbein, became the principal instruments by which this
company was enabled to bolster its dubious claims with subsidized
research, and harness the prestige of the American medical profes–
sion to one of the boldest, most unscrupulous promotion campaigns
in the history of American advertising. Since this campaign was
based on the Philip Morris' substitution of diethylene glycol for
glycerine as a moistener, the very foundations of business were
shaken when the papers reported, in October, 1937, that seventy–
two people had died as a result of taking this chemical, used by an
irresponsible drug house as a solvent for the valuable drug, sul–
fanalimide. But not for long. Quickly the imperilled vested inter–
ests joined forces to repair the breach. The
Journal of
the A.M. A.
announced editorially that there was no evidence that diethylene
glycol when used as an ingredient in the manufacture of cigarettes
is harmful. The National Better Business Bureau sent out a hush–
hush bulletin quoting this statement and sternly denouncing an
alleged "whispering campaign" against Philip Morris cigarettes.
No commercial magazine would take an article from me s.etting
forth the facts of this situation. The
Nation
rejected three such
articles on advice of counsel, who contributed the astonishing
opinion that "this article cannot be revised to make it non-libelous."
In the end I was forced to tell the story from the platform of the
1938 conference of the American Association for Social Security.
Nobody sued me for libel then or since, but also, no newspaper
published what I said.
I have cited this example at some length because it illustrates
so perfectly what lies back of Mr. Pegler's pseudo-profound dic·
tum. It is not quite true that "we live by our vices." What really
happens is that we anchor a particular vice in the very bedrock of
our exploitative economy, so that we are obliged to die of it. What
