Health Justice Vigilantes
Why a certain group of scientists are aggressively pushing for health purity
A paper by Cristian Tomasetti and Bert Vogelstein, published in 2015 in Science, found that two-thirds of cancers were caused by "bad luck". They argued that cancer-causing mutations are due more to random DNA replication errors rather than environmental exposures. This explains why some people who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day lived a long life while others with little cigarette exposure died too young.
But there has been a strong reaction against this paper among certain environmental health scientists, statisticians and toxicologists, particularly around the IARC Ramazzini community. They argue that diseases like cancer are a consequence of poor lifestyle activities and decisions.
This class of scientist has left the lab to engage in a political struggle to impose their conclusions on public lifestyle choices – taking the fight to industry, consumer groups and tolerant regulators. Calling them “zealots” is too kind. I have started to refer to them as “health justice vigilantes” and there hasn’t been such displays of vindictiveness and intolerance in public health debates since the US Prohibition movement in the 1920s.
Some examples:
The Firebreak recently covered a group of scientists who have built on this mindset in their creation of the “exposome” where every disease is caused by environmental and lifestyle exposures. Industry is identified as the cause of these exposures so health prevention measures involve lawsuits, regulatory bans or denormalization tactics. Their objective is to identify and control (regulate) everything in this exposome.
The exposomers have been aligned with a philosophy advanced by members of the Collegium Ramazzini, a cult of activist scientists with anti-industry affiliations and a disposition for vengeance. These vigilantes design and run studies and publish papers intended to be tort-lawsuit friendly, linking diseases to products lawyers can then use to sue industries from pesticides, chemicals, food additives, cosmetic products. Ramazzinians usually serve as highly-paid litigation consultants in these lawsuits. With enormous sums of money and funding involved, it is no surprise that Ramazzini science has been associated with poor methodology, non-transparent funding and opportunism. They have developed a checklist to prove that any substance gives you cancer (from which they then selectively choose their strategy).
In the US, a group of activist Moms coalesced around Robert F Kennedy Jr to form the Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. Their objective is to blame the ongoing chronic health disease crisis in the United States on chemicals, food additives, vaccines, fluoride and 5G (plus a wide number of conspiracy theories). They have created some terms to bundle their accusations, like ultra-processed foods. Chronic health disease itself is a challenging term with many factors, including diagnosis, lifestyle and demographic shifts, that could account for increasing health issues. This month, the MAHA Commission (it is a movement) will release its report on the cause of autism and it is almost certain they will not conclude that it is caused by bad luck.
This is not to say that these health justice vigilantes wish cancer upon innocent people, but they feel that diseases have a clear correlation with certain lifestyle choices and decisions. They move fallaciously from correlation to causation to certainty. Being proved right for these scientists is more important than having empathy, something overrated to those who believe they themselves are saving lives in their political activism.
In moderation?
I shake my head when scientists boldly pronounce how ultra-processed foods like chemical additives or vegetable oils have been the root cause of so many chronic illnesses. An issue like obesity is complicated as we have become less active, spending more time indoors and suffering mental health issues from the consequences of long screen-time exposures. To confidently blame so many diseases simply on UPFs like red dye, fast food or aspartame is more than just a stretch. The media play into it though as all parties pretend they are providing an information service.
We need our scientists and doctors to be honest and tell us that we can enjoy life, but in moderation. We can have that big meal, but not every day, and then maybe go for a walk after. If we have gained some weight, consider a diet or get more exercise. Harm reduction and common sense should guide us, not health purity and prohibition. We should not be scared out of enjoying life.
It is valuable to understand what could be contributing factors to certain diseases so we can understand how vulnerable people can prevent exposures and lower risks. But vigilantes don’t behave that way. They want to be right and for others to be blamed. To show how most cancers are caused by bad luck just infuriates them.
If being right weren’t enough, these zealot scientists want to change the laws and impose lifestyle changes on us. Health justice vigilantes want us to stop smoking, vaping, drinking alcohol, eating processed or fatty foods, meats and sugars. If the diseases we suffer from were more bad luck than a consequence of our (poor) lifestyle choices, then their hypotheses (and their careers) would have been for nothing.
It comes down to one issue: determining blame (and accountability/liability).
The WHO Noncommunicable Disease Agenda
Next week the WHO will hold their Fourth High-Level Meeting on NCDs (chronic diseases) as a side event at the UN General Assembly in New York. The event will gather the leading health justice vigilantes and the picture and the data they will present can be expected to be bleak. Expect claims like how 74% of the world’s population will die from a noncommunicable disease (cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes...). The costs to society and economies will be measured in the trillions of dollars per year.
Last year the WHO prepared a report urging members to tobacconize all health harming industries (including the alcohol, food and drink, chemicals, plastics, pesticides, baby formula and pharmaceutical industries). The objective is to exclude these industries from engaging with society and policymakers in the same way the tobacco industry has been denormalized. See a Firebreak series that examined the hypocrisy of this view. No doubt there will be attempts by the Lancet Commercial Determinants of Health faction within the WHO to impose these restrictions, but the nomenclature has not been sufficiently defined.
The WHO health justice vigilantes clearly feel that industry is to blame for the rise in chronic diseases and should not be allowed to be involved or engaged in seeking solutions. It would be hard to succeed in this political ambition if many chronic diseases was due to bad luck.
A key characteristic of most zealots is that any negative consequences from their dogmatic campaigns matter little in comparison to winning. The attacks against tobacco harm reduction strategies like vaping and nicotine pouches, for example, will result in millions more dying from continued cigarette use, but these numbers mean nothing to the activists. It is about winning a fight against industry and the WHO has taken the lead in such vengeful campaigns.
Vaccines: A Pox on all Vigilantes
Zealots and vigilantes are not known for their tolerance or even-handedness. The vaccine debate is perhaps the best example of health intolerance on both sides of the debate.
Anti-vaxxers reject vaccines as a industry/regulator conspiracy against humanity and put their right to free choice ahead of the well-being of the population (especially the vulnerable). Activists provide false data and run fear campaigns built on anecdotal stories and half-truths to manipulate public perception and confidence in the healthcare system.
At the same time, vaccine vigilantes declare (falsely) that all vaccines are 100% safe, embrace the fullest vaccine schedule possible and consider vaccination as a moral obligation. The concerned parent or the vaccine hesitant is portrayed as a selfish scourge on humanity who will willingly infect vulnerable populations (categorizing it as a form of manslaughter). They maintain that children who do not get flu vaccines should not be allowed to go to school.
When vigilantes from both sides lock horns on health debates, the truth is kicked into the tall grass. People have a right to choose what to put into their bodies and vilifying them does not encourage rational dialogue. At the same time, certain realities about the achievements of vaccines cannot be denied and progress on the eradication of serious diseases should not be put at risk. A moderate, reasonable discussion is necessary but not with vigilantes leading the charges.
What I fear is that we are living more and more in a world where vigilantes are active on all sides of health debates, from vaccines to vaping, from biotech to food. That is definitely bad luck for reasonable policy decisions.