Bad Advice by Paul A. Offit

Author:Paul A. Offit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: MED078000, Medical/Public Health, SOC057000, Social Science/Disease & Health Issues
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2018-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.

—W. H. AUDEN

Charisma sells.

When trying to communicate science and health information to the public, celebrities can be enormously helpful—or harmful. For example, in the early 1950s, Arthur Godfrey, a beloved radio and television entertainer, promoted cigarette smoking. Godfrey created the slogan “Buy ’em by the carton.” Known affectionately as the “Old Redhead,” Arthur Godfrey was an avuncular, big-hearted figure. Even though studies had already shown that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer—and that the more people smoked, the greater the risk—Godfrey was influential. People trusted him. If Arthur Godfrey said cigarette smoking couldn’t hurt you, then scientists were probably wrong. Godfrey later died from emphysema, a complication of the radiation therapy he had received to treat his lung cancer.

In the early 2000s, Charlton Heston, a popular actor, lobbied against gun control, even though countries with stricter gun laws had fewer gun-related crimes. Heston was best known for his roles as Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur (1959), and George Taylor in Planet of the Apes (1968). Heston was also the five-term president of the National Rifle Association (NRA). On May 20, 2000, while addressing an annual meeting of the NRA, Heston said, “For the next six months, [presidential hopeful] Al Gore is going to smear you as the enemy. He will slander you as gun-toting, knuckle-dragging, bloodthirsty maniacs who stand in the way of a safer America. Will you remain silent? I will not remain silent. If we are going to stop this, then it is vital to every law-abiding gun owner in America to register to vote and show up at the polls on Election Day.” Heston picked up a rifle. “I want to say these fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: ‘From my cold, dead hands!’ ” Charlton Heston was a powerful, dynamic figure—when he talked, people heard the voice of God. “From my cold dead hands” became a bumper sticker and a rallying cry for the NRA.

On June 24, 2005, during an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today, Tom Cruise, another popular actor, became the national spokesperson for Scientology. He did it by denying the validity of Brooke Shields’s postpartum depression, saying, “Psychiatry is a pseudoscience.”

“The thing that I’m saying about Brooke is that there’s misinformation, okay?” said Cruise. “There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in a body.”

Cruise, who had starred in Top Gun (1986), Rain Man (1988), A Few Good Men (1992), Mission Impossible (1996), and War of the Worlds (2005) was a trusted voice. “You don’t know the history of psychiatry,” he told Lauer. “I do.”

Cruise knew what Scientologists had taught him. Specifically, that seventy-five million years ago, Xenu, the tyrant ruler of the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.