The four horse­men of the chil­dren’s apoc­a­lypse: lead, cig­a­rettes, for­mu­la and so­cial me­dia. Lead is a brain poi­son. Used to be found in com­mer­cial paint, bat­ter­ies and gaso­line. Paint last­ed longer, bat­ter­ies and gaso­line stronger. Lead tastes sweet and it poi­soned hun­dreds of thou­sands of chil­dren who ate paint chips con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with lead. Af­ter tremen­dous fights be­tween the lead in­dus­try and the med­ical pro­fes­sion, it was banned in most coun­tries around the 1980s.

Most of the lead pro­duced to­day is used in car bat­ter­ies and it’s not a prob­lem as long as its dis­pos­al is well reg­u­lat­ed. In the 1990s, there was an out­break of lead poi­son­ing around Ari­ma be­cause of the in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing of old car bat­ter­ies in emp­ty lots and chil­dren play­ing with and suck­ing the sweet pieces of lead. The lead in­dus­try, lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al, re­sist­ed all ef­forts to re­move lead from paint and gaso­line for decades, us­ing the same meth­ods lat­er used by the cig­a­rette, for­mu­la and now the smart­phone in­dus­tries: de­ny, dis­tort and de­lay.

Lead in gaso­line was fi­nal­ly banned in­ter­na­tion­al­ly around the turn of the last cen­tu­ry. De­spite fu­ri­ous op­po­si­tion, this meant the lo­cal in­dus­try had to do the same. The re­moval of lead from gaso­line has of­ten been called the great­est pub­lic health suc­cess of the past cen­tu­ry.

Then there were cig­a­rettes. An­oth­er poi­son but again, so prof­itable. We’ve known since the 1950s that cig­a­rettes are harm­ful. The “British Doc­tors Study,” found­ed in 1951 to in­ves­ti­gate the sud­den rise in lung can­cer, fol­lowed the smok­ing habits of over 40,000 physi­cians, smok­ing and non-smok­ing. By 1954, it had es­tab­lished that smok­ing caused lung can­cer and was strong­ly linked to em­phy­se­ma and heart at­tacks.

It took over 50 years for so­ci­ety to do some­thing about those find­ings and pro­tect peo­ple by ban­ning TV ad­ver­tis­ing (1965), tax­ing to­bac­co prod­ucts (1980) and fi­nal­ly su­ing the to­bac­co in­dus­try dur­ing the mid-1990s, ar­gu­ing that cig­a­rette man­u­fac­tur­ers en­gaged in de­cep­tive mar­ket­ing and know­ing­ly cre­at­ed mas­sive pub­lic health costs. The pub­lic won by fo­cus­ing on cor­po­rate de­cep­tion and the state’s fi­nan­cial bur­den for health­care rather than in­di­vid­ual smok­er li­a­bil­i­ty, which was and al­ways has been the in­dus­try’s fall­back po­si­tion. By 2000, most air­lines had banned in-flight smok­ing and in­door smoke-free en­vi­ron­ments were com­mon.

The milk in­dus­try found it­self in sim­i­lar po­si­tions by the mid-1970s, when, in 1974, a British NGO, War On Want, pro­duced the re­sults of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion, called “The Ba­by Killer,” in­to the pro­mo­tion and sales of pow­dered ba­by milks in the Third World, and showed ba­bies were dy­ing be­cause their moth­ers were be­ing ac­tive­ly en­cour­aged to bot­tle feed them de­spite the milk com­pa­nies know­ing that most peo­ple lived in con­di­tions of squalor and pover­ty, such as be­ing un­able to boil dirty wa­ter to mix for­mu­la prop­er­ly.

The milk in­dus­try was us­ing slick, high-pres­sure ad­ver­tis­ing me­dia cam­paigns on par­ents in ma­ter­ni­ty units and health cen­tres, in­clud­ing so-called “milk nurs­es” to en­cour­age moth­ers and doc­tors to rec­om­mend for­mu­la.

On re­turn­ing to T&T in 1977, I my­self was sub­ject­ed to for­mal vis­its by two high-rank­ing em­ploy­ees from Nes­tle and asked whether I was in favour of the “com­mu­nists” who had just launched TIBS, The In­for­ma­tive Breast­feed­ing So­ci­ety. I laughed them out of my of­fice but they re­turned again and again in var­i­ous guis­es, try­ing to get my sup­port for their prod­uct.

Drink­ing for­mu­la pro­duces too many obese ba­bies and chil­dren. Obe­si­ty is a pre­cur­sor for non­com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases like di­a­betes, stroke, high blood pres­sure, heart at­tacks and the like, the lead­ing caus­es of ill­ness and death in T&T. At present, gov­ern­ment spends TT$6 to $8 bil­lion per year on treat­ing these dis­eases, which link di­rect­ly to feed­ing meth­ods in the first years of life.

Yet, com­pa­nies claim they are not to blame and are able to slow down pub­lic knowl­edge or cast doubt on these find­ings. Most physi­cians are un­will­ing to crit­i­cise them. Some pre­fer to ac­cept do­na­tions to at­tend “med­ical con­fer­ences.”

The play­book is adopt­ed from the to­bac­co in­dus­try. It’s al­ways the same. Ex­ec­u­tives de­ny find­ings, ad­ver­tise and cast doubt. Set up “grass­roots” or­gan­i­sa­tions who sup­port your prod­uct. Co-opt sci­en­tif­ic dis­course (sup­port sleazy stud­ies and en­cour­age the me­dia, es­pe­cial­ly so­cial me­dia, to pub­lish them). High­light un­cer­tain­ties. Take le­gal ac­tion. Lob­by politi­cians.

We are see­ing the same thing hap­pen­ing with so­cial me­dia. So­cial me­dia has been called the largest un­con­trolled ex­per­i­ment hu­man­i­ty has ever per­formed on its own chil­dren. It re­sults in poor grades, so­cial anx­i­ety and an in­crease in sui­cides in chil­dren. Be aware. Tech com­pa­nies are fight­ing back us­ing the same tried and test­ed tech­niques to make us doubt what we are see­ing in front of our eyes.