Dr. Michael Greger

What if the CDC, the government came out and said, you know, yeah, it turns out that processed meat, bacon and hot dogs, lunch meat, we determined that they increase the risk of colorectal cancer.

In fact, it's a known human carcinogen.

It's true.

Group one carcinogen, meaning we're as sure that processed meat causes colorectal cancer as we are that plutonium causes cancer and tobacco causes cancer and asbestos causes cancer.

We are sure it causes cancer.

And yet, you know, we're sending kids to school with a bologna sandwich or something, right?

We wouldn't maybe smoke around our kids now, but we're sending... And colorectal cancer is the single deadliest cancer among non-smokers.

That's our number one... If you don't smoke, you're number one cancer nemesis in terms of dying to colorectal cancer.

And, right, and we... Okay, so the science has been established, has not yet, but what if the CDC, the government finally came out, put it on their website, okay, yeah, process me, we probably shouldn't be feeding this to people.

In today's media world, you know, back then, like, we like to, I mean, certainly me, I like to think of the internet as this, like, democratizing force.

Like, you know, we all have this idealistic view of, like, now, like, the truth is going to float to the surface, right?

If everybody, a free marketplace of ideas, right?

And so, you know, back in the 1950s, tobacco could absolutely control the message.

They can pay off the doctors.

In fact, the American Medical Association, even after 1964.

Even after the Surgeon General's report came out, they refused to endorse it.

And it turns out later, they got a $10 million check from the tobacco industry.

Wow.

Which they didn't disclose.

Okay, so look, you could pay off the doctors, you could control the message, you control the media, right?