Hey. Light up a cigarette and relax.
NPR is doing a series on stress. They commissioned a poll which is mostly non-scientific nonsense, yielding such stunning results as people in poor health feel a lot of stress. Wow!
But in Monday's story on the subject they did come up with some important news. (News only because it hasn't been widely reported, to my knowledge. The actual information has been available on the Internet for decades.)
It turns out that in reviewing these documents posted by court order since the 90s, public health researcher Mark Petticrew found that much of the research that made "stress" famous, that "discovered" the Type A personality, was funded and controlled by Big Tobacco:
"What they've discovered is that both Selye's work [which established that any kind of stress caused bad health outcomes] and much of the work around Type A personality were profoundly influenced by cigarette manufacturers. They were interested in promoting the concept of stress because it allowed them to argue that it was stress — not cigarettes — that was to blame for heart disease and cancer.
"In the case of Selye they vetted the content of his papers and agreed the wording of papers," says Petticrew. "Tobacco industry lawyers actually influenced the content of his writings, suggesting to him things that he should comment on."
They also, Petticrew says, spent a huge amount of money funding his research. All of this is significant, Petticrew says, because Selye's influence over our ideas about stress are hard to overstate. It wasn't just that Selye came up with the concept, but in his time he was a tremendously respected figure."
Why does this not surprise me? I've already told the story here of my encounter Big Tobacco paying off a newspaper to censor anything negative about Big Tobacco. This story is entirely credible on the face of it. It's especially credible because it fits into Big Tobacco's obsessive attention to marketing. Sure, a lot of scientific research has been funded by the Defense Department and other organizations with a purpose, but Big Tobacco wasn't interested in discovering or creating anything--they only wanted to manipulate "research" to help them sell cigarettes, and to prevent for as long as possible any attempt to regulate tobacco as a serious health threat.
As for stress, the NPR story also mentions that later research casts a lot of doubt on the whole Type A idea, though that mythology is firmly entrenched in popular culture. Most of the research that links high stress to heart disease was funded by Big Tobacco, while all but one of the studies that weren't find a much weaker link. The NPR story concludes:
But some scientists now argue that our usual narrative of stress — that stress is universally bad for health — is too one-sided and doesn't reflect the reality that some degree of stress can actually benefit people. Stress isn't always a bad thing.
Still, the narrative of stress promoted by the tobacco industry through research and marketing is alive a well. A ghost from a long time ago continues to shape how we see, and experience, stress.
Mr. Butts is still in our heads. Want to ask him what he thinks of the climate crisis?
No comments:
Post a Comment