Reason’s Ron Bailey writes:
Health activists, nutrition nannies, medical paternalists, and just plain old quacks regularly conjure up a variety of menaces that are supposedly damaging the health of Americans. Their scares ranging from the decades-long campaign against fluoridation to worries that saccharin causes cancer to the ongoing hysteria over biotech crops to fears of lead in lipstick. The campaigners’ usual “solution” is to demand that regulators ban the offending substance or practice. Here are five especially egregious examples.
In a way, this is an improvement — the health-scare nonsense, that is. Up to the mid-20th century, the favored way to scare people and rile them up was to blame the Jews, the Negroes, the “other” in whatever form was handy. This is still stupid and/or wicked, but it’s a little better.