<
https://buttondown.com/theswordandthesandwich/archive/how-to-not-get-poisoned-in-america/>
"The minute I saw that Robert Kennedy Jr., a notorious disease-loving health
crank, was going to be responsible for the nation’s health—and the health of
its food supply—I knew who I had to call. Deborah Blum is the woman who
literally wrote the book on the history of US food regulations. In 2018, she
published “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food
Safety at the Turn of the 20th Century,” a fascinating and occasionally
harrowing account of how the
Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906—which led to the
establishment of the FDA—came to pass. Blum is an expert on poison; her 2011
book “The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in
Jazz Age New York” also contends with poison, intentional and unintentional,
and the law.
Blum is also the director of the Knight Science Journalism Center at MIT during
a particularly difficult time for science journalism. Under an administration
ravenous for deregulation, which, when it comes to food safety, hits us right
in the gut, I wanted to talk to Blum about how she’s processing the news; the
Wild West of pre-regulation American food, and our chances of returning to that
unhappy state; and what it’s like to write about science in the face of
administration hell-bent on dismantling the U.S.’s world-class scientific
establishment. Along the way, we touched on low-dose toxicology, attitudes in
the US about money, food, and individualism, and the impossibility of being an
informed consumer in an age of disinformation. It was a fascinating
conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!"
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
