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• Norbert Hirschhorn
  Published on: 13 May 2016

• Published on: 13 May 2016

  • Norbert Hirschhorn, physician

  Stan Shatenstein's review nicely summarised the essence of the drama, how the dramatis personae of tobacco control in the USA helped scuttle "the plausible, if arguable benefits of the McCain bill," which would have provided the greatest concessions to public health ever imagined, or indeed now imaginable. Worse, the incident fractured the anti-tobacco movement along severe earthquake fault-lines. In this telling, says S...

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  Stan Shatenstein's review nicely summarised the essence of the drama, how the dramatis personae of tobacco control in the USA helped scuttle "the plausible, if arguable benefits of the McCain bill," which would have provided the greatest concessions to public health ever imagined, or indeed now imaginable. Worse, the incident fractured the anti-tobacco movement along severe earthquake fault-lines. In this telling, says Shatenstein, "the book is a rousing success."

  The reviewer dwells on what he perceives as the book's "central failing": that the author Michael Pertschuk set about mainly to exculpate Matt Myers and his decision to go into secret negotiations with the tobacco industry pretty much on his own. (Actually, Pertschuk is harder on Myers, and so is Myers himself.)

  But the book is far richer. It explains what was lost when the rejectionists vociferously opposed any concession to the industry. It tells how the "bad cops" Koop and Kessler helped the "good cops" extract the maximum conceivable in industry concessions -- a perfect inside- outside strategy until the "bad cops" forgot they were supposed to be acting. Pertschuk then provides a primer on "Thirteen Ways to Lead a Movement Backward" (echoing poet Wallace Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"), whose obvious inverse is how to lead a movement to victory.

  The most important lesson from the book, however, is that all the principals but one were willing to reconsider their roles in the debacle, to search deeply into their actions and motives, and to examine how they might have behaved differently. Pertschuk gives his own mea culpa. Even Ralph Nader learned something new, but Stan Glantz refused to be interviewed for the book (Pertschuk, personal communication).

  When the next opportunity comes, as it surely will, I'd want all these reflective persons -- Myers, Nader, Pertschuk, Julia Carol -- to be out in front again.

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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