Yeah, I'm Still Here

Because I feel better writing what is on my mind, than not doing so, I've decided to start this nonsense again after a break of several weeks. But, let me repeat, I'm doing it for myself, not for you.

The obesity / diabetes epidemic documented in this film can hardly be considered an example of progress, in the event there is still anyone left who thinks the march of time is synonymous with social/political/economic advance.



The irritating aspect of this story is that there are people who genuinely prefer to believe this problem just, somehow, happened, and that for the government to try to do anything about it is overreach or another obnoxious example of the nanny state at work. These are the people who label as "bad science" all studies that don't support their economic interests. And they are people who clamor for individual responsibility but have no sense of, or understanding even, of the need for corporate responsibility.

Here is a shameful, but typical, story from 2003 about the pressure the sugar industry brought to bear on the US State Department to extort the World Health Organization into changing the conclusions about sugar in one of its reports. At the time this story ran, the issue was still up in the air. I believe the ultimate result was that the WHO bowed to US threats to pull its funding support and changed its report.

No doubt there are some examples of corporations who have made socially-responsible decisions that went against their bottom line. And it might even be true that those stories are under-reported, although that would seem to indicate a very atypically non-media-savvy corporation. But, if those examples exist, gawd gave us the internet to find them. Personally, I'm not going to waste my time, but I'll gladly give equal time to anyone who can find a story about corporate good citizenship that can offset the corporate role in obesity, or the recent story about General Motors and the faulty ignition switch.