Lethal but Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health

Public health specialist Freudenberg points a critical finger at the “Corporate Consumption Complex” and the major corporations doing business in six consumer product industries: food, alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, guns, and automobiles. He argues that carefully designed products, effective lobbying, and aggressive advertising have created rising rates of premature death, increases in instances of heart disease and diabetes, and poorer health worldwide. Reinforced by deep-seated cultural ideologies that value hyper-consumption, low regulation, and blaming individual lifestyle choices for widespread health issues, these corporations produce high-profit “fun for you” products, pursue poorly regulated international markets, and maintain a “system in which those at the very top... run the world to benefit themselves.” The limited successes of some community activist groups in challenging these forces, such as Million Mom March, are held up as building blocks for alliances that could focus on a broader, unified agenda. Freudenberg’s earnest enthusiasm for saving the public’s health from corporate greed comes through despite the quiet dryness of his presentation, and his faith in America’s disjointed collection of public health activists’ ability to become an emerging movement that can successfully advocate for a healthy, sustainable future is well articulated, if perhaps overly hopeful. B&W halftones and illus. (Feb.)