New article out on UNDO.org on ‘The dangers of Big Tobacco’s faux-pharmaceutical rebrand’

by | Mar 27, 2025 | Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Perverse Incentives, Priorities, Public Health, Publications, Side-effects, Tobacco Industry

This follows up on my article published last year: Hendlin YH, Han EL, Ling PM. Pharmaceuticalisation as the tobacco industry’s endgame. BMJ Global Health. 2024;9(2):e013866. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2023-013866 discussing how “To revamp their image, Big Tobacco relies...

Talk: 9 April, 2025 on Exporting Suffering: The Flower Industry at Home and Abroad

by | Mar 22, 2025 | agroecology, beyond liberalism, chemicals, Climate Change, Communication, Decolonization, deep ecology, Environmental Justice, exploitation, Fragmentation, Greenwashing, Indigenous Peoples, Industrial Epidemics, philosophy of science, Plants, Public Health, Semiocide, Side-effects, Syndemics, Talks

Everyone loves flowers. They brighten our day. They remind us of the beauty of life, and they are ephemeral, a memento mori of sorts to reflect upon our own mortality. But in the past half-century, the presence of flowers has moved from local to global markets, from...

EuEpigenetics

by | Apr 4, 2024 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Biophilia, Biosemiotics, Decolonization, duh, Environmental Justice, exploitation, Fake Freedoms, fake loops, folly, Fragmentation, Industrial Epidemics, philosophy of science, Public Health, Systems thinking, Verschlimmbessern

I get an email from Aporia Magazine titled “You’re probably a eugenicist” — provocatively suggesting that we all favor good genes, and that we, all-knowing moderns, imbued with science, know what good genes are. I take umbrage with Aporia for...

Pharmaceuticalization as the Tobacco Industry’s Endgame

by | Feb 21, 2024 | Conflicts of Interest, death, Discursive Gap, duh, e-waste, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Perverse Incentives, Priorities, Public Health, Publications, Tobacco Industry

A new article I wrote with colleagues at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has just been published in BMJ Global Health.   It investigates the multi-decade plan of various tobacco...

The first modern ‘War on’ was a War on Smog funded by the fossil fuel industry

by | Feb 9, 2024 | beyond liberalism, Climate Change, Conflicts of Interest, Decolonization, Discursive Gap, duh, Environmental Justice, fake loops, Greenwashing, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Oil Barons, pollution, Priorities, Public Health, Syndemics, Systems thinking, the real, Verschlimmbessern, Wolves in sheep's clothing

A new exposé by Rebecca John at DeSmog Blog shows that as early as 1953 industry was up to capturing popular outrage and dishing out placation. To mollify disgust of Angelinos at the mounting smog in Los Angeles, industrialists got ahead of the public action curve to...