Late 1800s – Early 1900s: Rockefeller, Oil, and Medicine
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Standard Oil Monopoly: John D. Rockefeller amassed huge wealth in oil. He then sought to reshape medicine in ways that aligned with petrochemical products.
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Flexner Report (1910): Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie, it led to the closure of most natural/holistic medical schools (homeopathy, naturopathy, herbal medicine). Only allopathic (drug-focused, lab/science-based) schools were accredited.
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Effect: Medicine pivoted toward pharmaceutical interventions and away from natural or traditional practices.
Prohibition angle (1920–1933):
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Rockefeller and allied industrialists supported alcohol prohibition. One reason, often cited by historians of fuel policy, is that ethanol had captured ~25% of the midwest U.S. automobile fuel market pre-1920. By banning alcohol production, ethanol as a fuel competitor to gasoline was destroyed, leaving petroleum dominant.
1930s–1950s: Sugar, Tobacco, and Food Industry Influence
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Tobacco Science Capture: For decades, the tobacco industry funded studies and scientists to deny the smoking-cancer link.
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Sugar vs. Fat Wars: The Sugar Research Foundation (now the Sugar Association) secretly funded Harvard nutritionists in the 1960s to downplay sugar’s health risks and shift blame onto fat/cholesterol. This directly shaped U.S. and Canadian dietary guidelines.
1960s–1980s: Food Guides & Pharma Expansion
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Canada’s Food Guide (1942, 1977 revisions): Strong emphasis on grains and dairy — aligned with agricultural industry lobbying.
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Cholesterol Scare: Official guidelines told people to avoid eggs, butter, and red meat. Meanwhile, sugar and processed carbs were given a free pass, reflecting food industry capture of nutrition science.
1990s–2000s: Deepening Pharmaceutical Influence
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Medical Journals: Investigations (e.g. New England Journal of Medicine, 2002 editorial) admitted half of published clinical trial results were industry-funded and often biased toward positive outcomes.
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Regulators: FDA, CDC, NIH increasingly funded or influenced by pharmaceutical partnerships. “Revolving doors” between regulators and industry ensured industry-friendly policies.
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Opioid Crisis: Purdue Pharma aggressively marketed OxyContin while regulators and journals downplayed addiction risks. This killed hundreds of thousands — a modern example of systemic capture.
2010s–2020s: Vaccines, Nutrition, and Public Health
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Vaccine Liability Protection: In the U.S., the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act shielded manufacturers from lawsuits, creating the Vaccine Court (funded by a tax on vaccines, not corporate liability).
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COVID-19:
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Warp Speed contracts and indemnity agreements gave Pfizer/Moderna liability shields in both the U.S. and Canada.
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Regulatory agencies (FDA, CDC, Health Canada, EMA) relied heavily on industry-submitted data.
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Independent doctors who raised safety concerns were censured or stripped of licenses by professional colleges.
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Today: A Consistent Pattern
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Rockefeller: Redirect medicine toward pharma/petrochemical model.
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Prohibition: Crush ethanol as fuel competitor to petroleum.
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Food Industry: Shape food guides, vilify fats, downplay sugar.
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Tobacco & Pharma: Suppress harms until undeniable.
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Modern Pharma: Liability shields + captured regulators ensure profits first, accountability last.
✅ The throughline: Corporate interests shaped the definition of “science” and “public health policy” to protect markets (oil, sugar, pharma) while marginalizing or silencing competing truths (ethanol, natural medicine, independent doctors).