Even relatively small threats to profits can cause vested interests to spring into obfuscatory action as is revealed by the case involving the makers of aspirin. Aspirin consumption by children with viral illnesses increases the risk of Reye’s syndrome – fatal in one third of all patients – by 4,000 per cent.
When this evidence became known, the aspirin industry geared up a counter-campaign that delayed the introduction of simple warning labels on their products about the risk of Reye’s syndrome by more than five years.
Before the warning labels became mandatory in the US, some 500 cases were reported annually; today, less than a handful of cases are reported each year.
The unnecessary death toll is readily obtained by multiplication.
