1885: they put cocaine in throat lozenges and children's teething drops.
1898: they put heroin in cough syrup and sold it as the non-addictive one.
1918: they put radium in toothpaste, face cream and drinking water, and called it the future.
1920s: they painted radium on watch dials, and the girls who licked the brushes to a point died with their jawbones crumbling.
1920s: they put asbestos in the ceilings, the school walls and the children's ironing boards, as a safety feature.
1923: they put lead in the petrol, the paint and the water pipes.
1935: they fitted x-ray machines in shoe shops, so children could bathe their feet in radiation to check the fit.
1945: they put DDT on the crops, the walls and the children, and filmed everyone smiling in the spray.
1950s: they handed pregnant women thalidomide for morning sickness, and a generation was born without limbs.
Every one of these was modern, scientific, and stamped with total confidence.
The list of things the experts swore were safe is a great deal longer than the list of things that actually were.
Progress has a poison aisle, and every bottle in it once had a lab coat standing behind it.
They'll tell you this time is different. So did they.
