Dan Froomkin, Presswatchers
Morton Mintz is turning 100 today, a good excuse to briefly review his extraordinary career as a pioneering hero of investigative reporting in medicine and public health.
As a reporter at the Washington Post for 30 years – from 1958 to 1988 – Mintz relentlessly exposed corporate crime and misconduct, particularly in the drug, tobacco and automotive industries.
In 1962, Mintz broke the story of the consequences of using thalidomide, the sedative/tranquilizer that caused thousands of babies to be born armless, legless or limbless to women who had taken the drug during the first trimester of pregnancy.
As he wrote in a 2013 essay, “The story dealt a lasting blow to the then widely-held notion that science and technology always or nearly always produce benign results.”
His continued to report on unsafe medicines and medical devices, most notably the Dalkon Shield, an intrauterine birth control device that seriously injured tens of thousands of women.
In his book, “AT ANY COST; Corporate Greed, Women and The Dalkon Shield” Mintz wrote that he saw the Dalkon Shield story as proof of “the chasm between the flesh-and-blood person and the paper corporate person.”
He famously concluded: “The human being who would not harm you on an individual, face-to-face basis, who is charitable, civic-minded, loving, and devout, will wound or kill you from behind the corporate veil.”
Rest is here…
