Corporate spokesmen justified lead poisoning by invoking utilitarian national benefit over individual risk

Evidence

The industry relied mainly on economic justifications for the widespread use of lead. In addressing the Public Health Service regarding the public health hazards of lead, Dr. Gilman Thompson, a medical director representing Standard Oil, General Motors, and DuPont, extolled the vital role that lead played during the industrial era: “Is this a public health hazard? Unfortunately, our problem is not that simple. We cannot quite act on a remote probability. We are engaged in the General Motors Corporation in the manufacture of automobiles, and in the Standard Oil Co. in the manufacture and refining of oil. On these things our present industrial civilization is supposed to depend” (U.S. Public Health Service, 1925). … Thompson framed the issue of individual risk versus national benefit in utilitarian terms: “We should look at the problem in the large, rather than be swayed by prejudice. It is often much easier to see the concrete immediate dangers than to evaluate the perhaps more important industrial advantages. We do not like to match the life of a man against the life of a Nation” (U. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1752

Categorization

• XREF: This is Bandura’s advantage comparison/utilitarian framing mechanism for moral disengagement, directly parallel to how social-conservative policy advocates weigh collective goods against targeted harm.
• QUESTION: The ‘life of a man against the life of a Nation’ framing appears in Thompson’s 1925 testimony but the location merges two paragraphs (1751 quote ends and continues). Worth verifying this is the intended juxtaposition.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1752