The Disease of the Powerful

Intellectual arrogance cripples the powerful but it is a danger to us all.

The wisdom of drinking unpasteurized milk is once again making headlines.

It astonishes me that I wrote that sentence. Today. In 2024. Almost one-quarter of the way through the 21st century.

Here’s some History 101: The term “pasteurization” comes from the name of the great French scientist Louis Pasteur, who showed that dangerous micro-organisms in wine could be eliminated with mild heating. Pasteur did that research in the 1860s.

Not the 1960s. The 1860s.

For more than a century, pasteurization has been a routine part of modern life in the United States. The number of illnesses and deaths it has prevented is incalculable but surely immense.

But just as there have always been anti-vaccine activists, so there have been anti-pasteurization activists who believe, contrary to decades of scientific research, that pasteurization is dangerous, or significantly destroys nutritional value, or is simply unnecessary. And this fringe view is back in the headlines because it is one of the many fringe views endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the man Donald Trump is about to put in charge of some of the most important health institutions in the world.

Henry and Edsel Ford, 1943, shortly before Edsel’s death

So I thought I’d share a short passage from Steven Watts’ wonderful biography of Henry Ford, The People’s Tycoon.

The reason?

Ford was a classic example of a man who succeeded massively, got very rich and respected, and let it all go to his head. He became convinced that he understood politics better than the experts, foreign affairs better than the experts, economics better than the experts — and health better than the experts. Ford went so far as to explicitly scorn expertise. In Ford’s eyes, the very fact that someone was deemed an expert could make that person suspect.

One of Ford’s countless certainties was that pasteurization was bad. He bought his own farms to supply unpasteurized milk. And because Ford was a bully, he insisted everyone around him, including his son Edsel, drink unpasteurized milk.

The following passage describes events in the early 1940s, when Edsel was nominally in charge of the Ford Motor Company but was constantly tormented and undermined by his father. The emphasis is mine.

In this highly charged atmosphere of family tension, an additional strain appeared. Edsel began to experience recurrent stomach pain and vomiting that proved resistant to treatment. “On one of our trips to Washington, he was suddenly taken ill after a seafood dinner,” Sorensen reported. “I got him back to our hotel rooms and called a doctor. Edsel was in such agony that I sat up with him all night.” When the ailment was diagnosed as ulcers brought on by stress, the doctors advised him to cut back on work in order to ease his worries. Edsel attempted to do so, but with limited success. Henry, of course, was quick to blame his son's health problems on Grosse Pointe parties, alcohol consumption, and smoking. “If there is anything the matter with Edsel's health he can correct it himself,” he told associates. “First, he will have to change his way of living. Then I'll get my chiropractor to work on him.” Henry developed a standard prescription to remedy his son's health: “Edsel must mend his ways.”

Edsel's condition deteriorated. In January 1942, he underwent an operation for ulcers and surgeons removed part of his stomach. After the surgery, he improved slightly, but within months he began to lose weight and appeared increasingly wan and weak. To complicate matters, he also suffered undulant fever, an infectious, debilitating malady that is contracted from bacteria in unpasteurized dairy products. It is characterized by high fevers, chills, diarrhea, and weight loss, and at that time it was incurable. Ironically, it is likely that Edsel caught the fever by drinking milk from his father's farms. For years Henry had rejected the advice of medical and nutritional experts, insisting that pasteurizing milk was unnecessary. After Edsel was struck down, Henry stopped serving this milk in Greenfield Village and ordered Ray Dahlinger to get rid of all the cows on his farms. Nonetheless, he stubbornly insisted that his son's living habits were the source of his sickness. In November, Edsel returned to the hospital after a relapse and underwent another stomach surgery.

It was becoming obvious to everyone but his father that Edsel was gravely ill. In the middle of this health crisis, Henry indulged in a shameful display that threatened to open a total breach with his only son. In a phone call on April 15, 1943, he ordered Sorensen to confront Edsel the next morning and demand a reform in his attitude and behavior. He reiterated his faith in Harry Bennett, declared he would support Bennett against every obstacle, and demanded that Edsel fully acquiesce in Bennett's authority over labor issues. To drive the point home, Henry ordered Sorensen to fire A. M. Wibel—the capable head of purchasing, who had worked at the company since 1912—because he had tangled recently with Bennett. Henry took an even harsher stand on personal issues. He insisted that Edsel end his long friendship with Ernest Kanzler and change his diet, drinking, and lifestyle. Sorensen was flabbergasted at this irrational tirade. “What a brutal thing to do to one's son!” he told himself. “To send me to tell him this!” The next morning, Sorensen visited Edsel and conveyed Henry's sentiments along with his own commiseration and support. The younger Ford, physically and emotionally exhausted, threw in the towel. “The best thing for me to do is to resign. My health won't let me go on,” he said to Sorensen wearily. Henry backed away when Sorensen told the old man that he would follow Edsel out of the company, but this episode marked the breaking point for the son, who decided he could take his father's abuse no longer. Sadly, he would not have to.

In late April, Edsel collapsed and was taken to his home at Gaukler Pointe. Eleanor then told the family, including Henry and Clara, what she had known since the operation in November: her husband had been diagnosed with incurable stomach cancer. When Henry heard that his son was dying, he refused to believe it. He frantically contacted the doctors at the Ford Hospital and demanded that they restore Edsel's health. He told associates, “You know, Edsel's not going to die.” Henry's physician, Dr. Roy McClure, explained these irrational outbursts: “Henry Ford is a sick man, too. We must expect him to say and do unusual things.” Throughout the month of May, Edsel remained bedridden at Gaukler Pointe as Eleanor and a team of doctors and nurses administered to his needs as best they could. But he steadily slipped away, occasionally mustering the energy to take a brief walk along the lakeshore. Finally, Edsel fell into a coma and at 1:00 a.m. on May 26,1943, he died at age forty-nine.

Henry Ford was shattered by his son’s death.

In a sense, the elder Ford was himself a victim.

Intellectual arrogance was like a disease infecting Ford’s mind, a disease that convinced him to sneer at expertise and replace the fruits of the scientific process with his own intuition, impulse, and unshakeable conviction. And that contributed to the suffering and death of his oldest child and heir.

Ford was hardly the first to succumb to a disease whose cause is most often success and the power it brings. The infected becomes convinced he is infallible, that he need only trust his own judgement and not be dissuaded by nay-saying fools and doubters.

In so doing, he becomes dangerous to himself. And thanks to the power he holds, dangerous to others — with the danger being proportionate to the power wielded.

Something to keep in mind in this, the era of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.