>>Chris Hayes' book "Twilight of the Elites" for a big-picture explanation of why such things gain traction today, when once they would have just made us point and chuckle.
Thanks, I'll get it. In exchange- see if you can track down a 1979 paper "The Bandwagons of Medicine" by Cohen and Rothschild. It's getting old and I couldn't find it in a brief online search, but it was so important in its day. Gotta watch out for crazy bandwagons like tonsillectomy that caused 300 deaths per annum in the 1950s doing procedures that probably weren't necessary.
/update/
Found it- in a legacy Tobacco documents archive of all places.
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/dec72d00/pdf?search=%22bandwagons%20medicine%22
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
