This "government oppression due to science" has been going on for 125 years.
“Spitting Positively Forbidden”: The Anti-Spitting Campaigns, 1896-1910 Chairperson: Kyle G. Volk Following the development of the germ theory of tuberculosis in the 1880s, American medical reformers crafted a series of policies devoted to eradicating the “great white plague.” Among these was the legal prohibition of spitting, a habit that had proliferated in step with Americans’ taste for chewing tobacco and had bedeviled social commentators for generations. Armed with increasing professional stature, medial professionals encouraged hundreds of cities, as well as several states, to ban spitting in places such as street cars, transit stations, sidewalks, and public buildings. This effort revealed the extent of medical authority at the turn of the century and sheds light on the ways advances in medicine encouraged Americans to reconsider popular notions of “liberty.” Medical reformers argued that the right to bodily integrity and the well being of communities superseded the right of any individual to indiscriminately spit, a position many journalists, social activists, and educators supported. In the process, their efforts not only altered municipal codes, but also sought to transform the meaning of individual liberty within the public sphere.