The Corruption of Science
The current issue of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health (Vol. 11. Issue 4) is devoted to the manipulation of science by corporate interests. Several of the articles mention the asbestos industry's corrupting influence on scientists and the scientific process.
The authors of Maximizing Profit and Endangering Health, SR Bohme, J Zorabedian & DS Egilman talk of the “Science Laundromats:”
“Sometimes consultants are needed to launder other consultants' work. For example, Dr. Crump served as a consultant for the Asbestos Information Association legal team and testified against OSHA regulations proposed to reduce exposures to asbestos in 1984. Almost 20 years later, Crump and co-researcher Dr. Wayne Berman received a contract from the EPA to develop a mathematical model that would assess the risks of contracting cancer from various forms of asbestos. They concluded that chrysotile asbestos, the type that comprised more than 95% of the asbestos used in the United States, probably does not increase the risk of contracting mesothelioma - the cancer that is almost uniquely associated with exposure to asbestos…”
In the paper Business Bias: How Epidemiologic Studies May Underestimate or Fail to Detect Increased Risks of Cancer and Other Diseases authors V Gennaro & L Tomatis support their assertion that: “studies of potential occupational and environmental health hazards that are funded directly or indirectly by industry are likely to have negative results” with three common scenarios “in which faulty design of epidemiologic studies skews results.” One example cited is epidemiologic studies of health risks associated with working in oil refineries:
“Epidemiologic investigations on oil refinery workers carried out in Liguria (Italy) have identified specific asbestos-related tumors, such as pleural and lung tumors, a finding that was subsequently and independent confirmed in Canada. These findings were initially ignored and/or openly disputed, but were later accepted. Only Kaplan had previously registered an excess of mesothelioma in these workers.”
According to the paper Abuse of Epidemiology: Automobile Manufacturers Manufacture a Defense to Asbestos Liability, by DS Egilman & MA Billings:
“asbestos-lined brake manufacturers have corrupted medical literature to escape liability, analyzing studies funded by these companies to enable them to claim that work with asbestos brake lining never causes mesothelioma… the industry has funded scientists and lawyers to develop arguments and methods for defending against lawsuits brought by workers and their household members who have developed mesothelioma as a result of exposure to asbestos in brakes.”
Manufacturers mentioned in this article include: GM, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler and Bendix.
The focus of the paper Mining and Mendacity, or How to Keep a Toxic Product in the Marketplace by J McCulloch is the role played by Canadian asbestos stakeholders in the distortion of data from the mining and use of asbestos in Canada:
“Until the 1970s, the (Canadian asbestos) industry funded most of the (Canadian) medical research into the effects of exposures to asbestos. Where the results were favorable they were released into the public domain and used as evidence that employers were providing a safe work environment. Where the results were unfavorable they were suppressed, and fictionalized accounts of disease rates were published in their place….
The early denials about the existence of asbestosis ensured the industry's long-term survival. Having argued for decades about the absence of asbestosis in the Canadian miners, it was a small step for the major producers to argue, as they did after 1960, that neither was there mesothelioma. That fallacy has been maintained until the present.”
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October 28, 2005
