Re: SPOOF OF GUIDOTTI'S RESPONSE TO THE WSJ ARTICLE.

[Guest guest]

Sharon-

Your brilliant spoof is about as useful a document as I could imagine

in spelling it all out right there.

There should be a way to display them side by side.

The ugly and amoral real-world response.

And what he really SHOULD HAVE BEEN saying.

On 2/28/07, snk1955@... <snk1955@...> wrote:

>

>

>

> THIS IS A SPOOF.

> THE ACTUAL WRITING OF DR. GUIDOTTI IS

> BELOW.

> From Your President: Ambush of the Mold Victims

> The American College of Occupational and Environmental

> Medicine (ACOEM) performs a great deal of unrecognized

> disservice to medicine and a service to the litigation

> community as a first line of defense while promoting

> questionable practice. Because people tend to project their

> fears and beliefs about financial liability of health

> threats of their poorly maintained environment, our

> practices and clinics disproportionately attract the

> worried, the obsessed, people who disagree with science and

> medicine, and " true believers. " This comes with the

> territory, given our commitment to environmental medicine

> in conjunction with the financial liability for the Fortune

> 500 companies many of us are employed by. Our thankless

> role, when confronted with unsupportable beliefs, is to

> review the evidence, to explain patiently, to say " no " when

> it is required or we are on the witness stand, and not

> infrequently, to promote abuse of true science. We took a

> lot of justified abuse last month. We are anticipating much

> more in the months to come.

> On 9 January 2007, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page

> story on the 2002 ACOEM statement on Adverse Human Health

> Effects Associated with Molds in the Indoor Environment.

> The article was highly accurate. The reporter,

> Armstrong, reported key facts, illuminated a conflict of

> interest, and represented similar statements by other

> groups with which ACOEM was compared. Within hours, blogs

> and legal web sites had picked up the story in what bore

> all the earmarks of a coordinated, and very effective,

> campaign. Your College officers answered as best we could,

> posting after posting. Remarkably, interest in the story

> has caught the attention of national legislators. Within

> mold litigation, several cases around the US settled within

> days of the Wall Street Journal article. Of course, the

> seeds of distrust were sown widely on the Internet for

> future eruptions.

> Your officers submitted a letter to the editor (posted on

> the ACOEM web site) well within the time the WSJ allowed,

> but they declined to publish it. No reason was given. Last

> week we filed a complaint. Our prediction is that they will

> ignore it because it is full of false and rambling

> diatribes.

> By now, it should be obvious that there is an agenda at

> work. The ACOEM statement is poorly researched and dated.

> Over the last five years, it has been introduced many times

> into evidence in court cases and (we now realize...and have

> from it's inception) became perceived by the plaintiff bar

> and the sick who are unable to receive proper medical

> treatment, as a major obstacle. What we experienced in

> January was a campaign to discredit the statement by

> bringing the truth to light (and by extension ACOEM) so

> that it could not be used in court. This is because the

> courts have been driving the medical science. We helped

> extensively with that. An activist in the " toxic mold "

> community has, in fact, now taken credit for first making

> the Wall Street Journal aware of the insidious story of the

> Conflict of Interest within ACOEM. The reporter spoke with

> myself and many who were involved in the fiasco, including

> all three authors and the overseer of the peer review

> process.

> We feel sure that our statement was the focus of the attack

> because it has an unscientific non-sequetur finding that we

> legitimized as science. This finding has been quite useful

> for defendants in mold litigation. ACOEM probably seemed an

> easier target for exposing the truth than the American

> Academy of Pediatrics and the Institute of Medicine (part

> of the National Academy of Sciences), each of which

> produced their reports after ours, because their reports do

> not promote the same concept that we promote. These

> organizations do not feel it is sound science to take

> limited data from a rodent study and deduce absence of all

> human illness like ours does.

> However ACOEM, as a professional organization, is proving

> to be no pushover. Quite similar to when President Bush got

> caught lying about the weapons of mass destruction, we are

> vigorously defending the statement within the professional

> community. We are currently pushing out our message in

> every way we can. Our backs are against the wall now that

> we have been outed as such an industry friendly bunch. We

> have fully documented the statement development process (if

> needed for discovery, which happens occasionally when ACOEM

> is subpoenaed in lawsuits where the statement is

> introduced). However, we seem to have a little glitch in

> exactly what we did regarding conflict of interest

> disclosures and why we brought in three individuals with no

> backgrounds in mold research to write our mold position

> paper.

> Turning to substantive issues, let me remind ACOEM members

> of the background to the statement. We are not talking

> about the association of mold and mold spores with

> invasive, allergic, infectious, or irritating conditions.

> The statement is perfectly clear that these are known and

> accepted medical conditions. Likewise, the statement,

> although it was written well before the Institute of

> Medicine's report Damp Indoor Spaces, does not suggest that

> damp or moldy living environments are acceptable. Not at

> all. It just falsely suggests that we have been able to

> scientifically prove people cannot plausibly become ill

> from mycotoxin exposure indoors. We are pretty proud of

> this, as NO ONE else has been able to scientifically make

> this claim. The insurance industry loves us.

> The issue at hand is whether we have really been able to

> prove the implausibility that the metabolic products of

> mold known as mycotoxins, absorbed through inhalation of

> spores and vegetative fragments in indoor air, are

> responsible for systemic human disease under conditions

> encountered in homes and offices, an unproven theory

> called " toxic mold " in the vernacular. The WSJ article

> denotes that there is an extensive scientific debate on

> this topic. The reality is that few scientists associated

> with ACOEM embrace the theory of " toxic mold " and many who

> do are interested in it as a theory to be tested, not as a

> belief, because these gentlemen are scientists who were

> very disappointed with what ACOEM promoted as science with

> regard to mold induced illnesses. The mainstream of medical

> opinion, thanks to ACOEM, has decided that so far the

> weight of evidence, in light of years of ignoring state of

> the art investigation, does not support the theory.

> The WSJ reporter, Armstrong, used selective quotes in

> context from the Institute of Medicine's report, Damp

> Indoor Spaces, to demonstrate that the Institute's

> statement is at odds with ACOEM's statement. That is

> provably right and the Institute of Medicine report as been

> used within the courts to discredit the methods ACOEM used

> to make the unscientific finding of " not plausible " . Put

> the two side by side and it is clear that one concludes

> that the evidence for the existence of a " toxic mold "

> effect needs further study and the other just added some

> math to rodent data to make the finding of " not plausible " .

> The WSJ also denoted that the statement was created for

> purposes of litigation. It was. The statement was initiated

> by your College precisely because the topic is important in

> environmental medicine and mold lawsuits were of great fear

> to those with financial liability of the matter.

> The WSJ article proved that the " authors " of the ACOEM

> statement were in conflict of interest. Let's set the

> record straight – The lead author chosen to develop the

> statement was a retired Assistant Surgeon General, who

> admits under oath that he was already involved in

> supporting defendants in mold litigation when we brought

> him in to author the ACOEM Mold Statement. He had much

> conflict of interest at the time. In the course of

> developing various drafts, he asked two colleagues

> experienced in mold litigation support for the defense, to

> supply information and analysis he needed to develop some

> of his points – nothing unusual in that at ACOEM. He was

> generous enough to acknowledge them with authorship credit

> and it is actually their history of sometimes testifying in

> mold litigation that is being attacked because this paper

> really helped their businesses of expert witness testimony

> quite a bit. For the record, however, the lead author was

> always the responsible party. Authorship of an ACOEM

> statement is not the same as authorship of a paper: the end

> product is not the author's property and can be – and often

> is – changed without the author's agreement. Yet, it was

> the property of the authors when they were paid by the

> think-tank, the Manhattan Institute to translate the

> document into lay terms of stating that toxic mold

> illnesses are simply a result of trial lawyers, media hype

> and junk science. ACOEM credits authorship of statements

> for the purpose of giving recognition for work done on its

> behalf because we know these papers have " currency for them

> in other ways, other places " , not to assign responsibility

> or for disclosure. Incidentally, all this is

> documented...ummm? somewhere.

> In this case, your College adhered to its own rigorous

> statement development process (developed in 2000 and

> available on the ACOEM web site). And since we feel we are

> above reproach, we do not really care what standards others

> adhere to. The mold statement was substantially revised

> four times to " tone " it down and get rid of " buzz words " ,

> in a process closely managed by the chair of our Council on

> Scientific Affairs. It then underwent three levels of

> review (Council, Board committee, full Board) before barely

> being approved by your elected representative governing

> body, the Board of Directors of the College. All this is

> also documented.

> We take allegations and insinuations against the integrity

> of the College and you, our members, very seriously. We

> know many of you are quite embarassed by what your

> governing body did over the mold issue. We hope you are not

> mad at us for causing this to reflect on your personal

> integrity. This whole episode has made us realize just how

> important a role we play in promoting unscientific medical

> beliefs. Seen another way, this attack was a backhanded

> tribute to the growing industry influence of your College

> and its despairation to being able to be the ones who

> decide what is evidence-based medicine. It would not have

> happened if your College had not taken an industry

> friendly, yet unscientific stand on something important. It

> would not have failed if your College had done the right

> thing and backed it up with documentation and rigor..and of

> course, legitimate science.

> SPOOF OF Tee L. Guidotti, MD, MPH, FACOEM

>

ACOEM President'S WRITING.

> ACTUAL WRITING BELOW:

>

> From Your President: Ambush Above the Fold

> The American College of Occupational and Environmental

> Medicine (ACOEM) performs a great, unrecognized service to

> medicine and to the community as a first line of defense

> against questionable practice. Because people tend to

> project their fears and beliefs about health onto

> perceptions of their environment, our practices and clinics

> disproportionately attract the worried, the obsessed,

> people who disagree with science and medicine, and " true

> believers. " This comes with the territory, given our

> commitment to environmental medicine and to evidence-based

> medical practice. Our thankless role, when confronted with

> unsupportable beliefs, is to review the evidence, to

> explain patiently, to say " no " when it is required, and not

> infrequently, to take abuse. We took a lot of abuse last

> month.

> On 9 January 2007, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page

> story on the 2002 ACOEM statement on Adverse Human Health

> Effects Associated with Molds in the Indoor Environment.

> The article was highly misleading. The reporter,

> Armstrong, misreported key facts, insinuated a conflict of

> interest, and misrepresented similar statements by other

> groups with which ACOEM was compared. Within hours, blogs

> and legal web sites had picked up the story in what bore

> all the earmarks of a coordinated, but not very effective,

> campaign. Your College officers answered as best we could,

> posting after posting. Remarkably, interest in the story

> did not last long, even on the web. Of course, the seeds of

> distrust were sown widely, if not deeply, on the Internet

> for future eruptions.

> Your officers submitted a letter to the editor (posted on

> the ACOEM web site) well within the time the WSJ allowed,

> but they declined to publish it. No reason was given. Last

> week we filed a complaint. Our prediction is that they will

> ignore it.

> By now, it should be obvious that there is an agenda at

> work and that the WSJ was, in fact, used. The ACOEM

> statement is well-researched, well-written, and clear in

> its conclusions, although it is becoming dated. Over the

> last five years, it has been introduced many times into

> evidence in court cases and (we now realize) became

> perceived by the plaintiff bar as a major obstacle. What we

> experienced in January was a campaign to discredit the

> statement (and by extension ACOEM) so that it could not be

> used in court. An activist in the " toxic mold " community

> has, in fact, now taken credit for planting the story.

> We feel sure that our statement was the focus of the attack

> because it was the first and most detailed of four

> statements that have come to similar conclusions regarding

> the lack of evidence behind " toxic mold " as a theory. ACOEM

> probably seemed an easier target than the American Academy

> of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology, the American Academy of

> Pediatrics, and the Institute of Medicine (part of the

> National Academy of Sciences), each of which produced their

> reports after ours.

> However ACOEM, as a professional organization, is proving

> to be no pushover. We are vigorously defending the

> statement within the professional community. We are

> currently pushing out our message in every way we can. We

> have fully documented the statement development process (if

> needed for discovery, which happens occasionally when ACOEM

> is subpoenaed in lawsuits where the statement is

> introduced).

> Turning to substantive issues, let me remind ACOEM members

> of the background to the statement. We are not talking

> about the association of mold and mold spores with

> invasive, allergic, infectious, or irritating conditions.

> The statement is perfectly clear that these are known and

> accepted medical conditions. Likewise, the statement,

> although it was written well before the Institute of

> Medicine's report Damp Indoor Spaces, does not suggest that

> damp or moldy living environments are acceptable. Not at

> all.

> The issue at hand is whether the metabolic products of mold

> known as mycotoxins, absorbed through inhalation of spores

> and vegetative fragments in indoor air, are responsible for

> systemic human disease under conditions encountered in

> homes and offices, an unproven theory called " toxic mold "

> in the vernacular. The WSJ article implies that there is an

> extensive scientific debate on this topic. The reality is

> that few scientists embrace the theory of " toxic mold " and

> many who do (including some of our members) are interested

> in it as a theory to be tested, not as a belief. The

> mainstream of medical opinion, ACOEM included, has decided

> that so far the weight of evidence, despite years of

> investigation, does not support the theory.

> The WSJ reporter, Armstrong, used selective quotes

> out of context from the Institute of Medicine's report,

> Damp Indoor Spaces, to give the impression that the

> Institute's statement is at odds with ACOEM's statement.

> However, that is simply wrong. Put the two side by side and

> it is clear that they both conclude that the evidence for

> the existence of a " toxic mold " effect is " inadequate or

> insufficient, " to use the IOM's term of art.

> The WSJ also implied that the statement was created for

> purposes of litigation. It was not. The statement was

> initiated by your College precisely because the topic is

> important in environmental medicine.

> The WSJ article insinuated that the " authors " of the ACOEM

> statement were in conflict of interest. Let's set the

> record straight – The lead author chosen to develop the

> statement was a retired Assistant Surgeon General,

> eminently credible. He had no conflict of interest at the

> time – none. In the course of developing various drafts, he

> asked two colleagues experienced in the issue to supply

> information and analysis he needed to develop some of his

> points – nothing wrong or unusual in that. He was generous

> enough to acknowledge them with authorship credit and it is

> actually their history of sometimes testifying in mold

> litigation that is being attacked. For the record, however,

> the lead author was always the responsible party.

> Authorship of an ACOEM statement is not the same as

> authorship of a paper: the end product is not the author's

> property and can be – and often is – changed without the

> author's agreement. ACOEM credits authorship of statements

> for the purpose of giving recognition for work done on its

> behalf, not to assign responsibility or for disclosure.

> Incidentally, all this is documented.

> In this case, your College adhered to its own rigorous

> statement development process (developed in 2000 and

> available on the ACOEM web site). The mold statement was

> substantially revised four times, in a process closely

> managed by the chair of our Council on Scientific Affairs.

> It then underwent three levels of review (Council, Board

> committee, full Board) before finally being approved by

> your elected representative governing body, the Board of

> Directors of the College. All this is also documented.

> We take allegations and insinuations against the integrity

> of the College and you, our members, very seriously. This

> whole episode has made us realize just how important a role

> we play in challenging unscientific medical beliefs. Seen

> another way, this attack was a backhanded tribute to the

> growing influence of your College and its dedication to

> evidence-based medicine. It would not have happened if your

> College had not taken a stand on something important. It

> would not have failed if your College had not done the

> right thing and backed it up with documentation and rigor.

> Tee L. Guidotti, MD, MPH, FACOEM

> ACOEM President

>

>

[Guest guest]

Well of course Dr. Guidotti's response is right on the money. I'm sitting

here typing this and I lived through a black mold episode without realizing

it. But my late mom's Cocker didn't make it. Ginger wouldn't even come in

and sleep with me, then would try to run out on a busy street if you opened

the front door. Passed away from RF in late July, 2004. I got out of there

in October. Of course Dr. Guidotti is much more intelligent than a dog,

isn't he?? Biff Byrum

Re: [] SPOOF OF GUIDOTTI'S RESPONSE TO THE WSJ

ARTICLE.

Sharon-

Your brilliant spoof is about as useful a document as I could imagine

in spelling it all out right there.

There should be a way to display them side by side.

The ugly and amoral real-world response.

And what he really SHOULD HAVE BEEN saying.

On 2/28/07, snk1955@... <snk1955@...> wrote:

>

[Guest guest]

yes, excellant!

>

> Sharon-

>

> Your brilliant spoof is about as useful a document as I could imagine

> in spelling it all out right there.

>

> There should be a way to display them side by side.

>

> The ugly and amoral real-world response.

> And what he really SHOULD HAVE BEEN saying.

>

>

>

>