Whitewashing Toxic Chemicals: Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health

[Guest guest]

comment follows the news item.

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" It's quite easy to take a positive result [showing harmful effects] and

turn it falsely negative. This epidemiological alchemy is used widely. "

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Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your

Health

by s

http://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threatens/dp/019530067X

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*Whitewashing Toxic Chemicals*

This book will shock anyone who still believes that 'science' and

'integrity' are soulmates.

May 12, 2008 Issue

Sharon Begley

" Attn: Sharon Begley "

http://www.newsweek.com/id/135408

If anyone remakes " Brockovich, " this is a scene I want to see. A

scientist launches a study to determine the toxicity of hexavalent

chromium, the drinking-water contaminant at the center of the lawsuits

Brockovich spearheaded. The study will be a meta-analysis, combining

existing individual studies to, he says, produce more-authoritative

conclusions. Some of the earlier studies measured rates of lung cancer

among pigment-factory workers exposed to airborne chromium, so it makes

sense to include them. But the scientist is working for industry, so he

chooses his other studies carefully: he includes those that assessed all

forms of cancer among residents who drank chromium-laced water. Only the

workers, not the residents, had increased rates of lung cancer. No

surprise there: only inhaled---not ingested---chromium can cause lung

cancer. Since there are many more residents than factory workers, the

data showing no rise in lung cancer swamp the large numbers of lung

cancers in the workers. Thanks to this sleight of hand, the

study---which happened in real life, not a movie---concludes that

chromium " is only weakly carcinogenic for the lungs, " giving the

chemical a nice coat of whitewash.

That science can be bought is hardly news to anyone who knows about

tobacco " scientists. " But how pervasive, effective and stealthy this

science-for-hire is---as masterfully documented by s of

Washington University in his new book, " Doubt Is Their Product:

How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health " ---will shock

anyone who still believes that " science " and " integrity " are soulmates.

In studies of how toxic chemicals affect human health, s told me,

" It's quite easy to take a positive result [showing harmful effects] and

turn it falsely negative. This epidemiological alchemy is used widely. "

The alchemy is all in how you design your study and massage the data.

Want to show that chemical x does not raise the risk of cancer? Then

follow the exposed population for only a few years, since the cancers

that most chemicals cause take 20 or 30 years to show up. Since workers

are healthier than the general population, they start with a lower death

rate; only by comparing rates of something the chemical is specifically

suspected of causing---a particular lung disease, perhaps---can you

detect a problem. Or, combine data on groups who got a lot of the

suspect chemical, such as factory workers, with those who got little or

none, perhaps their white-collar bosses. The low disease rates in the

latter will dilute the high rates in the former, making it seem that x

isn't that toxic. All these ruses have been used, delaying government

action on chemicals including benzene, vinyl chloride, asbestos,

chromium, beryllium and a long list of others that cause cancer in

humans. " Any competent epidemiologist can employ particular tricks of

the trade when certain results are desired, " s writes.

The strategy of manufacturing doubt was pioneered, of course, by the

tobacco industry. Tobacco-funded studies threw up enough red

herrings--- " Psychosocial, Familial Factors May Have Role in Lung

Cancer, " " Lung Cancer Rare in Bald Men " ---to confuse consumers and delay

the warning label on cigarettes. Doubt is still a crucial product for

any industry fighting regulations that would protect workers and

consumers from exposure to toxic compounds. Now some industries argue

that it would be wrong to reduce allowable exposure limits until science

can prove exactly what level is safe. Better to keep the limit at, say,

50---even though that level kills workers---than cut it to 10, when 12

might be OK.

This is all very big business. " Product-defense firms " have sprung up to

spin the science and manufacture doubt---proudly. One boasted on its Web

site of persuading the Food and Drug Administration to let an unnamed

drug stay on the market for " 10 additional years of sales " before the

FDA banned it for harming people. This science-for-hire is aided and

abetted by what s calls " vanity journals, " established by the

firms. By naming like-minded consultants as the journal's peer reviewers

(who decide what gets published), they can get anything that advances

their cause into " a peer-reviewed journal " ---magic words to jurors,

regulators and reporters.

Make no mistake: raising doubt has run up the body count. By the early

1980s, for instance, studies had shown that children who took aspirin

when they had a viral infection such as chickenpox were at greater risk

of developing Reye's syndrome, which damages the brain and liver and is

fatal in about one case in three. Desperate to protect their market,

aspirin makers claimed the science was flawed, called for more research

(a constant refrain), and ran public-service announcements assuring

parents, " We do know that no medication has been proven to cause

Reye's. " The campaign delayed by years the requirement that aspirin

carry a warning label about children and Reye's. In the interim,

thousands of kids developed Reye's. Hundreds died.

s's argument would be stronger if he included cases in which

early studies overstated risk, to show that industry is sometimes right

about how dangerous a compound is. (Sodium nitrite in hot dogs?) Still,

his book should leave no doubt that science, and scientists, can be

bought---the public welfare be damned.

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The biasing of science described herein seems relevant to vaccinology's

High Priests looking away from data whose ramifications threaten their

financial empires, relevant also to " regulatory " agencies and the

investors/industries who profit from toxic molecules and/or from the

pathologies thereby induced. -

*

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