Document KQQQ1pnaGBOVvJ6YBvLLjkzw

Editorial Bon Vivant Scientists owerful outside interests have Pbeen infringing on the profes the IARC Monographs program and a new IARC Director, strong action sions of science and medicine for has been taken to restore IARC's most of the past century, contort reputation and prevent the manipu ing science to greater and lesser lation of IARC by financially inter extents to support their own ends. ested parties.1 For example, persistent litigation In the United States, there were discovery disclosed, first, the edit some problems in the 1990s with ing of medical reports by the corporate officials and consultants asbestos industry lawyers, cover-ups having strong influence in shaping of asbestosis at the Canadian government policy, acting through asbestos mines, and the suppres outside advisory panels to the Envi sion of experimental studies show ronmental Protection Agency and ing that asbestos causes cancer. the Department of Health and Facing accumulating independent Human Services. During the cur reports of evidence undermining rent Bush administration, there its attempts at obfuscation, the have been unprecedented extremes industry was forced to adopt less and more numerous examples of crude tactics. During the past 50 corporate influence through the years, these have included the stacking of these panels, frequently exploitation of epidemiology to in violation of federal laws calling advance the argument that asbestos for disclosure of financial conflicts miners have no excess of lung of interest and balancing of inter cancer, using methods strongly crit ests represented on federal advisory icized by Thomas Mancuso and committees. These abuses have described by Wilhelm Hueper as been publicized in leading science "statistical acrobatics." With the journals.2-6 The Lancet warned that a increasing sophistication of science "terminal decline in public trust in and its extension into such arcana the advice of scientists" was in as quantitative modeling of risk as a danger of resulting from the pat function of toxic exposures, there tern of industry links and right-wing has been a growing problem for sci ideology of scientists appointed to ence to purify itself of manipula federal advisory panels.6 tion by the best scientists that "Defensive research" by business money can buy. interests is a prevailing condition in Readers of this journal will recall the arena of occupational and envi the raging controversy over a shift ronmental health. In April 2005, it starting in the late 1990s at the Inter was disclosed in litigation that the national Agency for Research on oil industry's trade association is Cancer (IARC), part of the World financing a study of its own to Health Organization. Articles and counter a recent epidemiology commentaries published in report by the National Cancer Insti 2002-2003 and sent to IARC and the tute. It is anticipated that the Amer World Health Organization called ican Petroleum Institute's research attention to IARC's failure to imple will be designed to blunt efforts to ment new WHO conflict-of-interest lower the permissible exposure policies in the selection of expert limit for benzene in the workplace panelists in IARC working groups. and to provide evidence for use in With the change in the leadership of defense of personal injury suits.7 During the 1970s, the Center for Science in the Public Interest had the idea of spotlighting food indus try abuses by ceremoniously pre senting the Bon Vivant Vichyssoise Award (a beat-up old garbage can) to food producers. The name came from a company that had gone out of business after selling cans of improperly processed vichyssoise soup containing Clostridium botu linum; some people who drank it died of botulism. Awardees have included: Gerber, for selling the first junk food encountered by many, baby food desserts; Oscar Mayer, for its salty, fatty, processed meats; and General Foods, for sugary breakfast cereals. It was proposed at last year's meeting of the International Soci ety for Environmental Epidemiol ogy that the ISEE issue its own counterpart token of disapproval, which could be called the "Tobacco Science Smoke-and-Mirrors Award" or something like that. But this would require a considerable effort, for committees of independ ent scientists would have to try to determine when other scientists had crossed the line and commit ted the design-and-analysis, ethical equivalent of fudging their data. This would be a major undertaking even if the "awardees" were not backed by global enterprises with much at stake in the scientific con troversies and no restraint about deploying expensive lawyers. Police, prosecutors, politicians, juries, and journalists are not by themselves capable of debunking the toxic defenders of the null hypothesis and studies fatally designed to confirm it. Public health and environmental activists often criticize public bodies such as IARC, WHO, and government reg- 329 ulatory agencies for not doing a better job, but with the goal of strengthening these institutions, not tearing them down. We all lose if the public reacts by losing faith in science and cynically concluding that the truth is hopelessly obscured by an impenetrable din of doctors of spin. There is an increasing burden on independent scientists to con front science-for-sale and those who represent their sponsors' business interests by the opportunistic and misleading use of scientific instru ments and credentials. Govern ment regulation can deal with some extreme cases, but the scientific professions themselves have the obligation to protect their integrity and honor in ways they alone can. ChevronTexaco's efforts to detoxify its Amazon pollution in the public mind in Ecuador, while a civil trial in the matter was pro ceeding, provoked a denunciation signed by occupational and envi ronmental health scientists around the world, which appeared in the previous issue of this journal. The oil giant had paid for advertise ments in Ecuadorian media, with excerpts authored by credentialed consultants, that contested pub lished studies attributing elevated rates of cancer, spontaneous abor tion, and other problems to pollu tion arising from oil-extraction activities. The authors of the media critique of the published reports, at least two of whom participated in a press conference staged by ChevronTexaco, suggested that methodologic flaws in the pub lished studies render them useless for identifying any health effects resulting from the crude oil and toxic waste pollution. There are numerous obstacles to conducting thorough epidemiologic studies in such circumstances, and the evi dence of health effects is, of course, open to further consideration. However, ChevronTexaco's conflict of interest with the findings of the published studies could not be clearer. Holding a press conference and placing advertisements in the media while a trial on the issues is proceeding is not something most oil companies would dare do in countries such as the United States. Was this an effort to bypass the sci entific literature altogether and manage the public perception of science as a market commodity? As the success of the campaign for development and implementa tion of conflict-of-interest policies by the World Health Organization shows, scientists who speak out and oppose abuses that threaten scien tific objectivity and frustrate the search for truth can have an effect. The letter about ChevronTexaco's pollution of the environment and ensuing dissemination of advertis ing to the public in Ecuador is yet another instance of concerned sci entists speaking up to defend sci ence against such abuses. BarryI. Castleman, ScD Environmental Consultant P.O. Box 188 Garrett Park, MD 20896 References 1. Cogliano VJ, Baan RA, Straif K, et al. The science and practice of carcinogen identification and evaluation. Environ Health Perspect. 2004;112: 1269-74. 2. Michaels D, Bingham E, Boden L, et al. Advice without dissent [editorial]. Sci ence. 2002;298:703. 3. Kennedy D. An epidemic of politics [editorial]. Science. 2003;299:625. 4. All the President's yes-men? [editorial]. Nature. 2003;421:459. 5. Marris E. Ethics review slams govern ment panels over conflicts of interest. Nature. 2004;431:3. 6. Keeping scientific advice non-partisan [editorial]. Lancet. 2002;360:1525. 7. Benjaminson W. Petroleum industry funds new benzene study. Business Week Online, Apr. 28, 2005. <http://www. businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D 89OLR1G0.htm?campaign_id=a>. 330 Editorial www.ijoeh.com INT J OCCUP ENVIRON HEALTH