-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: 15 Nov 1999 22:43:08 -0000 Information about this email appears at the bottom. Formaldehyde and the Preservation of Science Ever wonder just how they do it? Just how corporations can twist science to support a pack of lies? In "Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your Health," Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle provide a useful roadmap. If you've lost your scruples and want to sell your soul, here's a recipe: 1. CHEAT. The U.S. regulatory system for chemical products is tailor-made for fraud: The subjects are arcane, the results subjective, the regulators overmatched, and the real work conducted by--or for--the manufacturers themselves. In the mid-1970s, IBT, the nation's largest toxicology laboratory (performing 35 to 40 percent of all toxicology testing in the U.S. at the time) was riddled with fraud. After an alert FDA pathologist questioned a rat study for the drug Naprosyn, evidence emerged that dozens of studies had been faked. Some reports were total fabrications based on no studies at all. Paul Wright had been a research chemist at Monsanto before working at IBT in 1971 as its chief rat toxicologist. Eighteen months later he returned to Monsanto as manager of toxicology. Government investigators concluded his stay at IBT was long enough for him to be in the middle of a series of apparently fraudulent studies that benefited Monsanto products. Despite investigators writing that there was evidence Monsanto executives knew the studies were faked, Monsanto denied any involvement, and fired Wright after he was convicted for his role in the IBT scandals. Cheating in the studies apparently included: adding extra lab mice to skew the sample in a rice-herbicide test; two rodent studies involving a chemical in swimming pool chlorinators seemed to have raw data replaced with after-the-fact invented records; animal deaths were deliberately concealed; and final reports included claims about procedures and observations that never happened. It's tempting to see any given example of cheating or skewing results as an isolated aberration. But corporate culture is rife with the practice. In another example, Monsanto spent $4 million in 1985 testing water in wells to see if the chemical alachlor had leaked into groundwater. Richard Kelley of the Iowa Department of Water, Air and Waste Management pointed out that Monsanto was sampling deep wells in clay soils, where the chemical was unlikely to turn up, foregoing sampling shallow wells in sandy soil. "The study was systematic--it was systematically designed not to find the product," he recalls. 2. MANIPULATE RESULTS. (Aka: blame the rats.) When forest product company Georgia Pacific conducted studies on formaldehyde in 1980--a key ingredient in its popular paste-board products found in millions of homes--rats in the study breathing air mixed with the substance developed tumors in their nasal passages. Clifford T. "Kip" Howlett, in charge of safety and environmental affairs for the company at the time, first blamed the tumors on the rats' "weak" condition, even though identical rats given no formaldehyde were tumor-free. Then he blamed the rats for being "dumb." Mice in a similar study slowed their breathing and "tucked their noses under their legs," resulting in fewer tumors. The rats were said to be too dumb to do this… Scientists then pursued a four-pronged plan: conduct a new rat study constructed to minimize these results; hire academics to give independent testimonials claiming formaldehyde is safe; attack any scientist who said formaldehyde is dangerous; and steer research in directions to play down the chemical's risk. They won. There is no real regulation of formaldehyde to this day. 3. CREATE A FRONT GROUP. When it comes time to defend a product, it's always better to have an "independent" group do it rather than be seen to be doing so directly. The soothingly-named American Crop Protection Association does most of the talking for the pesticide industry. The Center for Indoor Air Research works for the tobacco industry; the Risk Science Institute is financed by a variety of chemical companies. Scientists from these institutes testify before Congress, government hearings and in courtrooms. To cite a particularly ridiculous example, the largest client of Healthy Buildings International is--the tobacco industry. 4. BUY RESEARCH. Most safety studies are financed by corporations or industry groups (like the Formaldehyde Institute). Take the four chemicals covered in "Toxic Deception": alachlor and atrazine (weed killers used on farms), formaldehyde and perchloroethylene (dry cleaning), which had at least 43 studies assessing their safety, financed by corporations or industry organizations. Six returned results unfavorable to the chemicals involved; five had ambivalent findings. The other 32 all returned results favorable to the chemicals studied. In short, the manufacturers were batting .744 when they paid for research. But get this: when non-industry scientists did the research, the results were quite different. While a labor group that had a stake in the outcome sponsored two of the 118 non-industry studies the rest had sponsors who had nothing to gain or lose from the outcomes. These included the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Air Force, and the United Nations. About 60 percent of the studies (71) returned results unfavorable to the chemicals involved; 27 were favorable and 20 were ambivalent or difficult to characterize. 5. ATTACK OTHER SCIENTISTS. As Lavelle and Fagin write, "Scientists who cross the industry often run a gauntlet of criticism. In congressional hearings, politicians grill them with questions helpfully supplied by industry lobbyists. In scientific meetings, industry scientists pepper them with hostile queries. If they submit their findings to a journal to be published, their work is often attacked in letters to the editor written by industry researchers." 6. When all else falls, try this game plan described by David Ozonoff from Boston University, who served as a witness in asbestos litigation, describing the series of defenses used by the asbestos industry: Asbestos doesn't hurt your health. OK, it does hurt your health but it doesn't cause cancer. OK, asbestos can cause cancer but not our kind of asbestos. OK, our kind of asbestos can cause cancer, but not the kind this person got. OK, our kind of asbestos can cause cancer, but not at the doses to which this person was exposed. OK, asbestos does cause cancer, and at this dosage, but this person got his disease from something else, like smoking. OK, he was exposed to our asbestos and it did cause his cancer, but we did not know about the danger when we exposed him. OK, we knew about the danger when we exposed him, but the statute of limitations has run out. OK, the statue of limitations hasn't run out, but if we're guilty we'll go out of business and everyone will be worse off. OK, we'll agree to go out of business, but only if you let us keep part of our company intact, and only if you limit our liability for the harms we have caused. These facts come from Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle's "Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your Health," http://www.commoncouragepress.com/toxicd.html TOMORROW: Whetting Your Appetite for Genetically Modified Food This is the free Political Literacy Course from Common Courage Press: A backbone of facts to stand up to spineless power. Email 52, November 15 1999. Week 11: The New Math of Science + Corporate Power Homepage: http://www.commoncouragepress.com To subscribe (or unsubscribe) for free: http://www.commoncouragepress.com Chatroom: http://www.cartserver.com/bbs/a/3827/index.cgi Feedback/Title suggestions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Missed any? Course archive: http://www.commoncouragepress.com/politlitarchive.html YES! This course is partly advertising for books. 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