Open in TheBrain

Society of Toxicology

<font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">generic cat for field journals, orgs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
=</font></div><div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">02/07/22 3:24 PM EST</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">OAN reporter: The survival of our country depends on COVID-19 vaccines killing liberals</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-reporter-survival-our-country-depends-covid-19-vaccines-killing" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-reporter-survival-our-country-depends-covid-19-vaccines-killing</a></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">vid?</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">SHARP (REPORTER):&nbsp;More and more Americans are standing up and fighting back against the<b>&nbsp;tyranny of the COVID conspiracy theory. Convoys of outraged truck drivers are sending a message loud and clear to cowardly leaders all over the world,</b>&nbsp;from Canada to Australia and even here in the U.S., and that message is simple:</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Back off, or else.&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">We, the people, will not tolerate this oppression any longer.</b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;"><b style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">We have had enough. Enough of watching our businesses get destroyed, while hypocritical politicians like Gavin Newsom dine out at fancy restaurants with their friends during lockdowns,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">&nbsp;[NOT BORIS?] or go maskless to public events they demand that we wear masks to. We've had enough of watching our loved ones get sick and die pointless deaths, all because the media and despots in Washington refused to let us treat our sick with the safest and most effective drugs in the world, like ivermectin.&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">We've had enough of being denied basic services</b><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">,[LIKE HAPPY HOUR?]&nbsp; like being refused entry into a grocery store or restaurant,</span><b style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">&nbsp;or being refused a life-saving organ transplant unless we have a dehumanizing passport proving we're dumb enough to sign over the rights to our own bodies to these murderous tyrants.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">&nbsp;Enough of seeing our children die after being forced to take this same poisonous drug that's making Big Pharma companies like Pfizer and Moderna over $100 billion a year. Enough is enough.</span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;">They can try to cover up their crimes. But the evidence is mounting, and they can't hide it forever. The story that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated is laughable.&nbsp;<b>How do they explain the hundreds of fully vaccinated cruise ships coming down with the Fauci flu?</b>&nbsp;Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and right now nearly 1% of their entire population is coming down with the China virus every single day. Think about that. Really let that number sink in: 1% of the entire country gets sick with this engineered virus, every day. And they're all fully vaccinated.&nbsp;</p><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;"><b>Wayne Allyn Root over on Townhall put together a great article on this, demonstrating how the German government claimed up to 90% of the infected and dead are unvaccinated.</b>&nbsp;But that was a flat-out lie, because it turns out the German government was actually classifying every sick and dying person as unvaccinated, regardless of whether they were or not. S<b>ame goes for Canada, where they claimed 60% of the COVID deaths were unvaccinated. But that was a lie, too, because in reality, they just classified anyone who got sick or died within two weeks of getting the vaccine as unvaccinated.</b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;"><b>And surprise, surprise, our own beloved CDC -- the Centers for Democrat Control -- pulled the same trick on us.</b>&nbsp;The CDC claimed that anyone who died within 14 days of getting injected wasn't vaccinated. Even though the majority of the deaths and injuries from the vaccine happened within that first 14-day period. Good way to cover up all the&nbsp;<b>people they're murdering,</b>&nbsp;just say they're not vaccinated. Sneaky, sneaky.</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Daniel Nagase, a Canadian doctor for over 15 years who was fired after saving the lives of three patients with ivermectin, says this is just the tip of the iceberg. Nagase said looking at Pfizer's own clinical trial data, the number of deaths and injuries from the vaccine are staggering. According to their data,<b>&nbsp;fully 31% of the people who got the vaccine either died or had permanent disabilities.</b></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Even more shocking is what's happening in the military. Since the armed forces rolled out the vaccine, in one year&nbsp;<b>cancer rates are up 300% among military members.&nbsp;</b>But that's not all.&nbsp;<b>Infertility is skyrocketing as well, up 500% in women, along with miscarriages, which are up another 300%.</b>&nbsp;But those numbers pale in comparison to the rates of clinically diagnosed neurological disorders, which went up an astronomical 1,000% from 82,000 to nearly 900,000. And that happened in one year since the vaccines were introduced. Just think about what that's doing to America's ability to defend itself. Our young warriors crippled by their own government. And we still insist on giving this experimental drug to our children.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">Even research published in the</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Toxicology Reports Journal</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">one of the most well-respected medical journals anywhere, found that children have almost no risk from COVID, but suffer severe consequences from what the researchers themselves called <b>toxic inoculations</b>, including paralysis, heart attacks and even death. The study found the <b>spike proteins from the injections</b> cause permanent damage in children's critical organs, including their brains, nervous and reproductive systems.&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">After being ordered by a judge in December, Pfizer released its own data, which showed that out of 32 known pregnant women who received the vaccine, 28 women experienced fetal death and lost their babies. This is tantamount to child sacrifice on the altar of Big Pharma.</b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;"><b>Young athletes&nbsp;</b>are another prime group to be targeted by this deadly vaccine with 500% more soccer players in the E.U. dropping dead from heart attacks than one year ago -- 500%. Who is actually braindead enough to think that this is just a coincidence, when Pfizer and Moderna's vaccine are known by the FDA to cause heart attacks. This is a pandemic of the ignorant, and it's killing our country.</p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 18.9291px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">So, for all of you progressives and Democrats and radical leftists out there. Do us all a favor, please, and go get vaccinated. In fact, don't stop there. Get double vaccinated, and be sure to<b>&nbsp;get all your boosters. All three or four of them.</b>&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Why stop there? If more is better--- get five, six, get 10 boosters. All the rest of us sane, freedom-loving Americans are counting on you to get your injections. The survival of our country depends on it.</span></p></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">-----</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"experts" for hire</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://expertpages.com/experts.php/toxicology_massachusetts.htm">https://expertpages.com/experts.php/toxicology_massachusetts.htm</a>
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="copy centralColumn lede" data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 680px;"><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 28px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘A lot like climate’</font></h3><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 34px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In June, two peer-reviewed studies trumpeted a conclusion at odds with years of solid science: fine-particle pollution long linked to premature death and chronic illness isn’t as dangerous as health advocates contend. If true, the findings would call into question health benefits claimed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has set ever-tightening air-quality standards.</font></p></div></div></div><div data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="copy centralColumn text" data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 680px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was a catch, however. The articles — which were published within a week of one another — appeared in&nbsp;<b><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Critical Reviews in Toxicology</span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology</span>,</b>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/02/18/19307/brokers-junk-science" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">two journals favored by industry consultants</a>&nbsp;alleged to promote pay-for-play science. And both studies were funded by API, a trade group that has spent $40 million since 2013 to lobby Congress on topics ranging from taxes to global warming.[twitter]</font></p></div></div></div><div data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="copy centralColumn text" data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 680px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Our study is published...air quality does not kill. $600 million of EPA junk science up in smoke,” climate-change skeptic and Donald Trump acolyte&nbsp;<a href="https://junkscience.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Steve Milloy</a>&nbsp;tweeted in June,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230017301538" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">linking to the&nbsp;</a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230017301538" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Regulatory Toxicology</a></em><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230017301538" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">&nbsp;article</a>.&nbsp;During a congressional luncheon a month later, the former coal executive took credit for conceiving the study before turning it over to friend,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/s-stanley-young" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">S. Stanley Young</a>,&nbsp;and two other statisticians, who authored the final article. No mention of Milloy’s involvement is made in the publication.</font></p></div></div></div><div data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="refer" data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 80px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; width: 250px; float: right; line-height: 23.76px;"><a href="https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/venue-of-last-resort" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Read more about how Big Oil is trying to sow skepticism of science among judges »</font></a></div></div><div data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="copy centralColumn text" data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 680px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of the same data&nbsp;were used in&nbsp;<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408444.2017.1311838" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">the&nbsp;</a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408444.2017.1311838" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Critical Reviews</a></em><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408444.2017.1311838" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">&nbsp;article</a>&nbsp;published by Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr., which also disputed the link between fine particles and mortality. Cox, a biostatistician from Colorado, started consulting for API in 1988. Cox disclosed that his paper “benefitted from close proofreading and copy-editing suggestions from API” but denied in an interview that his findings were influenced. In November, he was named the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/epa-unveils-new-industry-friendlier-science-advisory-boards" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">next chair of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee</a>, drawing criticism from groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The science on particle pollution, much like the science on global warming, is exhaustive and widely accepted, with thousands of studies pointing to serious health implications. The&nbsp;<a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">World Health Organization notes</a>&nbsp;that particulate matter “affects more people than any other pollutant,” with effects observed at even “very low concentrations.” The particles — found in automotive and industrial exhaust and smaller than one-fifth of the width of a strand of hair — form a toxic mix with ozone that lodges deep in the lungs. Unlike Cox, most researchers are no longer fixated on whether this form of pollution is fundamentally dangerous; they worry instead about whether it can cause — not just exacerbate — chronic illness.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Attacking the science is one way of undermining the Clean Air Act, said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/john-walke" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">John Walke</a>&nbsp;of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which advocates for more protective air-quality standards. The Clean Air Act is routinely hailed as one of the most cost-effective federal laws, even by business groups. In 2015, the EPA estimated that the law will have saved the U.S. economy $2 trillion by 2020 while costing $65 billion to implement. About 85 percent of the act’s benefits come from reducing fine-particle pollution, which raises the risk of early death. Opponents of the law “deny that air pollution is deadly … or even harmful in order to try to pretend that no benefits are delivered,” Walke said.</font></p></div></div></div><div data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="centralColumn left" data-v-2b44f1d4="" data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 18.9479px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 680px; float: left; clear: left; width: 290.562px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><img src="https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/img/legislative/milloy.jpg" srcset="resized/legislative/milloy-2880.jpg 2880w, resized/legislative/milloy-1440.jpg 1440w, resized/legislative/milloy-720.jpg 720w" data-v-2b44f1d4="" style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 290.562px; height: auto;" /></font><div class="cutline" data-v-2b44f1d4="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px 10px; border: 0px; line-height: 18px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span data-v-2b44f1d4="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Steve Milloy</span><br data-v-2b44f1d4="" style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><span class="credit" data-v-2b44f1d4="" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 16px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 5px; padding-left: 0px;">Illustration by Robert Fresson</span></font></div></div></div><div data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><div class="copy centralColumn text" data-v-22732b7c="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 680px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Milloy’s July luncheon at the Rayburn House Office Building — billed as a “congressional staff and media briefing” — was little more than a plug for his latest book, “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA,” which condemns the “echo chamber of deceptive science”&nbsp;on ozone and fine particles. The event was hosted by&nbsp;<a href="https://cei.org/expert/myron-ebell" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Myron Ebell</a>,&nbsp;</font></p></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...By law, the EPA is not allowed to consider cost when setting ozone standards, but that hasn’t stopped API and other industry groups from injecting economics into the policy debate. Much like scientists for hire, economists have provided API with grist to challenge regulations. Armed with seemingly authoritative studies from firms such as&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nera.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">NERA Economic Consulting</a>,&nbsp;the institute has recast issues such as action on climate change as reckless moves that could tank the U.S. economy. NERA, whose clients include API collaborators such as the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nam.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">National Association of Manufacturers</a>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.americanchemistry.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">American Chemistry Council</a>, was co-founded by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hudson.org/experts/401-irwin-m-stelzer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Irwin Stelzer</a>, an economist who works at the Hudson Institute, a free-market think tank.</font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such studies, like the NERA report Trump c<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/jul/26/trump-pulled-out-the-oil-industry-playbook-and-players-for-paris" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">ited when he announced the U.S. exit</a>&nbsp;from the Paris climate agreement&nbsp;earlier this year, can be “extremely misleading,” often tallying every conceivable cost and ignoring every possible benefit, said Ben Franta, a Stanford University researcher investigating API’s climate activities. Because data underlying these reports are proprietary, Franta said, in many cases they can neither be verified or debunked. What’s left are unsupported arguments: “New ozone rules could be the most expensive ever,” reads an API webpage&nbsp;linking to dozens of NERA findings.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has taken a tack similar to API’s. Since 2013, the TCEQ has paid NERA more than $870,000 for economic research on ozone — a topic the firm studied earlier for API.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">More than $2.2 million in taxpayer funds have also been spent on contracts with Gradient — a consultancy previously hired by API to question the benefits of a stricter ozone limit</span>. The TCEQ declined to comment on this story but on its website describes its mission as protecting the “state’s public health and natural resources consistent with sustainable economic development.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.nera.com/experts/dr-anne-e-smith.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Anne E. Smith</a>, a managing director at NERA,&nbsp;&nbsp;did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment.&nbsp;She was among several industry-friendly voices at a 2015 TCEQ ozone workshop in Austin led by Michael Honeycutt,&nbsp; the agency’s director of toxicology. Other speakers included&nbsp;<b>Gradient scientists</b>, the editor of&nbsp;<b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Critical Reviews in Toxicology</span>, </b>industry toxicologist Michael Dourson and air researcher Robert Phalen, known for saying the air “is a little too clean for optimum health.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group’s findings were later referenced by Honeycutt&nbsp;<a href="https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-114-SY-WState-MHoneycutt-20151022.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">at a House Science Committee hearing</a>, where he argued against a tighter EPA ozone standard. Honeycutt said the risks posed by the pollutant were “small” and any change could discourage people from “outdoor exercise.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speakers at the Austin workshop have risen to prominence in the Trump administration. This fall, Honeycutt, Anne Smith, Dourson and Phalen were all named to key EPA science positions as either advisers or staff.&nbsp;<a href="https://qz.com/1129576/some-pollution-is-good-for-kids-lungs-and-other-beliefs-held-by-trump-health-officials/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Their fringe views on ozone</a>&nbsp;— championed by API — have alarmed public-health advocates and run counter to the EPA’s own findings. The agency strengthened its ozone standard in 2015 after reviewing more than 1,000 new studies.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Economics has long figured into API’s strategy to derail ozone rules. In 1971, the newly formed EPA set the ozone standard at 80 parts per billion, but in 1979 took an unexpected U-turn and weakened it to 120 ppb&nbsp;— angering industry and environmentalists alike. The latter called the reversal scientifically indefensible and accused the EPA of prioritizing economics over health. API promptly sued the EPA, with President DiBona claiming the relaxed standards would still cost “billions of dollars without significantly improving the quality of the environment or the health of the public.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spurred by lawsuits from the<a href="http://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/outdoor/fighting-for-healthy-air/about-fighting-for-healthy-air/clean-air-timeline.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">&nbsp;American Lung Association</a>&nbsp;that compelled it to update air standards based on the latest science, the EPA reverted to its original 80 ppb ozone limit in 1997. The cap is now at 70 ppb, though even that number may not be protective enough, as some research has found health effects at 60 ppb.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epas-administrator" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt</a>&nbsp;— a former Oklahoma attorney general with deep ties to oil and gas — tried to keep the 70 ppb standard from taking effect. He backed off on the delay after 16 state attorneys general sued the agency in August. In&nbsp;<a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/science-environment/article/Environmental-groups-sue-to-force-EPA-to-declare-12405212.php" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">a lawsuit filed</a><a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/science-environment/article/Environmental-groups-sue-to-force-EPA-to-declare-12405212.php" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">&nbsp;</a><a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/science-environment/article/Environmental-groups-sue-to-force-EPA-to-declare-12405212.php" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">this month</a>, however, environmental groups accused the EPA of failing to enforce the rule.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 29px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/fueling-dissent/">https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/fueling-dissent/</a></font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20160221044342/https://publicintegrity.org/2016/02/18/19307/brokers-junk-science">http://web.archive.org/web/20160221044342/https://publicintegrity.org/2016/02/18/19307/brokers-junk-science</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">no lnx many</font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Science for Sale</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Brokers of junk science?</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Two scientific journals known for their industry ties have become go-to publications for researchers who minimize risks from chemicals</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By Jie Jenny Zouemail 5:00 am, February 18, 2016 Updated: 5:00 am, <b>February 18, 2016</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The National Library of Medicine in 2013. Wikimedia Commons.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Science and opinion have become increasingly conflated, in large part because of corporate influence. As we explain in “Science for Sale,” an investigative series by the Center for Public Integrity and co-published with Vice.com, industry-backed research has exploded — often with the aim of obscuring the truth — as government-funded science dwindles. Read more.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Hardbound volumes of Critical Reviews in Toxicology and Regulatory Toxicology and&nbsp; Pharmacology spanning decades are shelved at the National Library of Medicine’s subterranean archives — the world’s largest medical collection — in Bethesda, Maryland.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The peer-reviewed journals are among a select group of medical titles indexed by the National Institutes of Health, and they belong to international associations whose members pledge to uphold ethical and scientific standards. The titles come at a price: an issue of Critical Reviews retails for $372, while an annual subscription to Regulatory Toxicology costs $275.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Yet critics also claim the journals are purveyors of “junk science” — misleading, industry-backed articles that threaten public health by playing down the dangers of well-known toxic substances such as lead and asbestos. The articles often are used to stall regulatory efforts and defend court cases.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">An analysis by the Center for Public Integrity found that </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">half of all review articles written by top scientists at the consulting firm Gradient since 1992 were published either in Critical Reviews or Regulatory Toxicology. No other journal came close.</span></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“You’d have to be delusional to not recognize that the issues they’re dealing [with] and policies they’re setting won’t affect the profits of very powerful sources,” said Canadian anti-asbestos activist <b>Kathleen Ruff, who called both journals “egregious examples” of a deeper problem of industry influence.&nbsp; “Creating doubt is an endless activity and, in the meantime, people die unnecessarily.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Editorial boards at both journals are laden with scientists and<b> lawyers employed by industry</b>, making them easy targets for public-health advocates. Current board members include private consultants who have also received compensation as expert witnesses in court.&nbsp; &nbsp;</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The harm is that it actually muddies the independent scientific literature,” said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “They’re stacking their weight on their side of the scale.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Those behind the journals deny that industry relationships compromise scientific independence.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“There is this prevailing issue, which is really unfortunate, that anything supported by industry is tainted,” said David Warheit, a Critical Reviews board member and scientist at Chemours, which manufactures titanium dioxide, an ingredient in sunscreen. “Perceptions pervade everything.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Warheit said each submission to the journal is evaluated by four or five peer reviewers as opposed to the typical two or three. “I have reviewed some awful papers for [Critical Reviews in Toxicology], and they didn’t get published.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Roger McClellan Wikimedia commons</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">New Mexico veterinarian and Critical Reviews editor Roger McClellan declined an interview request from the Center, writing in an email that he was proud of the journal’s 45-year history. “My scientific record speaks for itself,” he added, providing copies of his 64-page résumé and biography.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Gio Gori, editor of Regulatory Toxicology, also declined to comment</b> and referred all questions to the publisher, Elsevier. A spokesperson cited a 2003 editorial by Gori, which referenced the journal’s objectivity and “more than 600 international scientists who generously assist in the journal’s peer-review process.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chaos and turmoil</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Epidemiologist Philippe Grandjean was one of 42 scientists who signed a letter in late 2002 criticizing Regulatory Toxicology’s frequent failure to disclose conflicts of interest and deep industry ties, starting with Gori.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A former director of the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> National Cancer Institute</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, Gori made millions as a tobacco consultant questioning the dangers of secondhand smoke in scientific journals as well as The Washington Post.</span></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>“Gori is the kind of guy who would write especially obnoxious editorials where he would castigate honest scientists as being out of their minds,” said Grandjean, a Danish epidemiologist. “It was so blatantly biased towards industry and against open and transparent science.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Elsevier stood by the journal but implemented a disclosure policy in 2003.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A decade later, Grandjean found himself drafting another letter — this time airing his concerns about Critical Reviews, where he&nbsp; served as a board member.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>An adjunct professor at Harvard School of Public Health and a pioneering mercury researcher, Grandjean said he joined the Critical Reviews board more than 30 years ago despite its reputation for being cozy with industry because he believes in collaboration and felt he could have a say in the journal’s content.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">That changed in 2012 when the journal published two articles rebutting research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health linking lung cancer to diesel fumes. Grandjean said the publication “wasn’t science for science’s sake,” but a way to cast doubt on NIOSH’s findings.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">His complaints got no traction with editor McClellan or then-publisher Informa Health, which Grandjean said reneged on promises to conduct an independent review.<b> Taylor & Francis, the current publisher, declined to comment</b>. In 2012, McClellan defended the journal’s disclosure policies and said that Grandjean’s complaint had been shared with other members of the editorial board, “none of [whom] shared the views expressed by Dr. Grandjean.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Grandjean resigned in 2012, ending a positive relationship that began under founding editor Leon Golberg. “I thought if [McClellan] invited me, he thought my advice would be useful, but apparently this changed to a situation where it was useful to have my name on the masthead to justify this was a balanced journal.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Like the journal he founded, Golberg’s career aligned closely with industry. A native of Cyprus who held academic positions in South Africa and Britain and spent the end of his career at Duke University, Golberg oversaw C<b>ritical Reviews from its inaugural issue in September 1971, published by The Chemical Rubber Co.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The journal was introduced as “the voice of reason” in an era of “chaos and turmoil.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Never before have so many regulatory actions been taken or proposed — some too late, others prematurely — that have bewildered the consumer and had a crushing impact on industry,” Golberg wrote.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That same year, a public health crisis unraveled when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against diethylstilbestrol (DES) — a synthetic hormone used for decades by pregnant women to combat morning sickness and prevent miscarriages or premature deliveries — which Golberg had co-created in 1938. As many as 10 million people were exposed to DES before it was linked to a rare vaginal cancer and other fertility problems, spawning myriad lawsuits.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Golberg’s role in the DES debacle is less well known than his later achievements. They include founding the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology (CIIT), now the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences, a research group “founded and funded by the chemical industry,” according to the Research Triangle Regional Partnership. <b>He also jump-started the British Industrial Biological Research Association, a consulting firm whose clients include ExxonMobil and Procter & Gamble.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In the 1970s, Golberg consulted for a now-discredited campaign for “safer” cigarettes by R.J. Reynolds</b>, which still funds fellowships in his honor at Wake Forest and Duke. <b>He died in 1987 from mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer linked to asbestos exposure.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>McClellan succeeded Golberg as both Critical Reviews editor and CIIT leader, working with trade groups like the American Chemistry Council</b>. Critical Reviews has since become one of the most-cited toxicology journals, at the same time drawing a spate of criticism.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ruff, the anti-asbestos advocate, chastised Critical Reviews in May for what she alleged to be improper disclosure in a 2013 asbestos article. Testimony in a court case stated that an industry group paid the authors nearly $180,000 in writing fees, which were erroneously described as “grants.”&nbsp; She cited the incident as a reason for stricter disclosure reporting and enforcement.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As Critical Reviews editor, McClellan has been outspoken against regulation. By his own count, he has testified before Congress 20 times. In 2011, he argued against a proposal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to curb ground-level ozone, or smog, as too expensive, calling for lawmakers to recognize that “a healthy economy with people employed is the cornerstone of a healthy population.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Industry ties</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Since its 1981 debut, Regulatory Toxicology has billed itself as a credible and objective source for a broad audience. Its co-editors promised to focus on science instead of politics and “mythology.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>“Safety is relative, not absolute,”</b> AIDS researcher Frederick Coulston and FDA scientist Dr. Albert Kolbye Jr. wrote in the inaugural issue. “Safety is a moving target.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The journal has been sympathetic to industry from the start. In its first issue, an associate editor lamented: “There has always been a sense of competition between government and industry, but always a high degree of mutual respect. In the seventies that spirit changed from competition to an adversary posture and from respect to distrust.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Regulatory Toxicology is the official publication of the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology, an association whose leaders include a Coca Cola executive, corporate consultants and lawyers.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In an email to the Center, President Sue Ferenc denied that the society plays any editorial role at the journal. Outside of the society, Ferenc heads the Council of Producers & Distributors of <b>Agrotechnology, a pesticide group</b> with its own political action committee.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But significant overlap at both the society and the journal has existed for years.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gary Yingling, a former FDA attorney who now represents industry clients, has been an editorial board member of Regulatory Toxicology since 1981 while also serving as the society’s general counsel. Fellow board member Terry Quill is an industry lawyer and former society president, who led the society’s push against labeling chloroform as carcinogenic. The EPA has since classified chloroform, a byproduct of chlorinating water, as a probable human carcinogen.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Recipients of the society’s achievement award include well-known journal figures like McClellan, the Critical Reviews editor who also sits on Regulatory Toxicology’s board. The society credited the journal’s growing popularity as the “major” source of its success and “esteem.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Responding to questions about industry’s financial support of the society, then-president Christopher Borgert wrote in a 2008 newsletter, “Science has an objective means of evaluating information, but it has nothing to do with who got the money and why . . . The process of science removes the scientist, with his numerous biases and conflicts of interest, as far as humanely [sic] possible from the process of data generation and interpretation.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Regulatory Toxicology’s editors have also made headlines. Chain-smoking through an interview with The Wall Street Journal in 1997, Coulston claimed nicotine wasn’t addictive and smoking didn’t cause cancer. In 2001, his New Mexico chimpanzee lab was stripped of federal funding amid animal abuse claims.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gori became editor of Regulatory Toxicology following Coulston’s 2003 death and has also served as society president. In 2013, he and 17 other toxicology journal editors penned an editorial criticizing the European Union’s plans to regulate chemicals known as endocrine disruptors. Of the 18 editors, only one did not have industry ties.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">‘All that noise’</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“If a call comes in and the number is withheld, you might become suspicious and ignore the call,” Grandjean wrote in 2012. “Scientific authorship should be just as simple so that we can concentrate our attention on the sources we trust.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>But representatives of the EPA, the FDA and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration said their agencies treat science equally, regardless of the funding source. Disclosure is encouraged by all three agencies but isn’t mandatory.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Speakers at FDA proceedings are asked to disclose relevant financial relationships but the agency doesn’t bar those who don’t comply from participating.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Science at the EPA and OSHA is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Study authors are asked to disclose “funding sources and other pertinent interests” at the EPA, while OSHA asks those who comment on proposed rules to provide disclosures with their submissions.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What should or shouldn’t be disclosed is a matter of debate. “There is no agreement on what a conflict of interest is,” said Arthur Caplan, founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “The disclosures currently say, ‘I’m going to disclose industry funding because that is a potential source of bias. You, reader, have to decide for yourself whether it is or it isn’t. Good luck to you.’ ” Current sentiment “demonizes the industry side,” Caplan added, while ignoring potential biases created by private foundations or government money.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Science for Sale</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Corporations are steering millions of dollars to scientific consulting firms to cast doubt on health concerns surrounding toxic chemicals.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Stories in this series</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Brokers of junk science?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By Jie Jenny Zou February 18, 2016</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ford spent $40 million to reshape asbestos science</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By Jim Morris February 16, 2016</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Making a cancer cluster disappear</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By David Heath February 10, 2016</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Meet the ‘rented white coats’ who defend toxic chemicals</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By David Heath February 8, 2016</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">About 'Science for Sale'</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By Jim Morris February 8, 2016</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Click here for more stories in this investigation]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Disclosure policies don’t exist to eliminate bias, said Sheldon Krimsky, a professor at Tufts University who studies science and public policy, but to allow the public to assess potential conflicts that can undermine findings. “Science is not a matter of this fact and that fact; there’s all sorts of nuance in science,” he said. “You can draw conclusions in science beyond what your data tells you.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Krimsky’s own research has found that industry-backed studies typically yield findings that bolster a company’s bottom line. “Companies want you to produce a specific result,” he said. “They won’t publish it if you don’t.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Even with proper disclosure, assessing a study’s credibility takes time, said the NRDC’s Sass. “In the end we still have to go through it on its merits; so do the EPA, and [other] federal bodies,” she said. “That leaves us with the task of addressing the substantive flaws each time, article by article.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the federal regulatory process, this can mean additional public hearings and meetings where activists go head-to-head with, and are often outnumbered by, industry representatives.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The system can’t manage all that noise,” Caplan said. “The science tends to get lost and the politics wins or the economics wins. When there’s that much noise going on, other factors start to resolve the dispute and they’re not factual.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">More stories about</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Toxicology, Food and Drug Administration, Asbestos, Toxicologists, Critical Reviews in Toxicology, Passive smoking, Philippe Grandjean, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Jennifer Sass, chemicals, Natural Resources Defense Council, Regulatory Toxicology</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 21px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; vertical-align: middle; text-transform: uppercase; padding: 0px; border: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CONTACT</font></h2><div class="HtmlContent" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">11190 Sunrise Valley Dr., Suite 300,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Reston, VA 20191<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a href="tel:+17034383115" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">703.438.3115</a><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a href="mailto:sothq@toxicology.org" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">sothq@toxicology.org</a></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ltr support lamar secret sci BS:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SOT bio BS: 404 wayback</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For his many enduring contributions to the development of knowledge on the toxicology of airborne toxicants, Dr. McClellan has received the SOT Arnold J. Lehman Award (1992), Merit Award (2005), and Founder’s Award (2009), as well as numerous honors from other organizations. Dr. McClellan has been an active SOT member, serving on many SOT Committees, on the SOT Council, as founding chair of the SOT Endowment Fund Board, and as <b>SOT 1989–1990 President.</b></span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">off bs&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ROGER O. McCLELLAN</font></h1><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Interest in radiation and radionuclides are rooted in his growing up near the Hanford Nuclear Site where he moved with his parents in 1944. Working at Hanford as a student stimulated his interest in the radiological sciences. After receiving a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Washington State University in 1960, he joined the staff of the Hanford Laboratories, which continues today as the Pacific Northwest Laboratories. In 1965 and 1966, while on a special assignment with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, DC, he attended his first NCRP meeting.&nbsp;</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">From 1966 to 1988, McClellan provided leadership for the Lovelace Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico program that conducted pioneering research on the acute and long-term health effects of inhaled fission product and transuranic radionuclides. From 1988 to 1999, Dr. McClellan provided leadership for the<b> Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology,</b> Research Triangle Park, North Caroline....</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology and American Board of Veterinary Toxicology, and a Fellow of the Health Physics Society, Academy of Toxicological Sciences, American Association for Aerosol Research,<b> Society for Risk Analysis</b>, and American Association for Advancement of Science. In 1990, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science.</span></font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></span></div><div><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2016.1234117"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2016.1234117</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Editor gratefully acknowledges the extensive review comments offered by the 27 external reviewers. Those comments enhanced the quality and completeness of the five papers.</font></p><div id="s0002" class="NLM_sec NLM_sec_level_1" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><h2 id="
i2" class="section-heading-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 32px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 29.12px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Declaration of interest</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roger O. McClellan, the Editor-in-Chief of&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Critical Reviews in Toxicology</i>&nbsp;(<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">CRT</i>), since 1987, currently serves as an independent advisor to private and public entities on environmental and occupational health issues. Early in his career, his research focused on the health effects of radiation and internally-deposited radionuclides as an employee of General Electric Company and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Later he provided leadership for the Lovelace Inhalation Toxicology Research Institute’s extensive research program on airborne radionuclides and other toxicants with primary financial support from the AEC and the U.S. Department of Energy.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">From 1988 to 1999, he was the President and Chief Executive Officer of the<b> Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology (CIIT), a not-for-profit research institute whose extensive research program, focusing on mechanisms of action of chemicals, was supported by dues payments from member companies. The Monsanto Company was a founding member of the CIIT. </b>The CIIT did not conduct any research on glyphosate.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> McClellan, during his career, has served on over 100 major advisory committees for private firms, academic institutions and U.S. government and international agencies, including IARC. None of these advisory assignments has directly involved review of the health hazards of glyphosate.<b> McClellan, in his role as Editor-in-Chief of&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">CRT</i>, selected the 27 individuals who reviewed the five papers published in this Special Supplement. </b>The reviewers represented a cross-section of scientists from around the globe employed by academic, government and private entities or working as sole proprietors. The review comments they provided were considered to represent their independent professional views.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">This article is part of a supplement, sponsored and supported by Intertek Scientific & Regulatory Consultancy. <b>Funding for the sponsorship of this supplement was provided to Intertek by the Monsanto Company,</b> which is a primary producer of glyphosate and products containing this active ingredient.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">...</font></p><div class="art_title linkable" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 552.203px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a class="ref nowrap" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2016.1214677" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;" droid="Droid" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" em="em" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">review of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate by four independent expert panels and comparison to the IARC assessment</font></a></div><div class="tocentryright" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 552.203px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="tocAuthors afterTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="articleEntryAuthor all" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 10px; width: 436.234px;"><span class="articleEntryAuthorsLinks" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Williams%2C+Gary+M" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Gary M. Williams</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Aardema%2C+Marilyn" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Marilyn Aardema</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Acquavella%2C+John" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">John Acquavella</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Berry%2C+Sir+Colin" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Sir Colin Berry</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Brusick%2C+David" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px;">David Brusick</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Burns%2C+Michele+M" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michele M. Burns</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/de+Camargo%2C+Joao+Lauro+Viana" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Joao Lauro Viana de Camargo</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Garabrant%2C+David" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">David Garabrant</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Greim%2C+Helmut+A" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Helmut A. Greim</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Kier%2C+Larry+D" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Larry D. Kier</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Kirkland%2C+David+J" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">David J. Kirkland</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Marsh%2C+Gary" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Gary Marsh</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Solomon%2C+Keith+R" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;"><b>Keith R. Solomon</b></a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Sorahan%2C+Tom" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Tom Sorahan</a></span>,&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Roberts%2C+Ashley" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Ashley Roberts</a></span>&nbsp;&&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Weed%2C+Douglas+L" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Douglas L. Weed</a></span></font></span></div></div><div class="tocPageRange maintextleft" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 7px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pages: 3-20</font></div><div class="tocEPubDate" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 7px;"><span class="maintextleft" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Published online:</strong>&nbsp;28 Sep 2016</font></span></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">batasch cites</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>milloy </b>my CA study</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/16/denier-study-skeptical-epa-science-air-pollution-bastasch</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www2.stat.duke.edu/kkl13/lopiano-cv.pdf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">neo-nic ~sci:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Peter Campbell</b></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>Senior Environmental Specialist & Head of Product Safety Research Collaborations at Syngenta</div><div>Reading, <b>United Kingdom Chemicals</b></div><div>Current<span style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><b>Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Syngenta</b></div><div>Previous<span style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div>Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Syngenta, York</div><div>Education<span style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div>Plymouth Polytechnic</div><div>483</div><div>connections</div><div>View Peter’s full profile. It's free!</div><div>Your colleagues, classmates, and 500 million other professionals are on LinkedIn.</div><div>View Peter’s Full Profile</div><div>Summary</div><div>A Senior Research & Development Technical Manager with an extensive and successful career in leading regulatory environmental risk assessment and ecotoxicology both within one of the world’s leading global life science companies and one of Europe’s (and the world’s) leading governmental pesticide regulatory authorities.</div><div>Experience</div><div><b>Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry</b></div><div>SETAC World President/Vice President/Past President Rotation</div><div>Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry</div><div>January 2013 – Present (4 years 7 months)</div><div>I joined SETAC World Council in January 2011 as a SETAC Europe representative, I then started the SETAC World Vice President/President/Past President 3 yr rotation in January 2013. One of my main responsibilities is to Chair the SETAC World Council meetings and teleconferences and be a leadership ambassador for the SETAC Organisation. This is a voluntary Position.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">SETAC is a not-for-profit, global professional organization comprised of some 6,000 individual members and institutions from academia, business and government. Since 1979, the Society has provided a forum where scientists, managers and other professionals exchange information and ideas on the study, analysis and solution of environmental problems, the management and regulation of natural resources, research and development, and environmental education.</span></div><div>SETAC's founding principles are:</div><div>•<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Multidisciplinary approaches to solving environmental problems</div><div>•<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Tripartite balance among academia, business and government</div><div>•<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Science-based objectivity</div><div>Syngenta</div><div>Senior Environmental Specialist: Head of Product Safety Research Collaborations</div><div>Syngenta</div><div>September 2007 – Present (9 years 11 months)</div><div>Provide Env Risk Assessment advice on complex product issues:Lead the Product Safety enqabling Science Research Portfolio; Represent Syngenta in international Env Science related techno-regulatory ectivities eg ECPA and SETAC. Currently President of SETAC Europe.</div><div>Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry</div><div>SETAC Europe President/Vice President/Past President</div><div>Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry</div><div>May 2010 – May 2013 (3 years 1 month)United Kingdom</div><div>I joined SETAC Europe Council in May 2007, I then started the SETAC Europe Vice President/President/Past President 3 yr rotation in May 2010. One of my main responsibilities is to Chair the SETAC Europe Council meetings and teleconferences and be a leadership ambassador for the SETAC Europe Organisation. This is voluntary Position.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>SETAC is a not-for-profit, global professional organization comprised of some 6,000 individual members and institutions from academia, business and government. Since 1979, the Society has provided a forum where scientists, managers and other professionals exchange information and ideas on the study, analysis and solution of environmental problems, the management and regulation of natural resources, research and development, and environmental education.</div><div>SETAC's founding principles are:</div><div>•<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Multidisciplinary approaches to solving environmental problems</div><div>•<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Tripartite balance among academia, business and government</div><div>•<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Science-based objectivity</div><div>Syngenta</div><div>Head of Ecological Sciences</div><div>Syngenta</div><div>October 1997 – September 2007 (10 years)</div><div>Section head in charge of Ecotoxicology labs and Env Risk Assessment for Pesticides. Managed 63 staff based in 2 labs located in Jealotts Hill UK at in Basel Switzerland, plus office based staff in Greensboro USA. Manged Contract budget circa 14 Million US Dollars</div><div>Head of Ecotoxicology: Principlal Scientific Officer</div><div>York</div><div>September 1991 – November 1997 (6 years 3 months)</div><div>Head of Branch for Ecotoxicology responsible for conducting Env Risk Assessment for Pesticides. Represented UK in 91/414/EEC Ecotox Expert Group discussions including Chairing the original ECCO Ecotox Expert Group Peer review meetings.</div><div>Health & Safety Executive</div><div>Environmental Risk Assesor: Higher Scientific Officer</div><div>Health & Safety Executive</div><div>April 1990 – September 1991 (1 year 6 months)</div><div>Conducted Env Risk Assessments for Biocides (Anti-fouling paaints, wood preservatives etc).</div><div>
=</div><div>Helen Thompson</div><div>Principal Technical Expert at Syngenta</div><div>
</div><div>Anne Langford-Pollard</div><div>Technical Expert at Syngenta</div><div>
</div><div>Ian Barber</div><div>Regulatory Ecotoxicologist at Dow Agroscience</div><div>
</div><div>Fraser. Lewis</div><div>Head of Environmental Safety at Syngenta</div><div>
</div><div>Alison McDonald</div><div>Study Manager at Envigo ++++</div><div>
</div><div>Mark Miles</div><div>Pollinator safety specialist at Bayer CropScience</div><div>
</div><div>Dave JOHNSON</div><div>Senior Technical Expert, Consumer Safety at Syngenta Crop Protection</div><div>
</div><div>Grace Panter</div><div>Senior Technical Expert and Ecotoxicologist at Syngenta</div><div>
</div><div>Laurence Hand</div><div>Senior Technical Expert/Group Leader at Syngenta Crop Protection</div><div>
</div><div>Mo Farah Foundation</div><div>Director at The Mo Farah Foundation</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>https://uk.linkedin.com/in/julian-little-40825b1</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no link</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/02/18/19307/brokers-junk-science">https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/02/18/19307/brokers-junk-science</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hardbound volumes of<b> Critical Reviews in Toxicology</b> and <b>Regulatory Toxicology and &nbsp;Pharmacology </b>spanning decades are shelved at the National Library of Medicine’s subterranean archives — the world’s largest medical collection — in Bethesda, Maryland.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>The peer-reviewed journals are among a select group of medical titles indexed by the National Institutes of Health, and they belong to international associations whose members pledge to uphold ethical and scientific standards. The titles come at a price: an issue of Critical Reviews retails for $372, while an annual subscription to Regulatory Toxicology costs $275.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Yet critics also claim the journals are purveyors of “junk science” — misleading, industry-backed articles that threaten public health by playing down the dangers of well-known toxic substances such as lead and asbestos. The articles often are used to stall regulatory efforts and defend court cases.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">An analysis by the Center for Public Integrity found that half of all review articles written by top scientists at the consulting firm Gradient since 1992 were published either in Critical Reviews or Regulatory Toxicology. No other journal came close.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“You’d have to be delusional to not recognize that the issues they’re dealing [with] and policies they’re setting won’t affect the profits of very powerful sources,” said Canadian anti-<b>asbestos</b> activist Kathleen Ruff, who called both journals “egregious examples” of a deeper problem of industry influence. &nbsp;“Creating doubt is an endless activity and, in the meantime, people die unnecessarily.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>Editorial boards at both journals are laden with scientists and lawyers employed by industry, making them easy targets for public-health advocates. Current board members include private consultants who have also received compensation as expert witnesses in court. &nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>“The harm is that it actually muddies the independent scientific literature,” said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the<b> Natural Resources Defense Council, </b>an environmental group. “They’re stacking their weight on their side of the scale.”</div><div>
</div><div>Those behind the journals deny that industry relationships compromise scientific independence.</div><div>
</div><div>“There is this prevailing issue, which is really unfortunate, that anything supported by industry is tainted,” said David Warheit, a Critical Reviews board member and scientist at Chemours, which manufactures titanium dioxide, an ingredient in sunscreen. “Perceptions pervade everything.”</div><div>
</div><div>Warheit said each submission to the journal is evaluated by four or five peer reviewers as opposed to the typical two or three. “I have reviewed some awful papers for [Critical Reviews in Toxicology], and they didn’t get published.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>New Mexico veterinarian and Critical Reviews editor Roger McClellan declined an interview request from the Center, writing in an email that he was proud of the journal’s 45-year history. “My scientific record speaks for itself,” he added, providing copies of his 64-page résumé and biography.</div><div>
</div><div>Gio Gori, editor of Regulatory Toxicology, also declined to comment and referred all questions to the publisher, <b>Elsevier.</b> A spokesperson cited a 2003 editorial by Gori, which referenced the journal’s objectivity and “more than 600 international scientists who generously assist in the journal’s peer-review process.”</div><div>
</div><div>Chaos and turmoil</div><div>
</div><div>Epidemiologist Philippe Grandjean was one of 42 scientists who signed a letter in late 2002 criticizing Regulatory Toxicology’s frequent failure to disclose conflicts of interest and deep industry ties, starting with Gori.</div><div>
</div><div>A former director of the National Cancer Institute, Gori made millions as a tobacco consultant questioning the dangers of secondhand smoke in scientific journals as well as The Washington Post.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Gio Gori Wikimedia commons</div><div>“Gori is the kind of guy who would write especially obnoxious editorials where he would castigate honest scientists as being out of their minds,” said Grandjean, a Danish epidemiologist. “It was so blatantly biased towards industry and against open and transparent science.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Elsevier stood by the journal but implemented a disclosure policy in 2003.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A decade later, Grandjean found himself drafting another letter — this time airing his concerns about Critical Reviews, where he &nbsp;served as a board member.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">An adjunct professor at <b>Harvard School of Public Health </b>and a pioneering mercury researcher, Grandjean said he joined the Critical Reviews board more than 30 years ago despite its reputation for being cozy with industry because he believes in collaboration and felt he could have a say in the journal’s content.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That changed in 2012 when the journal published two articles rebutting research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health linking lung cancer to diesel fumes. Grandjean said the publication “wasn’t science for science’s sake,” but a way to cast doubt on NIOSH’s findings.</span></div><div>
</div><div>His complaints got no traction with editor McClellan or then-publisher Informa Health, which Grandjean said reneged on promises to conduct an independent review. Taylor & Francis, the current publisher, declined to comment. In 2012, McClellan defended the journal’s disclosure policies and said that Grandjean’s complaint had been shared with other members of the editorial board, “none of [whom] shared the views expressed by Dr. Grandjean.”</div><div>
</div><div>Grandjean resigned in 2012, ending a positive relationship that began under founding editor Leon Golberg. “I thought if [McClellan] invited me, he thought my advice would be useful, but apparently this changed to a situation where it was useful to have my name on the masthead to justify this was a balanced journal.”</div><div>
</div><div>Like the journal he founded, Golberg’s career aligned closely with industry. A native of Cyprus who held academic positions in South Africa and Britain and spent the end of his career at Duke University, Golberg oversaw Critical Reviews from its inaugural issue in September 1971, published by The Chemical Rubber Co.</div><div>
</div><div>The journal was introduced as “the voice of reason” in an era of “chaos and turmoil.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Never before have so many regulatory actions been taken or proposed — some too late, others prematurely — that have bewildered the consumer and had a crushing impact on industry,” Golberg wrote.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That same year, a public health crisis unraveled when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against diethylstilbestrol (DES) — a synthetic hormone used for decades by pregnant women to combat morning sickness and prevent miscarriages or premature deliveries — which Golberg had co-created in 1938. As many as 10 million people were exposed to DES before it was linked to a rare vaginal cancer and other fertility problems, spawning myriad lawsuits.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Golberg’s role in the DES debacle is less well known than his later achievements. They include founding the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology (CIIT), now the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences, a research group “founded and funded by the chemical industry,” according to the Research Triangle Regional Partnership. He also jump-started the British Industrial Biological Research Association, a consulting firm whose clients include ExxonMobil and Procter & Gamble.</div><div>
</div><div><b>In the 1970s, Golberg consulted for a now-discredited campaign for “safer” cigarettes by R.J. Reynolds, </b>which still funds fellowships in his honor at Wake Forest and Duke. He died in 1987 from mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer linked to asbestos exposure.</div><div>
</div><div>McClellan succeeded Golberg as both Critical Reviews editor and CIIT leader, working with trade groups like the American Chemistry Council. Critical Reviews has since become one of the most-cited toxicology journals, at the same time drawing a spate of criticism.</div><div>
</div><div>Ruff, the anti-asbestos advocate, chastised Critical Reviews in May for what she alleged to be improper disclosure in a 2013 asbestos article. Testimony in a court case stated that an industry group paid the authors nearly $180,000 in writing fees, which were erroneously described as “grants.” &nbsp;She cited the incident as a reason for stricter disclosure reporting and enforcement.</div><div>
</div><div>As Critical Reviews editor, McClellan has been outspoken against regulation. By his own count, he has testified before Congress 20 times. In 2011, he argued against a proposal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to curb ground-level ozone, or smog, as too expensive, calling for lawmakers to recognize that “a healthy economy with people employed is the cornerstone of a healthy population.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Industry ties</b></div><div>
</div><div>Since its 1981 debut, Regulatory Toxicology has billed itself as a credible and objective source for a broad audience. Its co-editors promised to focus on science instead of politics and “mythology.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Safety is relative, not absolute,” AIDS researcher Frederick Coulston and FDA scientist Dr. Albert Kolbye Jr. wrote in the inaugural issue. “Safety is a moving target.”</div><div>
</div><div>The journal has been sympathetic to industry from the start. In its first issue, an associate editor lamented: “There has always been a sense of competition between government and industry, but always a high degree of mutual respect. In the seventies that spirit changed from competition to an adversary posture and from respect to distrust.”</div><div>
</div><div>Regulatory Toxicology is the official publication of the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology, an association whose leaders include a Coca Cola executive, corporate consultants and lawyers.</div><div>
</div><div>In an email to the Center, President Sue Ferenc denied that the society plays any editorial role at the journal. Outside of the society, Ferenc heads the Council of Producers & Distributors of Agrotechnology, a pesticide group with its own political action committee.</div><div>
</div><div>But significant overlap at both the society and the journal has existed for years.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Gary Yingling, a former FDA attorney who now represents industry clients, has been an editorial board member of Regulatory Toxicology since 1981 while also serving as the society’s general counsel. Fellow board member Terry Quill is an industry lawyer and former society president, who led the society’s push against labeling chloroform as carcinogenic. The EPA has since classified chloroform, a byproduct of chlorinating water, as a probable human carcinogen.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Recipients of the society’s achievement award include well-known journal figures like McClellan, the Critical Reviews editor who also sits on Regulatory Toxicology’s board. The society credited the journal’s growing popularity as the “major” source of its success and “esteem.”</div><div>
</div><div>Responding to questions about industry’s financial support of the society, then-president Christopher Borgert wrote in a 2008 newsletter, “Science has an objective means of evaluating information, but it has nothing to do with who got the money and why . . . The process of science removes the scientist, with his numerous biases and conflicts of interest, as far as humanely [sic] possible from the process of data generation and interpretation.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Regulatory Toxicology’s editors have also made headlines. Chain-smoking through an interview with The Wall Street Journal in 1997, Coulston claimed nicotine wasn’t addictive and smoking didn’t cause cancer. In 2001, his New Mexico chimpanzee lab was stripped of federal funding amid animal abuse claims.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Gori became editor of Regulatory Toxicology following Coulston’s 2003 death and has also served as society president. In 2013, he and 17 other toxicology journal editors penned an editorial criticizing the European Union’s plans to regulate chemicals known as endocrine disruptors. Of the 18 editors, only one did not have industry ties.</div><div>
</div><div>‘All that noise’</div><div>
</div><div>“If a call comes in and the number is withheld, you might become suspicious and ignore the call,” Grandjean wrote in 2012. “Scientific authorship should be just as simple so that we can concentrate our attention on the sources we trust.”</div><div>
</div><div>But representatives of the EPA, the FDA and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration said their agencies treat science equally, regardless of the funding source. Disclosure is encouraged by all three agencies but isn’t mandatory.</div><div>
</div><div>Speakers at FDA proceedings are asked to disclose relevant financial relationships but the agency doesn’t bar those who don’t comply from participating.</div><div>
</div><div>Science at the EPA and OSHA is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Study authors are asked to disclose “funding sources and other pertinent interests” at the EPA, while OSHA asks those who comment on proposed rules to provide disclosures with their submissions.</div><div>
</div><div>What should or shouldn’t be disclosed is a matter of debate. “There is no agreement on what a conflict of interest is,” said Arthur Caplan, founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “The disclosures currently say, ‘I’m going to disclose industry funding because that is a potential source of bias. You, reader, have to decide for yourself whether it is or it isn’t. Good luck to you.’ ” Current sentiment “demonizes the industry side,” Caplan added, while ignoring potential biases created by private foundations or government money.</div><div>
</div><div>Science for Sale</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Corporations are steering millions of dollars to scientific consulting firms to cast doubt on health concerns surrounding toxic chemicals.</div><div>Stories in this series</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Philip Morris uses chemical industry consultants to perpetuate 'light cigarette' myth</div><div>By David Heath May 4, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>Senators seek better conflict disclosures for scientific articles</div><div>By David Heath March 31, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>Brokers of junk science?</div><div>By Jie Jenny Zou February 18, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>Ford spent $40 million to reshape asbestos science</div><div>By Jim Morris February 16, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>Making a cancer cluster disappear</div><div>By David Heath February 10, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>Meet the ‘rented white coats’ who defend toxic chemicals</div><div>By David Heath February 8, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>About 'Science for Sale'</div><div>
</div><div><b>Disclosure policies don’t exist to eliminate bias,</b> said Sheldon Krimsky, a professor at Tufts University who studies science and public policy, but to allow the public to assess potential conflicts that can undermine findings. “Science is not a matter of this fact and that fact; there’s all sorts of nuance in science,” he said. “You can draw conclusions in science beyond what your data tells you.”</div><div>
</div><div>Krimsky’s own research has found that industry-backed studies typically yield findings that bolster a company’s bottom line. “Companies want you to produce a specific result,” he said. “They won’t publish it if you don’t.”</div><div>
</div><div>Even with proper disclosure, assessing a study’s credibility takes time, said the NRDC’s Sass. “In the end we still have to go through it on its merits; so do the EPA, and [other] federal bodies,” she said. “That leaves us with the task of addressing the substantive flaws each time, article by article.”</div><div>
</div><div>In the federal regulatory process, this can mean additional public hearings and meetings where activists go head-to-head with, and are often outnumbered by, industry representatives.</div><div>
</div><div>“The system can’t manage all that noise,” Caplan said. “The science tends to get lost and the politics wins or the economics wins. When there’s that much noise going on, other factors start to resolve the dispute and they’re not factual.”</div><div>
</div><div>More stories about</div><div>Toxicology, Food and Drug Administration, Asbestos, Toxicologists, Critical Reviews in Toxicology, Passive smoking, Philippe Grandjean, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Jennifer Sass, chemicals, Natural Resources Defense Council, Regulatory Toxicology</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>ref ghost hack</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/business/monsanto-roundup-safety-lawsuit.html</div><div>
</div><div>The reputation of Roundup, whose active ingredient is the world’s most widely used weed killer, took a hit on Tuesday when a federal court unsealed documents raising questions about its safety and the research practices of its manufacturer, the chemical giant Monsanto.</div><div>
</div><div>Roundup and similar products are used around the world on everything from row crops to home gardens. It is Monsanto’s flagship product, and industry-funded research has long found it to be relatively safe. A case in federal court in San Francisco has challenged that conclusion, building on the findings of an international panel that claimed Roundup’s main ingredient might cause cancer.</div><div>
</div><div>The court documents included Monsanto’s internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators. The records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.</div><div>
</div><div>The documents also revealed that there was some disagreement within the E.P.A. over its own safety assessment.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The files were unsealed by Judge Vince Chhabria, who is presiding over litigation brought by people who claim to have developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a result of exposure to glyphosate. The litigation was touched off by a determination made nearly two years ago by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen, citing research linking it to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.</div><div>Court records show that Monsanto was tipped off to the determination by a deputy division director at the E.P.A., Jess Rowland, months beforehand. That led the company to prepare a public relations assault on the finding well in advance of its publication. Monsanto executives, in their internal email traffic, also said Mr. Rowland had promised to beat back an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct its own review.</div><div>
</div><div>Dan Jenkins, a Monsanto executive, said in an email in 2015 that Mr. Rowland, referring to the other agency’s potential review, had told him, “If I can kill this, I should get a medal.” The review never took place. In another email, Mr. Jenkins noted to a colleague that Mr. Rowland was planning to retire and said he “could be useful as we move forward with ongoing glyphosate defense.”</div><div>
</div><div>The safety of glyphosate is not settled science. A number of agencies, including the European Food Safety Agency and the E.P.A., have disagreed with the international cancer agency, playing down concerns of a cancer risk, and Monsanto has vigorously defended glyphosate.</div><div>
</div><div>But the court records also reveal a level of debate within the E.P.A. The agency’s Office of Research and Development raised some concern about the robustness of an assessment carried out by the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs, where Mr. Rowland was a senior official at the time, and recommended in December 2015 that it take steps to “strengthen” its “human health assessment.”</div><div>
</div><div>In a statement, Monsanto said, “Glyphosate is not a carcinogen.”</div><div>
</div><div>It added: “The allegation that glyphosate can cause cancer in humans is inconsistent with decades of comprehensive safety reviews by the leading regulatory authorities around the world. The plaintiffs have submitted isolated documents that are taken out of context.”</div><div>
</div><div>Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main story</div><div>The E.P.A. had no immediate comment, and Mr. Rowland could not be reached immediately.</div><div>
</div><div>Monsanto also rebutted suggestions that the disclosures highlighted concerns that the academic research it underwrites is compromised. Monsanto frequently cites such research to back up its safety claims on Roundup and pesticides.</div><div>
</div><div>In one email unsealed Tuesday, William F. Heydens, a Monsanto executive, told other company officials that they could ghostwrite research on glyphosate by hiring academics to put their names on papers that were actually written by Monsanto. “We would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak,” Mr. Heydens wrote, citing a previous instance in which he said the company had done this.</div><div>
</div><div>Asked about the exchange, Monsanto said in a second statement that its “scientists did not ghostwrite the paper” that was referred to or previous work, adding that a paper that eventually appeared “underwent the journal’s rigorous peer review process before it was published.”</div><div>
</div><div>David Kirkland, one of the scientists mentioned in the email, said in an interview, “I would not publish a document that had been written by someone else.” He added, “We had no interaction with Monsanto at all during the process of reviewing the data and writing the papers.”</div><div>
</div><div>The disclosures are the latest to raise concerns about the integrity of academic research financed by agrochemical companies. Last year, a review by The New York Times showed how the industry can manipulate academic research or misstate findings. Declarations of interest included in a Monsanto-financed paper on glyphosate that appeared in the <b>journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology</b> said panel members were recruited by a consulting firm. Email traffic made public shows that Monsanto officials discussed and debated scientists who should be considered, and shaped the project.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">jrnl hijacked?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.7em; max-width: 560px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2)&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">Glyphosate, conflicts of interest and PR masquerading as science.&nbsp;</em></strong>By naming names (Alan Boobis, Angelo Moretti, Chris Wolf, Michael Pragnell and others), Mason notes how key positions are held by individuals with proven links to the agrochemicals industry. As a result, crucial decisions and documents are slanted accordingly.</font></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.7em; max-width: 560px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mason mentions Critical Reviews in Toxicology and how, in 2016 Volume 46, <b>Monsanto commissioned five reviews published in a supplement to Critical Reviews in Toxicology</b>. Monsanto also funded them. The whole point was to raise serious doubts about the adverse effects of glyphosate by using junk science and to confuse the whole issue. Mason says that this is what Monsanto paid the scientists for.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.7em; max-width: 560px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/18/why-are-public-officials-protecting-the-pesticides-industry-digging-down-into-the-cesspool-of-corruption/</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see snailmail addy same as </b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">not a front per se, but punkable/buyable by chem industry?</b></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">bs cf asl ToxExpo!</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.toxicology.org/AI/MEET/AM2014/am.asp 2014</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Linda S. Birnbaum and the President of the Society of Toxicology (SOT) Lois D. Lehman-McKeeman, 2013–2014 SOT Council, and invited dignitaries will attend a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing ceremony</font></span></div><div><span style="line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">also stem</font></span></div><div><span style="line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><p style="line-height: 16px;"><strong><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">014 Global Gallery of Toxicology Participants:</font></strong></p><ul style="line-height: 16px;"><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Academy of Toxicological Sciences (ATS)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">African Society for Toxicological Sciences (ASTS)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Academy of Clinical Toxicology (AACT)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">American College of Toxicology (ACT)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asian Society of Toxicology (ASIATOX)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Association of Government Toxicologists (AGT)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Australasian College of Toxicology and Risk Assessment (ACTRA)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">British Toxicology Society (BTS)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Croatian Toxicological Society (CTS)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society (EMGS)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">European Association of Poison Centres and Clinical Toxicologists (EAPCCT)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Federation of European Toxicologists and European Society of Toxicology (EUROTOX)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">German Society of Toxicology (GT)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">INHAND Nomenclature Project</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">International Neurotoxicology Association (INA)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology (ISRTP)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Irish Society of Toxicology (IST)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">International Union of Toxicology (IUTOX)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Japanese Society of Toxicology (JSOT)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mexican Society of Toxicology (SOMTOX)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Society of Toxicology</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Safety Pharmacology Society (SPS)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Society of Toxicologic Pathology (STP)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Society of Toxicology (SOT)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Society of Toxicology of Canada (STC)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Swiss Society of Toxicology</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Teratology Society (TS)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Toxicologists Without Borders (TWB)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Toxicology Society of South Africa (TOXSA)</font></li><li><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Turkish Society of Toxicology (TST)</font></li></ul><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">2013 pres Slikker</span></font></div></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em>Synthetic chemicals:</em>&nbsp;The chief worry about synthetic chemicals,&nbsp;<a href="http://reason.com/archives/2012/09/26/silent-spring-turns-50-this-week" style="text-decoration: none;">stoked originally by Rachel Carson</a>&nbsp;in her 1962 book&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0618249060/reasonmagazineA/" style="text-decoration: none;"><em>Silent Spring</em></a>, has traditionally been cancer. Yet as the American Cancer Society&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@epidemiologysurveilance/documents/document/acspc-036845.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">notes</a>, “Exposure to carcinogenic agents in occupational, community, and other settings is thought to account for a relatively small percentage of cancer deaths—about 4% from occupational exposures and 2% from environmental pollutants (man-made and naturally occurring).” A recent article the journal&nbsp;<em>Lancet Oncology</em>&nbsp;argued that costly regulatory efforts to reduce exposures to trace amounts of man-made chemicals&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470204511702212" style="text-decoration: none;">divert resources from truly effective measures</a>&nbsp;to prevent cancer, such as modifying lifestyle factors such as smoking, obesity, and sunlight exposure.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">What do experts think?</font><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Polling data is scarce on the ground, but a&nbsp;<a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/are_chemicals_killing_us.html" style="text-decoration: none;">2009 survey of the members of the Society of Toxicology</a>&nbsp;<b>decisively rejected the assertion that exposure to any level of chemicals is unacceptable by 92 percent to 8 percent. In addition, 87 percent the society’s members disagreed with the claim that organic and natural products are safer</b>, and 81 percent disagreed with idea that detecting any level of chemicals in a person’s body shows a health risk.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats are more worried than Republicans about trace exposures to synthetic chemicals. As part of its campaign for the Safer Chemicals Act, the environmental lobbying group, the Natural Resources Defense Council commissioned a 2012 poll that found that&nbsp;<a href="http://pos.org/documents/12368_national_key_findings_final.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">79 percent of Democrats</a>&nbsp;wanted “stricter regulation of chemicals produced and used in everyday products,” compared to 58 percent of GOP voters. In another section of that poll, respondents were primed with a choice of regulating chemicals that could cause cancer or other health problems or protecting chemical industry jobs. In this case, 62 percent, not too surprisingly, favored stricter regulation. With regard to “mainstream” impact, every one of the&nbsp;<a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00847:@@@P" style="text-decoration: none;">30 sponsors</a>&nbsp;of the Safer Chemicals Act was a member of Senate’s Democratic caucus.</font></p><span style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- See more at: http://www.opposingviews.com/tags/conservatives#sthash.vNwnAdOX.dpuf</font></span></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p class="body" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong class="header_bold" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Are chemicals killing us?&nbsp;</strong></font></p><p class="body" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong class="header_bold" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</strong><span class="body"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">S. Robert Lichter</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, Ph.D, May 21, 2009&nbsp;</span></span></font></p><p class="body" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="body">
<span style="background-color: rgb(229, 229, 229);">A groundbreaking study conducted by<b> STATS, and The Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University,</b> shows how experts view the risks of common chemicals - and that the media are overstating risk.</span></span></font></p><p class="body style5" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(229, 229, 229);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Download a PDF of the full report<a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/Toxicology%20Survey.pdf" target="
blank" style="text-decoration: none;">&nbsp;here</a></font></strong></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter; background-color: rgb(229, 229, 229);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you believe what you see and hear in the media, Americans are being poisoned every day by the very chemicals we routinely use to improve our lives. Nora Ephron has told readers of the&nbsp;<em>Huffington Post</em>that she “loved” Teflon but had to throw out all her pans after hearing that the coating “probably causes cancer and birth defects.” The Environmental Working Group has repeatedly warned Americans that “millions of babies” are at risk from the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic baby bottles. Last week Chicago became the first city to ban the sale of baby bottles and sippy cups, on the grounds that BPA has been associated with everything from cancer to obesity.</font></p><table style="background-color: rgb(229, 229, 229);"><tbody><tr><td width="1" height="500"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></td><td width="255" valign="top" bgcolor="#E5E5E5"><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Toys containing phthalates have been banned for fear that infants will put them in their mouths. People have been warned that chemicals producing a “new car smell” can poison them, and that even sunlight warming the plastic in a baby stroller can endanger their babies from toxic off-gassing. Activist groups have warned of chemical perils in iPods, air fresheners, pizza boxes, lipstick, perfume, window blinds, mattresses, and sunscreen.&nbsp;

These warnings have generated thousands of news stories. But in all the media coverage over the past few years, and for all the scientists who were quoted on one side or the other, the community of experts who study the toxic risks of chemicals were never canvassed for their collective informed opinion on how much the public really was at risk.</font></span></p><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong class="body_bold" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Surveying Expert Opinion</strong>
<span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;">In the past we had surveyed expert communities on the environmental sources of cancer, the risks of nuclear energy, and the likelihood and direction of climate change. Amid heightened public concern over manmade chemicals, it seemed an opportune time to survey the expert community on this topic – the science of toxicology, which focuses on the adverse effects of chemicals on living organisms.</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In order to determine the collective judgments of toxicologists on chemical risks, we asked the Society of Toxicology (SOT), the professional association of this scientific discipline, for permission to survey their members. The SOT supplied us with a list of full members of the organization, with the understanding that this did not constitute an institutional endorsement of the study�s methodology or findings. Among the criteria for full membership are several years of professional experience in toxicology.</font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: lighter;">We created an online questionnaire with the assistance of Harris International, a prominent international survey research firm and an industry leader in online polling. Respondents were contacted by email requesting their participation. They were given passwords with which to log onto the questionnaire. From January 27 through March 2</span><b> we contacted 3562 SOT members</b><span style="font-weight: lighter;">, 1136 of whom responded, for a return rate of 32 percent. However, almost 200 of these filled out only part of the questionnaire, and many of these provided demographic information but skipped the key attitude questions. This initial presentation of our findings is based on the responses of the 937 who responded to every question.</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We inquired into four different areas of toxicologists’ attitudes, perceptions, and opinions about issues related to chemical risk. First, we asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a number of statements about the safety of currently used chemicals, the process of determining their safety, and the basis for making scientific judgments and regulatory decisions. Second, we asked them to rate the risk to human health posed by current levels of exposure to a list of chemical substances that have spurred controversy.</font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Third, we asked them to rate the quality of information about chemical risk associated with a wide variety of government, nonprofit, and private sector organizations that frequently address this issue. Finally, we asked their opinions on media coverage of chemical risk, including the media’s ability to explain scientific issues in a way that will help audiences reach their own conclusions.</font></p><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The overall findings on all these questions are provided in the attached tables. The exact wording of the items discussed below are presented in&nbsp;<strong><a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/images_stories/tables/AppendixA.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Appendix A</a></strong>. We are continuing to analyze these data and will present additional results in scholarly journals.</font></span></p><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong class="body_bold">Chemical health risks</strong>
<span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;">In the attitudes they express toward chemical risk, toxicologists tend to downplay the dangers to human health, as the results summarized in&nbsp;<strong><a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/images_stories/tables/Table1.htm" target="
blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Table 1</a></strong>&nbsp;indicate. Most do not regard either cosmetics or food additives as significant sources of health risks. Only one out of three ascribes significant risks to food additives and one out of four to cosmetics. They express more concern about pesticides and endocrine disruptors, which are seen by slight majorities as posing significant health risks.</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px;" align="left"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>They overwhelmingly reject the notion that exposure to even the smallest amounts of harmful chemicals is dangerous or that the detection of any level of a chemical in your body by biomonitoring indicates a significant health risk.</b><span style="font-weight: lighter;"> And they are nearly unanimous in rejecting the notion that organic or “natural”products are inherently safer than others.</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px;" align="left"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong class="body_bold" style="font-weight: lighter;">Regulation</strong>
<span class="article_text" style="font-weight: lighter;">Media coverage and public and political debate have featured strong criticism of the risk assessment approach taken by government agencies charged with regulating chemicals. But toxicologists give the system a vote of confidence.</span><span class="article_text"><b> Fewer than one out of four believe that regulation should be guided by the precautionary principle,</b></span><span class="article_text" style="font-weight: lighter;"> which mandates that a substance suspected to cause harm should be banned even in the absence of scientific consensus. Similarly, only one out of four believe that the US regulatory system is inferior to that of Europe, where the precautionary principle has the force of law.</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But toxicologists do express concern over the politicization of science.</b><span style="font-weight: lighter;"> Two out of three believe the peer review process is becoming too politicized, three out of four say scientists should restrict public statements to areas of their own expertise, and nine out of 10 believe research findings should be peer-reviewed before being released to the press</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finally, majorities fault both the media and regulators for not doing a balanced job of explaining chemical risk to the general public</font></p><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;" /></font></p><table style=""><tbody><tr><td width="1" height="1026"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></td><td width="266" valign="top" background="http://stats.org/stories/2009/images_stories/tables/AppendixA.html"><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong class="body_bold">Specific chemicals</strong>
<span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;">We then presented respondents with a list of specific substances and asked them to rate the risk to human health posed by current levels of exposure to a list of specific substances to each, on a scale from very low to very high risk.&nbsp;<strong><a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/images_stories/tables/Table2.htm" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Table 2</a></strong>&nbsp;shows the results in terms of both mean scores and proportions reading each substance as high risk. For example, 89 percent of toxicologists rate smoking tobacco as a high-risk activity, 44 percent regard second-hand smoke as high in risk to health, and</span><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px;"><b> 37 percent say exposure to mercury as a high risk.</b></span><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"> Next in line are exposure to sunlight, rated as high risk by 26 percent, and aflatoxin, a naturally occurring fungus found in peanut butter, rated as high risk by 29 percent.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;">In comparison, toxicologists rate certain chemicals that have generated considerable public controversy as significantly less dangerous to human health.</span><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px;"><b> Phthalates, which are added to plastic products to make them flexible, including many children’s toys, are rated as high risk by just 11 percent of respondents.</b></span><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"> High fructose corn syrup, seen by many people as a cause of obesity was also rated as high risk by 11 percent.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px;"><b>Bisphenol A, or BPA, which is used to harden plastics, and was recently discontinued by makers of baby bottles, was rated as high in risk to human health by 9 percent.</b></span><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"> Despite recent controversy over the safety of Teflon coatings, it is rated as a high health risk by just 3 percent of toxicologists. Similar results were obtained for several other magnets of public controversy, from flame retardants to genetically modified organisms.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong class="body_bold">Getting accurate information</strong>
<span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;">In addition to their own views on chemical risk, we asked toxicologists to rate the organizations involved in public debate over chemical risks in terms of how accurately they portray these risks. The results appear in<strong><a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/images_stories/tables/Table3.htm" target="
blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Table 3</a>.&nbsp;</strong>There were considerable variations in the number of respondents who were familiar enough with the various organizations to rate their accuracy. To insure that the comparisons are commensurable, the percentages exclude “don’t know” responses. We added a column indicating the percentage of respondents who rated each organization. The table includes only organizations rated by more than one-third of respondents. Organizations failing to meet this level of recognition included the Biotechnology Council, National Nanotechnology Initiative, Pew Charitable Trusts, and American Council of Science and Health.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;">There were considerable variations in the number of respondents who were familiar enough with the various organizations to rate their accuracy. As a result, some apparent differences in perceptions of accuracy were artifacts of the proportions who expressed no opinion. To insure that the comparisons are commensurable, the percentages in Table 3 exclude “not sure” responses. We added a column indicating the percentage of respondents who rated each organization. In addition, we present the same data with the “not sure” responses included in the rating percentages in&nbsp;<a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/images_stories/tables/AppendixB.htm" style="text-decoration: none;">Table 3A</a></span>.&nbsp;<span class="article_text" style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;">(Please note, the full names associated with these abbreviations and acronyms are listed in&nbsp;<a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/images_stories/tables/AppendixA.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Appendix A</a>.)</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: lighter;">Among respondents who rate these organizations</span><b>, large majorities view the leading environmental groups as overstating risk. 96 percent believe Greenpeace overstates chemical risk, 85 percent say the same of the Environmental Defense Fund’s risk portrayals, as do 80 percent of those rating PETA. 79 percent believe that chemical risk is overstated by the Environmental Working Group</b><span style="font-weight: lighter;">, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest.</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: lighter;">Conversely, smaller majorities see industry related groups as understating chemical health risks. This includes </span><b>57 percent of those rating the American chemistry Council, </b><span style="font-weight: lighter;">which represents the chemical industry, and 60 percent of those rating PhRMA, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America.</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>By contrast, majorities rate most government agencies and all professional associations as providing mainly accurate portrayals of chemical risk. An exception is the Environmental Protection Agency, which is rated as overstating risk by 41</b><span style="font-weight: lighter;"> percent, accurately stating risk by 40 percent, and understating risk by 19 percent. But increasingly large majorities see accurate risk portrayals coming from such agencies as OSHA, the FDA, the CDC, and the National Science Foundation, whose portrayal of chemical risk is rated as accurate by 85 percent of toxicologists.</span></font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the opposite end of the reliability scale are the news media, which are seen as overstating risk to an even greater degree than the environmental groups. Public broadcasting does best among the mainstream media with “only” two out of three toxicologists describing PBS and NPR as overstating chemical risk. Over 80 percent see America’s leading newspapers, news magazines, and health magazines as overstating chemical risk, and the proportion rises above 90 percent for both broadcast and cable television networks.</font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong class="body_bold">New media trumps old</strong>
In perhaps the most surprising finding in the entire study, all these national media outlets are easily eclipsed by two representatives of “new media” – WebMD and Wikipedia. WebMD is the only news source whose coverage of chemical risk is regarded as accurate by a majority (56 percent) of toxicologists, closely followed by Wikipedia’s 45 percent accuracy rating. By contrast, only 15 percent describe as accurate the portrayals of chemical risk found in the&nbsp;<em>New York Times, Washington Post,&nbsp;</em>and<em>&nbsp;Wall Street Journal</em>. The preference for Wikipedia in particular seems like an indictment of professional journalism, since anyone can contribute to this site.</font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/images_stories/tables/Figure1.htm" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Figure 1</a></strong>&nbsp;presents this information in a more compact form my arraying all the organizations that were rated according to their mean scores along a spectrum from “strongly understates” (scored as 1) to “strongly overstates” ( scored as 5). The government agencies and professional bodies are clustered near the midpoint of 3, while the media outlets and environmental groups cluster together almost interchangeably from 4.0 to 4.3.</font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only exceptions are public broadcasting, whose 3.8 rating represents a slightly lesser degree of overstating risk, and Greenpeace, whose 4.5 rating (representing slightly more overstatement) is the highest in the study. Of course the two industry organizations, PhRMA and the American Chemistry Council, are rated as understating risk. Perhaps surprisingly, however, their 2.3 ratings put them considerably closer to the midpoint (3.0, representing an “accurate” appraisal of risk) than any of the environmental groups and any of the traditional media outlets except for public broadcasting.</font></p><p class="article_text" style="margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-weight: lighter;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong class="body_bold">Scientific illiteracy</strong>
The disdain that toxicologists apparently feel toward traditional journalism is evidenced by their unwillingness to credit the media with getting almost anything right in covering chemical risk.&nbsp;<strong><a href="http://stats.org/stories/2009/images_stories/tables/Table4_5.htm" target="
blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Table 4</a></strong>&nbsp;shows that nine out of 10 fault the media for not seeking out diverse scientific views to balance stories, and it only gets worse from there. At least 95 percent describe the media’s performance as “poor” in distinguishing good from bad studies, distinguishing correlation from causation, explaining the trade-off between risks and benefits, distinguishing absolute from relative risk, explaining the odds ratios, and explaining that “the dose makes the poison” – a fundamental tenet of toxicology....STATS</font></p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=
</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">ilsi:&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This imbalance led, eventually, to the</span><span style="line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/World_Health_Organization" title="World Health Organization" style="line-height: 19.2px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">World Health Organization</a><span style="line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">banning the organisation from direct involvement in WHO (and related agencies) activities.</span><sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[2]</a></sup></font></div><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The ILSI certainly has sponsored genuine research, run real educational workshops around the world, and held many genuine conferences. It has done this both under its own name, and also under the auspices of the seemingly-independent&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Toxicology_Forum&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Toxicology Forum (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Toxicology Forum</a>&nbsp;which it runs (or perhaps 'guides') in parallel … using the same staff and venues … yet without any obvious connections.<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a></sup>&nbsp;The Toxicology Forum also seems to have extremely close ties to the Society of Toxicology (they share a fax number) and both the International Association of Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Societies (IAEMGS) and the American College of Toxicology (ACT), with which it shares an address in Reston VA.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Toxicology Forum is three years older than the ILSI (established in 1975) and wider in that it draws its membership from petroleum industries as well as from the ILSI's traditional sources in food, chemical, and drug companies.<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[4]</a></sup>&nbsp;It's President until recently has been Phillippe Schubik<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[5]</a></sup>&nbsp;<sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[6]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[7]</a></sup>&nbsp;of the Eppley Institute at the University of Nebraska, and its Administrative Vice President is ILSI President/Coca-Cola VP Alex Malaspina.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><h2 style="line-height: 19.2000007629395px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="mw-headline" id="Dealing_with_Tobacco"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dealing with Tobacco</font></span></h2><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1989 the ILSI created a Division of Environmental Sciences which "provided a mechanism for companies from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries to become members of the ILSI while preserving ILSI-NF's concentration on issues of importance to the food industry."</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tobacco_industry" title="Tobacco industry" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">tobacco industry</a>'s interest in the ILSI had been boosted in 1985 when, after attending the Brighton UK, International Congress on Nutrition, a long-term tobacco consultant Dr.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Francis_J.C.Roe" title="Francis J. C. Roe" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Francis J. C. Roe</a>&nbsp;reported to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Philip_Morris" title="Philip Morris" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Philip Morris</a>&nbsp;that "Many of the audience were surprised at the scale and breadth of ILSI activities" following a 35 minute promotional speech by Coca-Cola's Malaspina.<sup id="cite_ref-42" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-42" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[42]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">At about this time, the tobacco industry must have established some links to ILSI (probably via Kraft), because the following year Roe was asked to help organise an ILSI symposium on 'Inhalation Studies' (eg. the problems of second-hand tobacco smoke in everything but name) to be held in&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Germany" title="Germany" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Germany</a>&nbsp;during March 1987.<sup id="cite_ref-43" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-43" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[43]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roe suggested to the organiser (Dr Mohr from ILSI Germany) that they eliminate clinical or epidemiological studies from the discussion, thus removing anything related to humans. He wanted the symposium to focus entirely on toxicology, which is almost entirely studies on animals. This is much safer territory for tobacco science, since claim can always then be made that 'mice aren't men'.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Between 1983 and 1998 the ILSI provided assistance to the tobacco industry in its attempts to subvert many attempts at legislative control over the industry's activities</span>. It was effective, because it represented itself as an independent and unbiased scientific body, with international (including&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/World_Health_Organization" title="World Health Organization" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">World Health Organization</a>) credentials. It was only interested in maintaining scientific standards in the debate over questions of smoking and health, it claimed.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, by various surreptitious means, it was being financed liberally by the tobacco industry, and it was linked through various administrative channels to tobacco companies and PR organisations.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman" size="4">Moreover, the tobacco industry was ruthless in using their food company subsidiaries, when required, to further tobacco company influence. For instance, when&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_D.Graham" title="John D. Graham" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">John D. Graham</a>&nbsp;of the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Harvard_Center_for_Risk_Analysis" title="Harvard Center for Risk Analysis" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Harvard Center for Risk Analysis</a>&nbsp;organised a $20,000 'grant' from Philip Morris<sup id="cite_ref-44" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-44" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[44]</a></sup>, and then discovered that such payments were against Harvard University rules against tobacco industry involvement (a token of academic ethics half-heartedly promoted by the university), the Philip Morris check was returned, and an acceptable new one issued by Kraft.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Between 1987 and 1989&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Alex_Malaspina&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Alex Malaspina (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Alex Malaspina</a>&nbsp;assiduously cultivated the links he had built with the tobacco industry. He signed a personal contract with&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/R.J.Reynolds" title="R.J. Reynolds" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">R.J. Reynolds</a>&nbsp;to act as a go-between in organising Emory University and the tobacco company for research into Eclipse (the tobacco-less cigarette under development), and approached&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Thomas_J.Borelli" title="Thomas J. Borelli" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Thomas J. Borelli</a>, an executive scientific lobbyist at Philip Morris, to discuss closer cooperation.<sup id="cite_ref-45" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#cite_note-45" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[45]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[</font></p><h2><span class="mw-headline" id="Tobacco_industry_documents"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tobacco industry documents</font></span></h2><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A brief internal email from Tom Borelli (then Manager of Corporate Scientific Affairs for Philip Morris) relates PM's efforts to influence a scientific meeting about&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Secondhand_smoke" title="Secondhand smoke" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">secondhand smoke</a>&nbsp;(environmental tobacco smoke, or ETS). It reveals the subsequent scorn the company received, and the company's future plans to find ways to influence the group.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><u>Borelli arranged for PM to have a presence at a 1989 toxicology forum session on secondhand smoke. </u></b>He wrote about the meeting afterwards,</font></p><blockquote><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My contact at ILSI [International Life Sciences Institute, presumptive organizer of the forum] told me that the person from NCI [National Cancer Institute, a federal government cancer research organization] was not pleased with the TOX forum&nbsp;<b>ETS</b>&nbsp;session. That illustrates what a good job we did.</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Borelli describes the anger that the NCI attendee had at PM's attendance:</font></p><blockquote><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unfortunately, the NCI representative did not stop there but went on to say that if the<b>&nbsp;tox forum</b>&nbsp;allows PM to become a member, the NCI will remove itself from the advisory committee. It was also mentioned that if I want a career in the science/health issues, I should consider who I work for.</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Borelli discusses how PM could continue to try and influence this group, and proposes funneling sponsorship money through a PM subsidiary as a way to force the group to continue working with PM:</font></p><blockquote><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Thus if everything remains the same the tox forum is a one shot deal and I get blacklisted. I think it is time to move with the PM Co., Inc strategy for sponsorship of outside groups (remember the proposal I wrote). Of course that would raise the stakes of forcing these groups to accept PM and I guess they could choose to keep us out. But then they go broke. The only other option is to funnel money through KGF <b>[Kraft</b> General Foods, a PM subsidiary] but then we loose [sic] control of the issues...<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Thomas_J.Borelli#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">[4]</a>] insert</sup></font></p></blockquote></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div></div></div></div></div>