Can it get any lower than cancer researchers on take?
Injurywatch discovers secret payments for anti-smoking cancer-link Oxford academic Sir Richard Doll by asbestos and chemical industry by Rory O'Neill and Conrad Murray 11-12-2006 Read
Company paid for published review Sarah Boseley December 8, 2006 Vinyl chloride is used in the manufacture of plastics. In 1984, Sir Richard was approached by the London-based medical adviser of ICI chemicals, Brian Bennett, who wanted to know whether he would agree to carry out a review of the safety of vinyl chlorides which, Mr Bennett said, the American industry would be happy to pay for. Sir Richard agreed, but wanted a guarantee that his report would be published - whatever it said. He added that he would like the fee paid to a charity he would nominate. That turned out to be Green College, Oxford, which he helped found as a graduate teaching institution for medical and allied disciplines. Sir Richard was its first warden. The fee was set at £15,000 plus expenses and split between the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) and two of the biggest manufacturers, ICI and Dow Chemicals. Monsanto, also a manufacturer of vinyl chloride, had been paying Sir Richard a consultancy fee since 1979 and was still giving him money at the time. But none of his funding from Monsanto was declared in the article that was eventually published in 1988 as Effects of Exposure to Vinyl Chloride in the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health. The review came to the conclusion that there was no significant extra carcinogenicity associated with the manufacture of vinyl chloride other than in the liver - a fact that was already known. This contradicted a review by the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which in 1979 had listed vinyl chloride as a human carcinogen, affecting not only the liver but also the brain, lungs and lymphatic system. Sir Richard's review was used by the industry to defend the safety of the chemical by the manufacturers' trade association for more than a decade. In 2001, the American Chemical Association, as the CMA was renamed, said: "The world's leading researchers have studied vinyl chloride and brain cancer and concluded that the evidence does not support a link between brain cancer and exposure to vinyl chloride." The review also led to the US Environmental Protection Agency taking the view that only liver cancer could be linked to vinyl chloride. There have been a number of cases in the US where workers who contracted other sorts of cancer after exposure to vinyl chloride have tried to sue. During one of these brought against Dow Chemicals and also Solutia - a company spun off from Monsanto to run its chemical business in 1997 - by the widow of a man who died of a brain tumour, Sir Richard was cross-examined about the lack of any mention of the industry funding he had received in his review. Documents show that Sir Richard told lawyers during a hearing behind closed doors in London that he had asked Mr Bennett whether he should disclose the £15,000 payment and Mr Bennett had said there was no need. Sir Richard was paid by Solutia for his attendance as an expert witness. Read
Professor Doll failed to declare interests when working on vinyl chloride Roger Dobson 12/2/06 BMJ Read
Can it get any lower than cancer researchers on take?
By James Warren, Tribune staff reporter
December 4, 2006
Newspaper editors, rest assured, are often confused by the unceasing stream of scientific studies and challenged by what importance to give sometimes conflicting findings.
The American Journal of Industrial Medicine will now create greater doubt, given its startling, "Secret Ties to Industry and Conflicting Interests in Cancer Research."
This is a truly depressing look at how major cancer researchers have received funding from tobacco, chemical and other corporations, in the process winding up with research results friendly to financial patrons' self-interests.
It focuses on a prominent Swedish environmental health expert who, unknown to his bosses at Gothenburg University, kept from the world that he was paid significant sums for both research and consulting from Philip Morris, the tobacco giant. When allegations first arose, he denied them. Then a copy of the contract was found and, one learned, he'd been paid by Philip Morris for 30 years (during which time he also worked at the University of Geneva and Sweden's Environmental Protection Agency).
The drift of this piece, co-authored by scientists from Sweden, England, Israel and the United States (in fact, Skokie), is that epidemiological research is marked not just by distortions but by participants' non-disclosure of being tied to industry by their wallets and purses.
There are other individual tales, most notably of a famous British epidemiologist, the late Sire Richard Doll, heralded for revealing the link between smoking and cancer. It now turns out he was also receiving more than $1,000 a day from Monsanto for many years. That's important since Doll also became known for highly influential research denying a link between vinyl chloride and cancer other than in the liver. That was wrong, and it's now believed he knew full well it was wrong while on the Monsanto take.
This article concludes by raising serious questions about cell phone industry funding of research that denies an association between phones and brain tumors. In particular, it cites the involvement of a private scientific company on behalf of Motorola in litigation involving the subject of phones and tumors. Their conclusion is simply that, "powerful industrial interests are undermining independent research on hazard and risk in Europe and North America."
This story spurred a very sympathetic piece on National Public Radio's "Living on Earth" environmental show last week, including interviews with Lennart Hardell, the Swedish oncologist-chief author, and outsiders, including Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. She asserted that conflict of interest in medical research "is one of the biggest problems in medicine today, because it affects the research, which of course then affects the practice of medicine, which ultimately affects patient care." This article, the radio piece and related matters can be found on www.loe.org.
Read********** Expert revered for painstaking work that proved link between smoking and cancer Scientist who took the view that it was right to work with industry - and to take industry's money
Sarah Boseley
Friday December 8, 2006
Sir Richard Doll made history in the 1950s as the scientist who established beyond doubt that smoking caused lung cancer. He is revered in the medical and scientific establishment not only for what he achieved but the way he achieved it: through painstaking analysis of the evidence. That is why it will be hard for many to believe he could have been influenced by payments from industry that he received but did not declare.
Yesterday his long-time collaborator, the eminent epidemiologist Sir Richard Peto, said such allegations were a deliberate attempt to tarnish the reputation of "far and away the best cancer epidemiologist in the world for a long time" by those who are convinced without sufficient evidence that environmental pollutants, such as toxic chemicals, are a major cause of cancer.
Doll identified the biggest lifestyle cause of cancer - smoking. The research was revolutionary for its time. Cigarettes were considered harmless and 80% of men had a regular habit. Doll and his colleague Sir Austin Bradford Hill embarked on their investigation at the request of the Medical Research Council because lung cancer rates were climbing, but they expected to pin the blame on the fumes from coal fires.
When they administered questionnaires to patients with suspected cancers, they found that all those with confirmed lung cancer were smokers, and all those who got the all-clear were not.
It took some years even after the publication of their paper in the British Medical Journal in 1950 before anybody took any notice. The pair did a second study in doctors, which found high rates of smokers dying from lung cancer. The government accepted the link in 1954. In 1972, Denis Healey became the first chancellor to raise taxes on tobacco, and Doll sent him a congratulatory letter.
Doll went on to establish that smoking also caused other cancers and heart disease. Other work includes suicide and liver disease among doctors, the effects of the contraceptive pill, low-level radiation and gastric ulcers.
Smoking is the biggest cause of cancer and most of the other causes that have been positively identified by Doll and other mainstream epidemiologists are also lifestyle factors - poor diet, for instance, in bowel cancer. Radiation from phone masts and power stations and chemicals in the soil, air and water around us are far harder to pin down and Doll believed there was no proof they played a role, which angered environmentalists.
He took the view that industry was not the enemy: if he worked with them, he would get the data to find out whether or not their chemical output caused cancer, according to Sir Richard Peto, who worked closely with him at the clinical studies unit of Oxford University.
"I think he was pretty open about consulting for Monsanto and other groups," said Sir Richard. "He did certainly believe that it was appropriate to work with industry and try to get them to monitor their workforces."
In the 1950s, says Peto, this approach by Doll and Bradford Hill worked with the asbestos industry. "Initially the asbestos industry called them to try to prove there was no hazard," he said. The regulations on asbestos had been tightened up. "He and Bradford Hill got the data and found there was still a significant hazard."
The company representatives invited the scientists for dinner and tried to persuade them it was not in the national interest to be attacking a major industry, said Peto. Doll and Bradford Hill politely said they would think it over and 24 hours later told the industry they intended to publish. They were threatened with a writ, but went ahead regardless.
Several decades ago, scientists and publishers were not as concerned as they are now over sources of funding. Most of the fees that Doll received, however, went to Green College in Oxford, which he founded and ran as primarily a postgraduate medical institution. When Doll and Peto published their seminal study of cancers caused by workplace hazards in 1981, Doll gave his fee to Green College and Peto requested that his be sent to Amnesty International.
Peto said: "He was very interested in Green College - he gave them hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years. He also gave money to the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture."
Consulting at $1,500 a day
Letter sent to Sir Richard Doll by George Roush Jr, director of Monsanto's medicine and environmental health department, on April 29 1986
Dear Sir Richard:
This letter is for the purpose of extending your Consulting Agreement with Monsanto Company dated May 10, 1979. The Consulting Agreement is hereby extended for an additional one-year period beginning June 1, 1986 and ending May 31, 1987.
During the one year period of this extension your consulting fee shall be $1,500.00 per day. All other terms and conditions of the Consulting Agreement of May 10, 1979 shall remain in effect during this extension period.
If the foregoing meets with your understanding and approval please so indicate by executing this letter in duplicate and returning one of the signed duplicates to us. Read *********
Lung cancer pioneer 'was on chemical firms' payroll'
By Helen McCormack
Published: 08 December 2006
A renowned British scientist who established that smoking causes lung cancer was on the payroll of a chemical company while investigating cancer risks, it was reported last night.
Sir Richard Doll, who died last year aged 92, was said to have received a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day during the mid 1980s from the chemicals firm Monsanto, which is now associated with GM crops.
Doll, an epidemiologist, also received payments from the Chemical Manufacturers Association and the companies Dow Chemicals and ICI, The Guardian reported. It said the three organisations paid him £15,000 to assess the potential dangers of vinyl chloride, used in plastics.
Doll largely cleared the chemical industry of having links with cancer, a conclusion which goes against the World Health Organisation's assessment. The association is said to have used the review to defend its members' use of vinyl chloride.
While on Monsanto's payroll, it is claimed Doll wrote to a government-appointed commission in Australia investigating the potential for Agent Orange to cause cancer. He said there was no evidence the agent, manufactured by Monsanto and used during the Vietnam war, caused cancer.
Doll pioneered the argument that cancer is caused by smoking, a view contested by environmentalists who point to the dangers of pollution.
His work was funded by Cancer Research UK. Its medical director, Professor John Toy, said that Doll had been working in a different era when it was "not automatic for potential conflicts of interest to be declared in scientific papers."
A renowned British scientist who established that smoking causes lung cancer was on the payroll of a chemical company while investigating cancer risks, it was reported last night.
Sir Richard Doll, who died last year aged 92, was said to have received a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day during the mid 1980s from the chemicals firm Monsanto, which is now associated with GM crops.
Doll, an epidemiologist, also received payments from the Chemical Manufacturers Association and the companies Dow Chemicals and ICI, The Guardian reported. It said the three organisations paid him £15,000 to assess the potential dangers of vinyl chloride, used in plastics.
Doll largely cleared the chemical industry of having links with cancer, a conclusion which goes against the World Health Organisation's assessment. The association is said to have used the review to defend its members' use of vinyl chloride.
While on Monsanto's payroll, it is claimed Doll wrote to a government-appointed commission in Australia investigating the potential for Agent Orange to cause cancer. He said there was no evidence the agent, manufactured by Monsanto and used during the Vietnam war, caused cancer.
Doll pioneered the argument that cancer is caused by smoking, a view contested by environmentalists who point to the dangers of pollution.
His work was funded by Cancer Research UK. Its medical director, Professor John Toy, said that Doll had been working in a different era when it was "not automatic for potential conflicts of interest to be declared in scientific papers."
Science will tighten standards after retracting stem cell papers 12/9/06
Janice Hopkins Tanne The editor of Science, Donald Kennedy, said that his journal would tighten its review procedures and would work with Nature and other leading journals to try to identify fraudulent papers. He was speaking last week at a press conference with John Brauman, professor of chemistry at Stanford University, who headed an independent committee formed after Science retracted two papers by the South Korean researcher Hwang Woo Suk. The committee was set up to look into the way the journal handled the papers. Professor Hwang's papers reported the creation of stem cells from cloned human embryos and the production of stem cells matched to the donors (Science 2004;303:1669-74; 2005;308:1777-83). A whistleblower and South Korean journalists revealed that the papers were fraudulent. Dr Kennedy's editorial giving his response to the committee's findings was published last week (Science 2006;314:1353). The editorial, the committee's report, and related information are gathered together . . Read
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