[csda] Renowned cancer scientist was paid by chemical firm for 20 years (fwd)

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---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 21:18:54 -0500

From: Hotz <ahotz@...>

csda

Subject: [csda] Renowned cancer scientist was paid by chemical firm for 20 years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1967385,00.html

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1967385,00.html>

Renowned cancer scientist was paid by chemical firm for 20 years

Boseley, health editor

Friday December 8, 2006

<BLOCKED::http://www.guardian.co.uk/> The Guardian

A world-famous British scientist failed to disclose that he held a paid

consultancy with a chemical company for more than 20 years while

investigating cancer risks in the industry, the Guardian can reveal.

Sir Doll, the celebrated epidemiologist who established that smoking

causes lung cancer, was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the

mid-1980s from Monsanto, then a major chemical company and now better known

for its GM crops business.

<BLOCKED::http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1967385,00.html#artic

le_continue> Article continues

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While he was being paid by Monsanto, Sir wrote to a royal Australian

commission investigating the potential cancer-causing properties of Agent

Orange, made by Monsanto and used by the US in the Vietnam war. Sir

said there was no evidence that the chemical caused cancer.

Documents seen by the Guardian reveal that Sir was also paid a

£15,000 fee by the Chemical Manufacturers Association and two other major

companies, Dow Chemicals and ICI, for a review that largely cleared vinyl

chloride, used in plastics, of any link with cancers apart from liver cancer

- a conclusion with which the World Health Organisation disagrees. Sir

's review was used by the manufacturers' trade association to defend

the chemical for more than a decade.

The revelations will dismay scientists and other admirers of Sir 's

pioneering work and fuel a rift between the majority who support his view

that the evidence shows cancer is a product of modern lifestyles and those

environmentalists who argue that chemicals and pollution must be to blame

for soaring cancer rates.

Yesterday Sir Peto, the Oxford-based epidemiologist who worked

closely with him, said the allegations came from those who wanted to damage

Sir 's reputation for their own reasons. Sir had always been

open about his links with industry and gave all his fees to Green College,

Oxford, the postgraduate institution he founded, he said.

Professor Toy, medical director of Cancer Research UK, which funded

much of Sir 's work, said times had changed and the accusations must

be put into context. " Doll's lifelong service to public health has

saved millions of lives. His pioneering work demonstrated the link between

smoking and lung cancer and paved the way towards current efforts to reduce

tobacco's death toll, " he said. " In the days he was publishing it was not

automatic for potential conflicts of interest to be declared in scientific

papers. "

But a Swedish professor who believes that some of Sir 's work has led

to the underestimation of the role of chemicals in causing cancers said that

transparency was all-important. " It's OK for any scientist to be a

consultant to anybody, but then this should be reported in the papers that

you publish, " said Lennart Hardell of University Hospital, Orebro.

Sir died last year. Among his papers in the Wellcome Foundation

library archive is a contract he signed with Monsanto. Dated April 29 1986,

it extends for a year the consulting agreement that began on May 10 1979 and

offers improved terms. " During the one-year period of this extension your

consulting fee shall be $1,500 per day, " it says.

Monsanto said yesterday it did not know how much work Sir did for

the company, but said he was an expert witness for Solutia, a chemical

business spun off from Monsanto, as recently as 2000.

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