|
| ||
|
Stop Cancer Where It Starts! See Also: Read news story on the Marketing of Breast Cancer - and why we need to stop cancer where it starts Press Coverage New statistics show increase in cancer rates Stop Cancer Where It Starts! Read the facts and myths about the high rates of cancer for women and men, and Get Involved in Greenaction Stop Cancer Where It Starts Campaigns!
Cancer Tour 2000: San Francisco Mayoral Proclamation Declares October "Stop Cancer Where it Starts Month"
|
Conflicted Science Judy Brady It’s worse than you thought. Most of us who have been paying attention in recent years are aware than science is often manipulated to serve the interests of whoever is paying for it, but a first-of-its-kind conference on July 11th in Washington, D.C. laid it out. “Conflicted Science,” sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), was an intense day-long conference during which the presenters addressed from their own experience the central question: to what extent has the commercialization of science undermined science itself? Over 200 people from all over the U.S. and Canada listened to speakers from a wide range of professions—university professors in environmental planning and policy departments, epidemiology, public health policy, nutrition, pediatrics, botany, criminal justice, history, and chemistry, along with researchers, scientists with non-profit organizations, and journalists—who told their stories of how corporate money has corrupted or stifled their disciplines. Hearing similar stories from so many different people, one after the other, delivered a powerful and disturbing message—we can no longer trust what is presented to us as “science,” not even when it comes from what appear to be independent sources. Non-profit organizations, public universities, and health charities—all too often dependent on corporate money—have become the messengers for corporate interests. The American Cancer Society, for instance, got more than $100,000 in 2002 from each of nearly a hundred different corporations, mostly drug, chemical, and cosmetic companies. The ASC program, “Look Good, Feel Better,” funded by money from the perfume and cosmetic industries, is a good example of what happens with such “partnerships.” The ACS has remained silent about the carcinogenic chemicals used in most cosmetics. There were stories of purposeful cover-ups in the lead industry, the asbestos industry, the tobacco industry, the oil industry, and the food industry, but one story stood out to this city-bred attendee. Two presenters from the South, epidemiologist Steven Wing from the University of North Carolina and JoAnn Burkholder, professor of aquatic biology from North Carolina State University, gave graphic and fascinating accounts of how a particular industry in their state, hog farming, thwarts any scientific investigation of its impact on a community—because if there’s no noise, there’s no problem. These CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) are not the independent businesses they claim to be but are, in fact, owned by huge corporations which control all aspects of the hog farming. Called “family farms” for tax purposes, the CAFOs produce five tons of animal fecal waste per person per year (a human being produces about 80 pounds of waste a year). When there is any public outcry in the media about the waste dumps, it’s because of the terrible stench. You can imagine how unpleasant it would be to live downwind from a hog farm waste pool, but they do more than just stink. That waste—containing bacteria, viruses, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide (a volatile toxic material also found in cigarette smoke), and endotoxins—dumped into huge lagoons covering acres of land, contaminates the air and seeps into water supplies (most people depend on well water) as well as streams used for subsistence fishing, seriously threatening the health of the mostly low-income, people-of-color communities which furnish workers for the CAFOs. Oxygenation of nitrogen produces nitrates and nitrites which become nitrosamines, potent carcinogens, when you ingest them (that is why you should refrain from buying packaged meats with nitrites added as a preservative). One study done by the University of Iowa suggests that women who drink water contaminated with nitrates, even well below the EPA “safe” level, have three times the risk of developing bladder cancer. Infants fed on formulas mixed with nitrate-polluted water can develop a disease called “blue baby syndrome” (methemoglobinemia). Hydrogen sulfide, a central nervous system toxin which can result in brain damage, has not been tested for carcinogenicity; neither have some other 80,000 synthetic chemicals in our environment. And given that the pigs are certainly fed hormones and antibiotics which also turn up in the waste, close association with it and its effects on air and water can’t be healthy. Most of those health effects seldom come to light, however, because this is a community with little or no access to health care. Hog farming is one of the biggest industries in the state, so there is no official attention paid to the steep price extracted from the animals, the workers, and the surrounding communities for those hog farm profits. The hog-farm industry responded to Dr. Wing’s articles by demanding to know the names of the community members interviewed with health questionnaires on which he based his findings. He and his team had promised the community confidentiality (they are the workers on those hog farms), and he could not betray that trust; both he and the industry knew that such a betrayal would mean no one in the community would ever again make themselves available for epidemiological research. Finally, with many legal maneuverings, threats and counter-threats, he was forced to turn over the individual questionnaires, but he managed to delete identifying information first. When asked how the university reacted to his investigation of and publications about the hog industry, Dr. Wing admitted that his job is often on the line. The university gets its money from the state, allocated to it by the state legislature. The members of the state legislature get elected to office by the power of corporate campaign contributions. Hog farming is a huge and lucrative industry and therefore supplies much of that campaign funding. Industry has more tricks than simple economic pressure to stifle exposé. Tools customarily used by researchers digging for information hidden under corporate lock and key now serve that same corporate management in their efforts to foil science. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), for instance, is used by industry to force disclosure of data prematurely so that data can be attacked as flawed before the study is ever completed. And the last bastion of information gathering which most of us have considered a powerful and indestructible weapon, the Internet, is now poised to become one more obstacle in our way. Much of the evidence gathered against industries which have polluted our environment and our bodies has come from using FOIA to uncover documents disclosing industrial crimes and proving that industry knew they were engaged in criminal acts. But today, even if FOIA had not been so weakened by the Bush administration, the paperless communication of the Internet will render FOIA useless because there will no longer be a paper trail. What are scientists to do? While most of the day-long conference highlighted the abuses of corporate money, there were also attempts to propose solutions. None of the solutions offered, however, were really up to the challenge. Among them were suggestions that universities have on board omsbudsmen to help researchers being pressured by industry; that policy makers implement the precautionary principle; that the media refer to scientists who are acting on behalf of industry as “academic entrepreneurs,” not simply as “scientists,” or that the definition of scientific misconduct be broadened to include industry-funded scientists influencing public policy. Most people advocated stricter disclosure policies for journals and scientific advisory boards, yet major medical journals have recently relaxed their disclosure policies because it’s nearly impossible to find a scientist for peer review who is not connected to industry. Further, there’s no way to force complete disclosure, so that disclosure policies really boil down to a voluntary procedure. The outrage expressed by the presenters and the audience stemmed generally from the perceived threat to the objectivity of science through the infusion of corporate money. Belief in the “objectivity” of Western science is a central cultural cornerstone, and it is defended with the zeal of religious evangelism. Yet Dr. Wing pointed out that what we call science was invented, as he said, by wealthy white males and reflects the racism, sexism, and other cultural biases of the society which nurtures it. That culture is increasingly fashioned by the needs of global corporate capitalism, so that more and more institutions, from agriculture to education and government, are becoming handmaidens of the corporate empire. While there are certainly pockets of resistance in science as in other spheres of modern life, it is unrealistic to expect that science will remain untainted. As Neil Munro, a journalist with The National Journal, remarked, we might as well bump the science column over into the business column, for that’s where much of it really belongs. For those of us working to end the cancer epidemic, recognizing the reality of “conflicted science” means cultivating a constantly critical eye. The CSPI website for conflicts of interest in science is www.IntegrityInScience.org (1) See Steve
Wing’s article, “Social Responsibility and Research
Ethics
in Community-Driven Studies of Industrialized Hog Production” in Environmental
Health Perspectives, May, 2002. |