George Carlo (Doc Index)
|
This stub is a work-in-progress by the ScienceCorruption.com journalists's group. We are indexing the millions of documents stored at the San Francisco Uni's Legacy Tobacco Archive [1] With some entries you'll need to go to this site and type into the Search panel a (multi-digit) Bates number. You can search on names for other documents also. Send any corrections or additions to editor@sciencecorruption.com |
 |
This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation. |
George L Carlo was one of the most prolific science corrupter in the American scene, and he worked for any industry that would pay. Initially he built his business working for Dow Chemicals through the E Bruce Harrison Company countering the claims that the dioxin contaminants were producing cancers and child deformities. Later, he was hired through Ketchum PR to run the Wireless Technology Research program for the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA). It had been discovered that the strobe-pulsed output from the first form of digital mobile phone (known as 'D-AMPS' and 'GSM') caused breaks in the DNA in laboratory animal studies. He set up a couple of major corporate-research operations, and In between times Carlo and his partners and staff worked for tobacco and other chemical companies with problems. In later life he moved on to various other scams including promoting and selling 'bio-protection devices' to protect mobile phone users from cellphone radiation.
His main company was Health and Environmental Sciences which he later expanded into the Health & Environmental Sciences Group) but he had a half-dozen others, usually incorporating the Carlo name - like George Carlo & Associates and The Carlo Group. His closest associates were Ian C Munro from CanTox in Canada, Jim Tozzi and Thorne Auchter who ran Federal Focus. the Multinational Business Services and the Institute for Regulatory Policy in Washington DC.
| SPLIT ENTRY |
|---|
| George L Carlo |
| Carlo associates and organisations |
| Wireless Technology Research |
| Health and Environmental Sciences Group |
Contents
Main Lobbying Associates
- Maurice E LeVois who ran Environmental Health Resources in Mill Valley, California
- Ian C Munro who also ran CanTox (aka Canadian Centre for Toxicology) in Canada and was his deputy with Wireless Technology Research (WTR) for the CTIA.
- Thorne G Auchter, ex Reaganite director of the OSHA.
Auchter, Tozzi and Carlo also ran Federal Focus, Multinational Business Services (MBS), Health Policy Institute (HPI), Institute for Regulatory Policy (IRP), Center for the Study of Environmental Endocrine Effects (CSEEE), Center for Epidemiological Studies (CES), and Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) - James J Tozzi ex Reaganite deputy administrator of Office of Management & Budget (OMB) and head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). He left OIRA to become a consultant with the Beveridge & Diamond law firm (for chemical industry) Then set up those private operations above with Auchter (and possibly Carlo).
- James MacRae, ex Dept.Admin Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) and Tozzi/Auchter's Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE)
- Michael Gough and Steven J Milloy - TASSC and junk-science scams
- HESG Staff: Kelly G Sund, Rebecca Steffens ('Beckie'), James Baller (lawyer)
Various Research Associates
- Professor Keith Solomon -- Keith Solomon of University of Guelf, is probably the same K. Solomon who has worked for and with George in the HES days on a number of occasions -- and also the K. Solomon who featured in an 16 March 1997 article in the Toronto Star supporting the tobacco companies. He is quoted as saying that gun-shot wounds were more of a problem than second-hand smoke.
- Professor Robert Squire -- Robert Squire of John Hopkins University, is probably the RA Squire who also worked for HES. Squire has worked with Carlo on a number of dubious projects.
- Professor Anthony Miller -- Anthony Miller of the University of Toronto, is very probably the AB Miller who also worked with Carlo at HES on tobacco problems.
- Dr Philip Cole -- There are three Philip Coles in the archives. This one worked for Dow Corning,
All above appear to be available to conduct research projects with Carlo when required. There is nothing to necessarily suggest a propensity for scientific distortion other than their close association with Carlo.
Documents & Timeline
1940s: Carlo's family migrated to the USA from Calabria in Sicily.
1953 Aug 24 George Carlo was born in New York. His parents were Sicilians from near Palermo. [This family background closely parallelled that of Michael Repacholi who ran the WHO's EMF program: Repacholi's parents also came from the same region of Sicily.]
1970 The USA Army stopped using the defoliants Agent Orange and Agent Blue in Vietnam supposedly "because of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong charged that herbicides were a form of chemical warfare" and that they were causing birth defects among Vietnamese children as well as severe, perhaps irreversible, ecological damage.
1971 /E Carlo earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo [2]
1972: BACKGROUND: A small group of Boston-area scientists became concerned about the failure of two experiments in emergency water-cooling of small nuclear piles. The experiments had found that in some nuclear accidents, steam was generated around the hot fuel rods to the point where emergency cool water could not contain or control the run-away heat.
They formed the Union of Concerned Scientists to publicize the problem and demand action. These fears were addressed over the following few years.Carlo's "scientific involvement with dioxins" begins this year. He reveals in a letter to the Wall Street Journal (March 27 1992) that his focus at this time was on risk management rather than basic research. He also said that he "designed protocols" which were used by the Arkansas Department of Health about this time to "monitor dioxin-exposed Vietnamese refugees". {Note that there are some major inconsistencies in his dates with claims.]
1973 Carlo was now at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He says that he became a professional assistant football coach for the Buffalo Bulls, while at the University.
1974 The Arkansas Power & Light Co fired up their Nuclear One power plant in Pope County. Small radiation leaks from this power station were to make Carlo's name as an epidemiologist -- and one where he worked on the side of public health.
Between 1974 and 1977 the Arkansas Power and Light ran their Nuclear One power plant. When it opened, the county had a still-birth rate of 20.3 per 1000, the following year it rose to 25.4, then to 27.5, and then in 1977 it hit a highly significant figure of 26.8 per thousand. "The combined rate seen in the control counties farther from the site had, by contrast, dropped sharply."
1974 Jul 30 Times Beach dioxin scare. The Centers for Disease Control finally discovered that trichlorophenol (which had a by-product, dioxin) was the highly dangerous contaminate which were causing human problems at the Times Beach township, near St Louis, Missouri. [2] Little was done about it until 1982.
1975 Vietnam veterans, supported by some scientists and politicians, blamed Agent Orange as the cause of their own diseases and of birth defects in their children and demanded medical treatment and monetary compensation. Their efforts received a hugh boost from two television programs. [3]
1976-1977: Carlo is an Epidemiologist on the staff of the University of Arkansas's Medical Sciences department when the increased rate of still-births in Pope County became common knowledge. PUFF PIECE QUOTE:
"While at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (sic), he chaired the research committee of the Department of Family and Community Medicine and designed the acute and chronic clinical work performed by that department." (Carlo biog)
| Birth problems after Seveso |
|---|
In 1996 it was found that in Seveso there was a change in the ratios of boy babies and girls in the exposed families. (males to females 26:48 for children born between April 1977 and December 1984) A 2001 study... However, the most important factor in the decision that dioxins were dangerous in the long-term came from laboratory tests, carried out by scientists at the Dow Chemical Company. They showed dioxin to be the most potent cause of birth defects ever found in laboratory test animals.[Source Michael Gough's book "Politicizing Science"]Gough was a later associate of both Carlo and Steven J Milloy in Philip Morris's junk-science TASSC scam. |
| The emerging problem of Agent Orange in 1977 |
|---|
| 1977 -- 78: The Veterans Administration (VA) initially rejected veterans's claims for treatment and compensation for "Agent Orange diseases", saying that there was no evidence for a linkage between Agent Orange and the diseases for which these claims were made. The Veterans had a problem proving that they had been exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin since no records were apparently kept by the military -- and the chemical companies all denied that the substance was dangerous, carcinogenic or mutagenic. Agent Orange was also highly variable in its dioxin concentration which made true exposure to the dioxins impossible. Also, other herbicides such as Agent Blue (which contained arsenic) were also used extensively in Vietnam. |
|
1977 July: (summer) the US Air Force disposed of 2.22 million gallons of Agent Orange (believed to contain 23 kilograms of dioxins) by burning the chemical in a high-temperature incineration at sea aboard the incinerator ship, M/T Vulcanus [in compliance with the EPA permit requirements] There can be little doubt that the Air Force knew it was dealing with dangerous chemicals by this time.
|
1977 Sep-Aug 1978 Carlo says he worked during this period as a Teaching Assistant, Roswell Park Graduate Division, State University of New York at Buffalo, Department of Epidemiology. This suggests that he transfered to a new job which allowed him to pursue a higher qualification. His PhD is from the Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Division of Graduate Studies (SUNYAB), Department of Experimental Pathology (Experimental Pathology/Epidemiology) [Source: George Carlo's C/V as sent to the Tobacco Institute in 1988.] [5]
| November 1977 - Love Canal at Niagra Falls |
|---|
| 1977 Nov: This was an unfinished canal had become an industrial waste site which leaked chemicals whenever it rained. It had been given to the New York Education Department, which had then sold various parts of it as housing estates.
After 30 years of indiscriminate dumping and regular reports of seepages and odours, a local reporter began an investigation of possible links between the contamination and resident illnesses. In 1976 toxicology consultants (Calspan Corp. -- an ex-Defence-related general lab group associated with Cornell University) reported serious contamination by dioxins, and this fired up local Congressman LaFalce, who turned up at the site with the Environmenal Protection Agency in tow. The EPA tested air in basements, and the New York State Health and Environmental personnel sampled sump pumps and storm sewers. Love Canal citizens organised themselves into three large resident's organisations, and began to lobby for remedial action or relocation. [833 families were eventually relocated] In March 1978 the New York health authorities ordered human testing of blood, and a committee of physicians recommended drastic measures. The Governor declaring a State health emergency, closed the school, etc. Over the next years the EPA and New York health authorities expanded their area of concern to 36 residential blocks, and the Congress became involved in Joint Hearings when chromasomal damage was reported. This landmark case led, in the last days of the Carter Administration (1980), to passage of the Superfund (CERCLA) laws which required polluting industries to jointly pay to clean up their own mess and they also set aside government funds for sites where it was impossible to identify the culprits. However it took five years of lax Reagan-Republican administration before the ATSDR (the agency charged with enforcing these rules) to be funded.[Love Canal land was later remediated as a new suburb with a new name] [6] |
1978: George Carlo, while still a staff epidemiologist at the Medical Sciences Department, University of Arkansas, co-wrote with epidemiologist Carol Hogue a report for the Arkansas Department of Health. They warned that "a pattern of risk" seemed to be developing in the neighbourhood of the power plant. "The situation should be monitored closely," they said, because "we may be detecting a weak signal."
Arkansas Power and Light quickly denied any likelihood that Nuclear One "would have any effect on the health of newborns. We have worked closely with the hospital there," said AP&L vice-president, Charles Kelly, "and every indication we've had in monitoring the health effects is that there is none." Nor was the Carlo/Hogue paper received kindly by local municipal or supported by the local health authorities. The study, said Director Robert Young of the Arkansas Health Department, was "inconclusive" and offered no evidence that Nuclear One was to blame for the escalating stillbirth rate." [4]
| Dow chemical's Kociba finds dioxins dangerous |
|---|
|
1978 Dr Richard J Kociba a scientist working for Dow Chemicals found overwhelming evidence that Dow's 2,3,7,8-TCDD herbicides (which contain dioxins) were dangerous and published his report in Applied Pharmacology. Before Love Canal had come to public notice, he had begun a series of three different life-time (2 year) animal studies feeding dioxins to male and female Sprague-Dawley rats. Kociba found high rates of liver cancer in the female mice (but not the males) and he had microscope slides to prove it. This triggered the scientific scare about dioxins (and later, their cousins, the furans) both in agricultural herbicides and in Agent Orange. Public concerns became exaggerated when the media over-reacted; and this over-reaction was fueld by the clumsy and frantic attempts by the chemical companies to throw doubt on their own research. [Dow Chemicals rejected the Kociba findings. They then hired the 'greenwashing' PR firm, E Bruce Harrison , to run a campaign discounting and confusing the findings. They later challenged Kociba's diagnosis of the cancers by mounting their own 'independent' committee of highly-paid consultants who reviewed the Kociba slides and found fewer 'confirmed' cancers. This is why scientists don't like releasing their basic data; it just fuels the fires of a concerted PR attack.]. The first lawsuits are filed against Dow Chemicals and Monsanto over their sloppy production of Agent Orange resulting in Vietnam Veteran's dioxin. Then in March, Eckardt C Beck, the local (Love Canal) Regional administrator for the EPA reported:
|
[7]NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y.--Twenty five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the Love Canal here as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.
1978 Aug 2 The story triggered action. The next day Dr Robert Whalen , the New York State Commissioner of Health, visited Love Canal and said:
"The Love Canal Chemical Waste Landfill constitutes a public nuisance and an extremely serious threat and danger to the health, safety, and welfare of those using it or exposed to the conditions emanating from it, consisting, among other things, of chemical wastes lying exposed on the surface in numerous places and pervasive, pernicious, and obnoxious chemical vapors and fumes affecting both the ambient air and the homes of certain residents living near such sites."
Dr Whalen convened a Blue-Ribbon Panel, declared a health emergency, and ordered the relocation of women and children living in the most contaminated parts of the estate. He issued an order to country health officials to close the school and reduce accessibility to one division of the site ["keep people off"], and to begin health studies.
On August 7 he expanded the prohibited area, and Governor Carey decided to buy the homes of those who wished to relocate. President Carter also approved emergency financial aid. By the end of this year workers on the site were undergoing daily monitoring, and over the next three years lawsuits were filed by New York State Attorney against Hooker Corporation and Occidental Petroleum (settled by consent agreement in 1988 and 1989) and the whole area cleared. [Multiple Sources]
1978 Aug 4--Sept 79: George Carlo was now an Epidemiologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, School of Medicine's Research Program in Occupational and Environmental Health.
[His C/V says that he was also] Clinical Instructor , State University of New York at Buffalo, School of Medicine, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine. [Source: George Carlo's C/V dated the end of 1988.] [8] One of Carlo's puff pieces says:
Dr Carlo was among the first scientists on the scene at the infamous Love Canal chemical crisis in Niagara Falls, New York in 1978 that led to the Superfund law addressing hazards from abandoned hazardous waste sites.
| Carlo's denial of Love Canal involvement... |
|---|
Defending himself against later charges that he was a consultant to the land developers at Love Canal (and there is no evidence of this) Carlo later wrote: [Google turns up no evidence supporting the claim that Carlo's research information was given to Congress, or of any relationship with Congressman LaFalce. However, it could well be true that the University was approached for help by Lois Gibbs, and therefore true that he helped the activists. |
A leak followed by a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania created the most serious nuclear contamination incident in American history, and probably the best-known in the world before the Ukrainian Chernobyl disaster and Fukijama in Japan. Wikipedia says:
The nuclear power industry claims that there were no deaths, injuries or adverse health effects from the accident, and a report by Columbia University epidemiologist Maureen Hatch agrees with this finding. Another study by Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina found that lung cancer and leukemia rates were 2 to 10 times higher downwind of TMI than upwind. The Radiation and Public Health Project, an anti-nuclear organization, reported a spike in infant mortality in the downwind communities two years after the accident.
- In some of his later puff-pieces Carlo claimed to have worked helping the public who had been affected by this accident.]
1979 Oct: The American Department of Health issued a quick study which had been conducted on the Three Mile Island incident only 6 months after the event, and Carlo claims to have been involved as a consultant.
1979 the delayed publication date for the Carlo/Hogue Nuclear One stillbirth paper. It was only published well after the Three-Mile Island incident. "Analysis of Infant Deaths and Stillbirths in Pope County, Arkansas. " by Carlo GL and Hogue CJ, Arkansas State Department of Health.
The correct name of the Superfund is CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act) and Carlo claims to have been consulted on the design of the proposal by a congressional committee.
1980 Research biologist Beverly J Paigen, who was a senior staffer doing Cancer Research at Roswell Park while Carlo was there, has produced a series of papers on Love Canal [but she doesn't list Carlo as a contributor or co-author]
- "Controversy at Love Canal" which was published as a Hastings Center Report, in 1982.
- "Methods for assessing health risks in populations living near hazardous waste sites" 1983
- "Assessing the problem -- Love Canal," 1983
- Use of small mammals (voles) to assess a hazardous waste site at Love Canal, 1983[9]
- [It is possible that Carlo may have made some minor contributions to early Roswell Park papers before moving back to Arkansas in September 1980.]
... about 100 articles from toxicology journals dating back more than a decade, as well as data about where herbicides had been sprayed, what the effects of dioxin had been on animals and humans, and every accident in factories where herbicides were produced or dioxin was a contaminant of some chemical reaction. [10]
1980 Carlo says he was Principal Investigator this year on "Birth Cohort Infant Mortality and Environmental Insult in Arkansas Counties," study which was being funded by US Environmental Protection Agency, [5] [11]
- [We have found no studies which match the above. There is only the Arkansas Health Department study with no mention of the EPA. However, since his Arkansas Nuclear One paper had been recent published this could well be true.]
Only six dumps were cleaned up during the first five years of Superfund, and the activity went into limbo after September 30 1985 when its revenue sources dried up. The new compromise became a Bill for Renewal, which would require the Environmental Protection Agency to identify for future action 1,600 of the nation's worst sites by 1988. [The agency's national priority list was about half that size.]
The compromise bill also gave citizens living near toxic sites the right to sue polluters to force a cleanup if EPA is not acting against a dump, and it required chemical companies to inform communities about emissions of acute hazards from their plants. [6] [13]
1980 May-June American Journal of Public Health (AJPH Vol 70 No 5 1980) publishes "Cancer incidence and trihalomethane concentrations in a public drinking water system." by George L Carlo and Curtis J Mettlin
Abstract: 4255 cases of esophageal, stomach, colon, rectal, bladder, and pancreatic cancer reported from Erie County, NY between 1973 and 1976 were analyzed in terms of their relationship to type of water source, level of trihalomethane (THM) and various social and economic parameters. Among white males, a significant positive correlation existed between pancreatic cancer incidence rates and THM level. No other significant correlations were observed. This research lends little or no support to the hypothesis that THM levels which meet present standards are related to the incidence of human cancer. [14]
- [Trihalomethanes are chlorinated organic molecules (like chloroform and CFCs) which damage the ozone layer. Some are known to be carcinogenic. Carlo seems to have repeated this study in 1984. This report lists Carlo at the Division of Biometry, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. It says that... "At the time of the study he was with the Research Program in Occupational and Environmental Health, SUNY at Buffalo, New York.
[It doesn't say who funded the study, but Dow Chemicals and other chemical companies were under attack for releasing these chlorine-based compounds into underground acquifers.]
1980 June 6 A Hill & Knowlton PR Advisory to its clients:
The Justice Department expects to file 100 lawsuits to enforce the cleanup of dangerous hazardous waste disposal sites in 1980. It claims there are from 500 to 600 dumping sites today that could be as much of a threat to public health as Love Canal.
Another report says the National Toxicology Program "had isolated about 200 compounds at the site and was testing 70 of them."
1980 Jul Dr Irwin DJ Bross, Carlo's superior when he was at Buffalo and the Director of Biostatistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute was attacking the way the chemical companies were downplay the dangers of dioxins. He wrote to the Washington Star :
Even under the best of circumstances it is hard to do competent scientific studies of health hazards at Love Canal or other chemical (or nuclear) dump sites. Only a tiny fraction of physicians or scientists have any demonstrated competence in the conduct of such studies, and have any record of acting in the public interest in these issues.
These researchers soon become the targets of well-orchestrated efforts to discredit them, to disparage their findings and to drive them out of research. This has happened at Love Canal, and it has occurred over and over again in the past 25 years. It is one of the main reasons why so little has been done to protect the public against hazardous chemical, nuclear and medical technologies.
Bross also criticised a federal health official who told some women, who had had disastrous pregancies while living at New York's Love Canal, that "the cure was to quit smoking". [15]
- Irwin Bross was an anti-smoking crusader was also worked with the then-famous tobacco researcher Dr Ernst Wynder in an attempt to develop a "less harmful cigarette". [They both advocated a switch to filter cigarettes.] Wynder accepted more and more research funds from the tobacco industry over the years, and he would later become an occasional associate of Carlo, but there's no suggestion that the two were associated at this time.]
1980 Aug The EPA issues a requirement to all makers of the herbicide 2,4-D to prove the safety of their products. This herbcide was less of a dioxin risk than 2.4,5-T, but both were components of Agent Orange and both had contributed to the dioxin contamination. Under pressure from the EPA, the chemical companies jointly set up the Industry Task Force on 2,4-D Research Data (ITF) and entered into an agrement to produce the requested data for the EPA.
The 1980 notice required the ITF to conduct oncogenicity (cancer) tests with 2,4-D on both rats and mice (they often react differently). The Task Force eventually submitted the results of completed studies in 1986. By then, the EPA was under a 'more relaxed' administration.OTA Agent Orange Assessment Panel
1981: The Agent Orange herbicide used by the military in Vietnam had serious dioxin contamination problem also. Dioxins were both toxic and caused mutagens, and they were accidentally when some manufacturing processes were not strictly supervised.
This year Carlo begins serving the US Congress via the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) panel on Agent Orange. He served alongside a couple of other scientists who were to become friends and business associates, and he continues on this panel for at least ten years. QUOTE:
"[Carlo]...served in diverse scientific advisory capacities, including membership on the US. Congress Office of Technology Assessment Agent Orange Advisory Panel. (Carlo biog)
- Michael Gough, lead this panel for the OTA; he later worked with Carlo at TASSC. Gough then moved on to a life of serving in libertarian think-tanks, firstly Resources for the Future and later the Cato Institute.
Maurice LeVois (Carlo's later partner), was a consultant on Agent Orange representing the Veteran's Administration. He became a partner in Carlo's consultancy company Health and Environmental Sciences (HES). - They became a mutual supporting clique, providing each with back-up when needed, and all three later joined forces to support Steven J Milloy in the TASSC junk-science scam for Philip Morris]
1982 The Environmental Defense Fund published a leaked letter from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which listed 14 confirmed, and 41 possible dioxin-contaminated sites in Missouri, and also attacked the EPA's attempts to lower the dioxin cleanup protocol standards.
Anne Gorsuch Burford was the EPA director and Rita Lavelle was assistant administrator. Both were forced to resign not much later. Times Beach was highly contaminated and an excavation of 800 families was ordered on December 4th. The CDC publicly stated that the settlement must not be reinhabited.
| WTR - Cell phone research context: |
|---|
| In 1982 Dr William Morton of the University of Oregon found what he regarded as a significant link between low-levels of medium frequency (MF) radio radiation from television towers, and higher rates of lymphatic leukemia, cancers of the uterus, and breast cancer in Portland residents believed to be exposed to these radiations. [Well before cellphones became popular].
There was a general climate of fear in the public, resulting from the dioxin problems. There was also suspicion that certain types of radar had increased cancer rates among operators during the war. There were also general concerns that not enough research had been done into possible health effects of radio frequency radiation when the technologies had become widely used during World War II ... and that no one had bothered to do research when similar frequencies were later used in the densely populated residential areas. 1987: Dr Richard Stevens, writing in the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggests that increased rates of breast cancer might possibly be associated with radio frequency EMFs. |
1983 The American Medical Association attack the news media for creating a scare about Times Beach pollution. They claimed that there was no scientific evidence that dioxins were so harmful. Dr Vernon Houk the director of CDC's Center for Environmental Health, came to the same conclusion later, but only years after having recommended the permanent relocation of the Times Beach population. {They were both wrong by later evidence!] However it was 2012 before new tests confirmed that the Times Beach dioxins had eventually degraded to safe levels.
1986: The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorisation Act (SARA) increases the Superfund to $8.5 billion, and made private cleanups compulsory. Carlo says he was consulted by a congressional committee here also.
Reaganite zealots, Michael Gough (who had moved from the government Office of Technical Assessment (OTA), to the conservative think-tank "Resources for the Future") and 'junk-man' Steve J Milloy (then working through the National Environment Policy Institute (NEPI), and through Multinational Business Service with James J Tozzi and Thorne Auchter -- then later the EOP Group), were also involved in spin-doctoring the Superfund problems on behalf of the large corporations and the government.
- Tozzi, Auchter, Milloy and Gough all later became promoters of the anti-science, junk-science messages which were initiated and funded by Philip Morris to counter claims that 'scientists said that tobacco smoking was dangerous to your health'.
At this time the US Federal Government had its own vested interest in covering up the Agent Orange scandal because of the Vietnam War. And since Agent Orange was a problem or dioxins, they also 'aided and abetted' the cover-up of dioxin pollution problems. Their line was simply to deny that dioxins were strongly mutagenic; that the scientists were scare-mongering to get themselves government grants.
Health and Environmental Services
1985 Aug Carlo leaves government employment and sets up as a cash-for-science lobbyist for the polluting companies. He initially operates as [[George Carlo & Associates}} with Maurice Le Vois, supposedly his "Director of Research"
1987 Aug Carlo and Maurice Le Vois established Health and Environmental '''Services''' Corporation (HES) in Carlo's brownstone house in Washington DC. Maurice Le Vois leaves the VA and establishes HES-West in San Francisco. The name on the letterhead is "Health & Environmental Sciences Corporation" and Le Vois titles himself "President". [16]
- Note that at this time Dow Chemicals had a division named "Health and Environmental Sciences" run by lobbyist Robert Moolenaar,
1986-90:In this period, Carlo's Washington branch of Health & Environmental Sciences Ltd. (later expanded to Group = HESG) had offices and staff at 1513 Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington DC. His staff are now working for the Chlorine Institute (which runs a program of disinformation on the dioxin issue for the paper manufacturers. He also has some of the larger chemical companies as clients: he acts personally as a consultant and trouble-shooter. Meanwhile he is trying to break into the big-time shonky-research business with the tobacco companies.
1989 Aug - Oct Maurice Le Vois has set up the San Francisco branch sometimes known as HES-West. At this stage Le Vois and Carlo have joined forces to provide Philip Morris with a proposal for sham research which can be used to prove that those scientists who oppose smoking are simply 'biased'. Le Vois has written to Philip Morris with a proposal:
The ETS topical content of the communication would depend in part on identifying areas of greatest value to PM. This is a strategic matter, not a scientific question. However, it would probably be important to know which topics are most subject to strongly biased thinking, and which topics are likely to be viewed most objectively. This information could be derived from the survey pilot work discussed above since this is part of the goal of that process as well. As you, know, George Carlo and I would like to conduct research for PM along the lines outlined above. We propose developing a detailed research protocol for the survey portion of this work, and I believe that it would be wise to work closely with PM at this stage in order to focus our research on areas of greatest value to the client. George has already mentioned that we would request a $7500 advance payment that would be billed against by us during the start up phase of this project. [17]
- The protocols for the research were laundered through the Newman Partnership, (run by PM in house attorney Fred Newman and his brother) [18]
- Notes of another meeting (Borelli included via conference call) [19]. This letter records what they were really trying to do.
1989 Aug 10: In a letter signed by Maurice Le Vois to Dr Thomas J Borelli who headed the Science & Technology division of Philip Morris (which directs both the real science and the pseudo-research), Carlo and LeVois offer to run a research project aimed to show that it is the personal anti-smoking biases among epidemiologists which causes them to 'mislead' politicians and the public about the dangers of ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke). [20]
1989 Sep Carlo and Le Vois began using the expanded name Health and Environmental Sciences Group (HESG).
1989 Oct 6 The Newman Partners (Science PR for Philip Morris) have had a meeting with Philip Morris's top science dissemblers. They are launching a three-part 'Science Communications' project.
- To anticipate, then plan strategies for the EPA's ETS Risk Assessment (due shortly) Their primary contact is Le Vois. Their goal is to show cumulative bias by the EPA over the long term - cost $25,000
- Conduct the XYZ substances survey. This is the 'Bias Study' run by Carlo Le Vois and staff (see below) - cost is $60,000
- Develop and implement usability strategies to show that these studies are examples of "poor science" resulting in "Media scare stories". Support for airline smoking is important. Part B of this is also to attack the epidemiological use of meta-analysis (the statistical combination of smaller studies to strengthen conclusions). They say: "at a minimum, raise doubt of the validity of the procedure and the conclusions drawn from its use."
He then adds a couple of pages of other papers to exploit (Including those of the life-time lobbyist Carl C Seltzer) and a hint of the project now being run by Steven J Milloy, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). The total start-up costs for this program are $87,200 and it has a $163,750 per month on-going charge. [21]
1989 Oct 17 The Carlo-Le Vois proposal to Philip Morris has been handed to Larry Newman who runs the Newman Partnership with his brother Fred Newman, an in-house lawyer with Philip Morris. They hold a meeting with Carlo and his associate Patricia Doesberg (with a conference call to Borelli) in Washington DC.
The report of this meeting to Philip Morris says that after discussion the purpose of this study was:
- (to dilute the) "Impact on the EPA Risk Assessment Advisory Report" (into second-hand smoke as carcinogenic) See EPA ETS Risk Assessment
- (to find) "Publication in reputable scientific/medical journals so as to establish the (bias) criteria in the minds o scientists as widely accepted and appropriate.
- Publicity in general news media.
- Provide a basis for strategic development. (ie counter-attack on the EPA).
They also greatly extended the idea. Carlo's HESG were also to look for weaknesses on the National Academy of Science study, the Surgeon General's report, and in some original studies (Hirayama - Non-smoking wives study). [22]
- Newman Partnership was a front company run by Fred Newman and his brother Larry. Fred Newman was the main in-house lawyer for Philip Morris. The paper was actually later published with a credit saying that the funding came from the Institute for Regulatory Policy (IRP) which was run by Carlo's associates Jim Tozzi and Thorne Auchter. [23]
1989 Oct 26-31 The Newman Partnership also reports to Philip Morris's top scientists, Tom Borelli, Nelson Beane and Tom Osdene on a Risk Society meeting in San Francisco. They are tracking the development of the EPA ETS Risk Assessment studies. In particular a study by Kenneth G Brown and Douglass Crawford-Brown of Chapel Hill NC interested them because it was looking at the possibility that lung-cancer arose from radon. It was said to show that tobacco smoke in the air actually reduced the risk of radon as a carcinogen. This study was still incomplete. However there are extensive recordings of their conversations with the two scientists, especially some expressions of doubt.
They also identify Dennis J Paustenbach and Adam Finkel as potentially useful.[24]
1989 Nov 20 A formal approach is made to their new public relations/laundry firm Newman Partnership Lrd. [25]. The aim is to show that anti-smoking scientists are biased. Philip Morris is keen to get this research.
The DRAFT proposal for
Environmental Health Risk and Environmental Tobacco Smoke
is made to The Newman Partnership, Ltd. Columbia, South Carolina [26] This is proposed as a multi-part very complex series of studies on a variety of substances, which are clearly selected to hide the cigarette company interest. The budget requested is $90,000 for the actual research. [27]
Carlo has include a list of potential subcontracts to provide peer-review and data collection services. His choices demonstrate that he already had good knowledge of scientists who regularly worked for the tobacco industry. He also suggests those who should be used to 'peer review' the final study:
- Maurice E Le Vois -- (his ex partner)
- Alan J Gross (biostatistics) -- life-long tobacco lackey, Medical Uni of South Carolina
- Ralph I Horowitz (Yale Uni) for peer review. -- (an associate of tobacco's well-known Alvan R Feinstein and [[Walter O Spitzer)[28]
- John L Wilson (ACS) for peer review -- (Probably a clean-skin, but he had taken CTR money when Dean at Stanford Uni)
- Frank M LaDuca (International Technidyne) for peer review. [Also Cardiologist, Philadelphia Heart Institute}.??
- Joseph Wu, (New York Medical College) for peer review. -- A long-term tobacco scientist, who worked with Lawrence M Wexler (below) and Alan Gross (above)
- Larry Wexler (epidemiology - New York Medical College)-- tobacco 'consultant' who worked with Joseph Wu and Alan Gross. They all provided 'witness services' and had a private company Epidemiology Consulting Group-NYC
- William J Butler, (Failure Analysis Associates) -- Statistics -- Long-term tobacco industry witness and helper.
- Steven W Frantz (Bushy Run Research Lab) -- Toxicology --His lab worked for RJ Reynolds in mouse testing toxic chemicals at the time.
Carlo and his staff at HESG will do this study in scientific bias by sending out a questionairre which asks biased, isolated, and quite deliberately-loaded questions. Carlo and four staff members of HESG are involved:
- Ms Nora L Lee, (She also did some of their later dioxin research) [29]
- Ms Sydney D Pettygrove, (no further record)
- Ms Patricia Doseberg
- Ms Elizabeth Sheffey
By the time this was sent for publication Maurice Le Vois has split with Carlo, and three of his 'researchers' -- Patricia Doesberg, Brett Duch and Beth Sheffey -- had dropped out while Kelly G Sund and Maureen R Jablinske were given the credit.
|
In this so-called Draft Protocol, Carlo and Le Vois don't just only offer to conduct the research, they will also pre-plan the response and organise how to exploit the propaganda that can be generated. In effect, while supposedly acting as a disinterested scientist examining scientific ethics, they are performing the functions of a PR lobbyist and deliberately planning to manipulate a scientific outcome. The procedure was explained later in a Philip Morris document:
Part II of his plan is to "developing persuasive messages". On Page 2 (top), he specifies that this is a strategic question for PM -- not a scientific question. (But they will do it anyway, for money.) In the meeting report the tasks assigned to Newman Partners Ltd. and Tom Osdene's staff at Philip Morris were to create a mailing list of authors and scientists involved in the EPA Risk Assessment Study. They are also to:
|
1989 Nov /E An internal list prepared by Newman Partners for the head of scientific propaganda at Philip Morris, also lists George Carlo and Maurice Le Vois as full-time consultants on the problem of passive smoking. Carlo is listed as the top consultant to be sent to London for a conference which has, as its aim, the disruption of claims that the regulators make when imposing the 'precautionary principle'. This plan was known as Good Epidemiological Practices or GEP. {This became the London Conference)
Some of the 'scientific principles' which were designed by the participants (some of them may have been genuine, but gullible) at this tobacco-loaded conference were viable and acceptable, but many set the scientific hurdles so high that no independent scientist looking to prove harm from some source of pollution, would never be able to jump over it. So no independent scientist could ever claim that the case against tobacco smoke or chemical pollution had been proven.
This tobacco-industry inspired "GEP" standard became known as the "London Principles" after the predicatble loaded industry conference. You can still find these London Principles at the Federal Focus web-site. Government imposition of such principles would have prevented the EPA, FDA, OSHA and any other environmental/health regulator from ever issuing regulations until proof of danger was accepted by ever scientist in the industry and every paid industry consultant scientist. An impossible task.
- The study was to have been published in Environment International in June 1992 -- and it was typeset and the pages were fully formatted by Pergamon Press for it to appear in the magazine. [31]. However the title was later changed and it appeared instead in the Journal Risk Analysis only a few weeks later.
- Someone obviously rejected material from the first magazine at the last moment, and it was handed over (already typeset) to another magazine.
- See how this bias study was used in later reports to attack epidemiology: (June 1995) There must be 30 copies of this study in the tobacco documents, so every tobacco company had one it its files. [32]
1989: Carlo received two Philip Morris payments ($70,000 + $60,000) for his 'Bias Study" paper proving that epidemiologists and anti-tobacco scientists are all biased, and are producing distorted results.
Two long-term HESG staffers, Kelly Sund and Rebecca Steffens, now have their name on the paper as co-researcher -- Kelly Sund on the draft, and Rebecca Steffens on the final. Kelly Sund became a faithful employee although lacking any biomedical qualifications. She had her name listed in this year also as co-author on a dioxin-spill study on the Melbourne (Australia) water supply.
Maurice Le Vois also managed to get a check for $25,000 from Philip Morris at the same time, and he later began to work more with another dubious scientist called Max Layard in California. The Carlo/LeVois HESG operation had split, or changed nature at this time.
The tobacco documents also mention a Canadian, Dr Ian Munro, who later worked with Carlo firefighting dioxin concerns.
- [Munro became Carlo's deputy Director in the cellphone industry's Wireless Technology Research (WTR) project. Later Carlo and Munro formalised a partnership in preparing environmental impact statements in Canada. Munro also runs an organisation called CanTox, which is the Canadian equivalent (or maybe an "arm") of Carlo's HES group.]
George Carlo who is still Dow Chemical's 'dioxin specialist', travelled to Australia following a dioxin spill from a Nufarm factory sited in the Melbourne water catchment area. He was accompanied by:
- staffer (Kelly Sund) who had no biomedical qualifications, and
- his "personal contract lawyer" and friend (James Baller).
They were flown out to conduct an 'independent audit' of the Melbourne water supply to ensure that the dioxin spill hadn't effected the Melbourne water quality. This It is not at all clear what role Baller played, but his name is on the main report as if he was a biomedical specialist. However he probably was every bit as qualified as Kelly Sund. .
|
The NuFarm Dioxin Spill Nufarm Limited, is an agricultural chemicals manufacture which has the Australian and New Zealand rights to produce the herbicide Roundup. Following the Agent Orange problems, this herbicide had come under threat from Greenpeace activists because they were suspected of having comparatively high dioxin content (due to sloppy manufacture). Carlo's water-quality/dioxin paper, when published, showed that his associates in this research were Kelly Sund (who appears to have no biomedical degree) who worked for him at HES and later for the WTR, and also his contract lawyer and friend, James Baller. These three "independent" experts found no cause for alarm, and told the Australian media that health effects are unlikely to result from general population exposures to PCDDs and PCDFs (different types of dioxins). This was reported in the Australian media as having "cleared" the Melbourne Water Supply of any suspicion of contamination. At this time Nufarm was a subsidiary of Fernz Pty Ltd. a New Zealand company which owns Pharma Pacific and Pharma Pacific Management Pty Ltd. A Dr George Carlo is listed as Technical Director for these companies. (Later the Fernz companies merge under the Nufarm name.) As technical director, Carlo is still being offered around the world today as a keynote conference speaker by the Pharma Group (they pay the airfare and probably more). He is now touted as an expert on 'Risk Assessment'. They don't say he also works for a organochloride pesticide/herbicide manufacturing subsidiary, even though Nufarm owns the Australian licence for Roundup (Monsanto), the most widely used herbicide in the world. |
1990 Oct 27 Carlo et al are making a presentation at the Society for Risk Analysis at its 1990 Annual Meeting and conference (in San Francisco). The presentation is entitled "Potential Value Judgement Influences Among Scientists Asked to Evaluate the Hazards of Dioxin, Radon and ETS." [33]
Juggling dioxins and tobacco smoke
1991 late: Carlo is now working for both Philip Morris and for the Chlorine Institute. His job appears to be to play down the fears of the public about dioxin spills, and ridicule fears surrounding them. The Chlorine Institute was, without doubt, one of the most disreputable lobby organisations that has ever existed ... if you don't counting the tobacco industry.
Dioxins are not quite as deadly as some activists have made out, but they are still up there with the worst. The Chlorine Institute, however, had numerous paid lobbyists and paid scientists who were available on-call to counter public fears of dioxin contamination. Carlo was one of their best.
The organisation also lobbied long and hard to have the limits on dioxin contamination levels relaxed in order to reduce the costs of manufacture. During this period the lobbyists, including Carlo, constantly appeared on radio and in the newspapers, claiming that dioxin wasn't really a harmful by-product at all. Those who opposed having traces of it in their water supply, were painted as "extremists".
1991 Sep 23: On this day Carlo was involved in a National Public Radio (NPR) documentary which resulted in the publication of an article entitled: An NPR Report on Dioxin: How "Neutral" Experts Can Slant a Story, by Charlotte Ryan for FAIR.
1992 Jan: The [[Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting[[ (FAIR) organisation had conducted a four-month study of National Public Radio, and found that their coverage of toxic environmental issues had been declining since 1990 (Tyndall Report, 1/92).
The article written in 1992 explained how this was being achieved with dioxin contamination by sympathetic government officials:
A Study of National Public Radio"On Sept. 23, 1991, Morning Edition host Bob Edwards announced that scientists were gathering in North Carolina to discuss recent studies suggesting that "the dangers of dioxin may be overrated." NPR science reporter Richard Harris led off with interviews with two government scientists, Michael Gough of Congress's Office of Technology Assessment and Linda Birnbaum from the Environmental Protection Agency. Both suggested that new studies might lower estimates of dioxin's danger; Gough was quoted saying that the risk of cancer from dioxin "may be zero." Harris also cited an unnamed federal official who had ordered the dioxin-related evacuation of Times Beach, Mo., who now says the evacuation was unnecessary. These remarks were countered by those of public interest activists: Ellen Silbergeld, a toxicologist identified as working for the Environmental Defence Fund, and Paul Connett, an "anti-incinerator activist." [Incinerators also produce dioxins.] The last source quoted was George Carlo, identified by NPR as "a consultant for government and industry." Carlo claimed that activists were politicising scientific research by charging bias when new research results ran counter to their activist agenda. What's Wrong With This Coverage? At first blush, NPR's report has the aura of fair play. Two apparently neutral sources, government scientists, set the stage, explaining the significance of the issue. Counter opinions by activists were then cited, with a final wrap-up from an independent consultant. Beneath the apparent "balance," however, the story was tilted toward corporate interests. The segment's lead, "Recent studies suggest the dangers of dioxin may be overrated," is straight from the chemical and paper industries' public relations campaign. NPR framed the government scientists it cited as neutral experts, pinning their story to the claim by the Office of Technology Assessment's Michael Gough that new scientific data calls into question the toxicity of dioxin. Reconsideration of dioxin standards by the EPA, however, was based principally on industry-funded studies, one of which was written by Gough himself while on sabbatical from his government job. And according to an investigation by Jeff Bailey in the Wall Street Journal (2/20/92), the EPA's Birnbaum was influenced by a Chlorine Institute conference to urge EPA to consider the possibility that there is a "safe dose" of dioxin. (Birnbaum, according to the Journal report, has since altered her opinion.) The unnamed federal official who regretted the evacuation of Times Beach was Dr. Vernon Houk, whose work with the US. Public Health Service has been criticised by Congress, the National Academy of Science and others. In the fall of 1992, In These Times (9/25/92) reported that Houk "admitted copying virtually verbatim from paper industry documents in proposing relaxed standards for dioxin." The NPR report portrayed these scientists as objective experts, while activists were presented as the only partisan players. However, though Michael Gough now works for government, his research was previously funded by the paper industry. George Carlo, whom NPR described only as a consultant, was identified by the Wall Street Journal as a $150/hour employee of the chemical industry's Chlorine Institute. By contrast, NPR did not mention that "anti-incinerator activist" Connett is also a scientist, with a Ph.D. in chemistry. Nor did the report acknowledge recent studies stressing dioxin's toxicity published in leading medical journals like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association. While appearing to reflect diversity of opinion, NPR's report on dioxin fell prey to what the Journal's Bailey described as a "well-financed public relations campaign by the paper and chlorine industries." Buying into mainstream journalistic assumptions about scientific objectivity and government neutrality, NPR did not help its listeners understand how federal government regulation and environmental research have been politicised." (from EXTRA! April/May '93) |
1992 After a couple of years of prevaricating over the safety of silicone breast implants, the Food and Drug Administration issued a ban on the basis that they manufacturers had not adequately demonstrated their safety. This led to a flurry of lawsuits- some successful
1992 Feb: The Wall Street Journal published an article which reveals that Carlo had been responsible for publishing misleading proceedings of the Banbury Center conference (co-sponsored by the EPA) on the biological basis for risk assessment of dioxins and the accepted standard as to what constitutes a safe-dose.
The Banbury Conference was supposedly set up to resolve differences generated by chemical industry scientists denying problems while the government's health agencies said the problems were serious. Carlo had been sent to the conference as an observer for the Chlorine Institute (other scientists didn't recognise his 'dioxin expertise'!)l However he saw an opportunity and he rushed out and issue a press release purporting to be a report of the conference. This release claimed that the scientists had resolved their differences and now agreed that dioxins were not really a danger. The media swallowed the story.
The independent toxicologists in the conference were furious and issued statements saying that they had agreed no such thing. They had agreed only that some of the dangers had been overstated.
| 1992 Mar 3 Rachael's Environment & Health News |
|---|
| A remarkable front-page story in the Wall Street Journal February 20 confirmed that the paper and chlorine industries have waged a successful two-year campaign to bamboozle the nation's media about the toxicity of dioxin, and that US Environmental Protection (EPA) fell for it too.
The point of the campaign was to salvage the paper industry, which uses 15% of all the chemical industry's chlorine output, and which is facing billions of dollars in lawsuits brought by citizens claiming damages from dioxin released from paper mills. The Journal's story ("How Two Industries Created a Fresh Spin on the Dioxin Debate") by Chicago-based staffer Jeff Bailey, describes a bald-faced campaign by the American Paper Institute (API) and the Chlorine Institute to "revisit" the scientific evidence that dioxin is a potent carcinogen. The Journal says, "The paper industry scored its first major public-relations success in 1990, when paper companies arranged to challenge the findings of the most influential dioxin study ever done. That study, reported in 1978 by Richard Kociba, a Dow Chemical Co. pathologist, was done on 485 white rats, whose food was spiked with dioxin. Dr Kociba found a strong link to cancer: a daily dose of billionths of a gram led to tumors." To counteract the Kociba study, API hired five pathologists and brought them to a Maryland Lab in March, 1990, where for two days they reviewed Dr Kociba's rat slides under a microscope. The pathologists voted on each slide -- were they looking at a cancer tumor or at a "benign" tumor? At the end of the two days, they had voted for 50% fewer cancer tumors than Dr Kociba had observed 12 years earlier. Robert A. Squire, the pathologist who oversaw the recount, told the Journal, "There was't much unanimity. This was an uncertain finding." Nevertheless API managed to ignore the uncertainties. Based on its "new evidence" that dioxin is less potent than previously believed, API wrote stern letters to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to President Bush's science adviser, and to William Reilly, chief of EPA. API told EPA, "All of the Agency's analyses are now out of date in light of the significant new evidence showing that the risks of dioxin has been overstated." The API used this finding to demand a revision of the FDA's previous "overstatement" of the dangers. The JOURNAL goes on: "Next the Chlorine Institute... arranged to bring three dozen of the world's foremost experts on dioxin to a conference at the Banbury Center [on Long Island in October, 1990]." The JOURNAL continues, "Also present was George L. Carlo, a scientist but not widely regarded as a dioxin expert...." "Carlo is not a scientist with a long history of dioxin credentials," Dr. George Lucier of the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences told the JOURNAL. The JOURNAL goes on: "Why was Carlo there? Though described as a 'conference participant' by the Chlorine Institute, he was actually the industry's $150-an-hour observer. Based on his account, the institute would later circulate reports that the scientists had reached an important consensus...." Carlo's account, which the Chlorine Institute immediately circulated widely to journalists and to state regulatory officials, said that the scientists at Banbury had reached consensus that dioxin does no harm until a certain threshold of exposure is reached. In other words, Carlo claimed--and the Chlorine Institute sent out press statements claiming--that the Banbury meeting had reached agreement that there is some amount of dioxin that is safe. The JOURNAL continues, "The institute's statement, however, didn't accurately reflect what had happened at the conference....A Chlorine Institute official concedes its representations about the conference were a 'botched publicity effort.' The institute now agrees there was no conference consensus on whether a dioxin threshold exists." However, before the world had a chance to learn that the Chlorine Institute was playing fast and loose with the facts, the Institute's disinformation about Banbury was fed to William Reilly, chief of EPA, who fell for it. Citing the Banbury "consensus," in early 1991 Reilly ordered his scientific staff to officially "reassess" the toxicity of dioxin. [34] |
1992 Mar 13 The Philip Morris/Newman Partnership "Bias study" is completed and sent to a Pergaman Press journal Environment International as "The Health Scientist Survey: Identifying Consensus on Assessing Human Health Risk". It was accepted a week later, and due to be published in the July/Aug edition. [35]
However it appeared in a different journal under another name a few weeks later:
1992 April 10 It now carried the title "The Interplay of Science, Values, and Experiences Among Scientists Asked to Evaluate the Hazards of Dioxins, Radon and Environmental Tobacco Smoke" and it was published in the Risk Analysis journal.[36]
1992 Apr 10 The tobacco industry law firm Shook Hardy & Bacon published in their newsletter, a double entry (also in Appendix A) on the study. This was a favourable criticism of the study in relation to its treatment of ETS under the heading: "Risk Assessment" - which was published the same day (April 10) as it appeared in the journal Risk Analysis. [Extraordinay efficiency perhaps !] [37]
1992 May: Carlo and Ian Munro joined forces to convene a task-force which produced a report on dioxins. This claims to be a definitive statment on the dangers of dioxin as home-use herbicides. They conclude that there aren't many. Who would have guessed?
1992 Aug 21 Matt Swetonic, who runs the Total Indoor Environmental Quality (TIEQ) Coalition and its associated National Environmental Development Association (NEDA) from the same offices as the E Bruce Harrison Company (EBH) has written to Betsy Annese, his main contact at RJ Reynolds Tobacco about a meeting with the notorious scientific lobbyist George L Carlo.
I have known Carlo since 1983, when he was part of my "flying circus" of Dow scientists touring the country talking about the Agent Orange issue. As recently as three or four years ago, he had a working relationship with EBH doing projects for various chemical industry clients. In short, we know Carlo very well and, as a result, he was quite open and candid in the meeting. The study you sent me from Risk Analysis was funded through the Institute for Regulatory Policy (IRP) which, as you know has been the lead group trying to pressure the White House to release the Executive Order on risk assessment reform.
- [Polluting industries were all lobbying to try to get 'risk analysis' legislated as an essential component of all environmental and health regulation. They controlled most of the consultants and academics who did risk assessment (they funded chairs at universities). Thorne Auchter who ran IRP, was a hidden partner in Carlo's HESG. They had produced papers promoting the value of risk-assessment (which depends on judgements rather than science)] {Slightly paraphrased to clarify]
According to Carlo, EPA was so concerned about the implications of the (IRP/Auchter/Carlo) study that he was called to a meeting at the agency to explain "what the hell I was up to."
Carlo is unwilling to speak out directly in support of ETS, his "handlers" (probably Dow Chemical at this time) as the "primary funding organization" did little to publicize it when it was published in March.- Carlo was personally involved in a number of meetings at the White House on the Executive Order. He believes, as does Ward Hubbell (Ex.Dir of TIEQ/NEDA) that these were because it would be perceived to be a cave-in to industry at the expense of the public health if they didn't proceed.
- According to Carlo, Boyden Gray "screamed" (his word not mine) at them at one meeting that they had blown the whole thing by the heavy-handed corporate lobbying tactics and that he couldn't afford to hand the Democrats one more issue to beat President Bush over he head with in an election year.
- [Ward Hubbell at that time had left the White House to work for TIEQ.
- C Boyden Gray was President HW Bush's Counsel to the President" during his second term. He had been "Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief during the Reagan Administration.
- Gray was also heir to a large part of the RJ Reynolds fortune, and he founded and later ran the think-tanks Citizens for a Sound Economy and Citizens for a Sensible Environment, both of which worked for the tobacco industry.
Carlo was promoting the idea that the tobacco industry should fund a new attempt at forcing risk-assessment on the EPA and other regulatory agencies by running a highly publicized series of reform symposia to generate community support.
He feels Harrison (EBH) has plenty of environmental umbrella groups through which the effort could be funded, and indeed suggests NEDA as a potential sponsor. Ward agrees and sees the new NEDA/RAP (Risk Assessment Project) as the proper vehicle.
I can't say whether or not the project is doable however, I think it has sufficient merit to carry the conversation forward. Think this thing over and let me know if there is anything you want me to do.[38]
1992 Sep 25: The Times reported (above) that Dr. Vernon Houk the head of the US Public Health Service, had since been criticised by Congress, the National Academy of Science, and others over the Times Beach, Missouri evacuation. He was the "unnamed federal official" who had ordered the dioxin-related evacuation of Times Beach, Mo., {it has been officially a ghost town since 1985] However Houk later promoted the Dow company-line that the evacuation was unnecessary. [See Wikipedia explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri]
[Houk] admitted copying documents verbatim from Dow Chemical in his proposal relaxed standards for dioxin. Shortly before this a number of top EPA officials had also been forced to resign (seven in all). One of these officials, John Hernandez, had also been taking his written regulatory material straight from Dow Chemicals. (See also John Todhunter)
1993 June Publication of Assessment of dioxin-related health risk for the Melbourne metropolitan area in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. [39]
Wireless Technology Research
The Cellular Telephone has evolved through a number of stages, and the potential for harm to human health has changed with each development. The main objections to cellular phones arose in the early days with analog mobiles (AMPS) which were large, high-powered, and required the placement of obtrusive antenna 'towers', often in residential areas, where they loomed over suburban houses.
The electronics industry had just ignored the possibility of long-term harm to the health of
- users because of the proximity to the brain of a moderately powerful transmitter, and
- the potential harm to residents and their children in proximity to the 'base station' towers.
Most of the suspicion rested on the potential risk to children of long-term EMF radiation effects from the towers since the towers were always on. In the early days few users also meant wider spacing of base-stations for economic reasons, and therefore higher EMF transmission powers were emitted from both the handsets and the towers to maintain connections.
As usage grew, the cellphone industry swapped to digital technology using two slightly different pulsed-strobe transmission techniques. These temporarily stored the voice and released it in short digital pulses occupying hundredths of a second -- and by pulsing the output, up to 12 different transmiitters could use the same wave-length, each being allocated its own 'time-slot'. These were the European GSM technologies, and the American Digital -AMPS (D-AMPS). The transmission power was now lower on average, but concentrated into short bursts like a strobe light at a discotheque.
Handsets were now smaller requiring smaller batteries and transmitting over shorter distances. However the antennae of the handset was now almost directly against the skull, and the inverse square-law operated to increase the now-pulsed EMF power entering the brain, and these power-pulse rates roughly matched natural neurological transmission rates. The large base-station towers disappeared and were replaced by speaker-type boxes usually positioned on the top of buildings, so these fears evaporated. However biological research showing problems with experimental animals were ignored and the epidemiological studies were largely inconclusive (it takes time for these to show up). Henry Lai and Narendra Singh at the University of Washington showed that GSM type transmissions were increasing the rate of DNA double-breaks in the brain-cells of their experimental rats -- and extrapolating from this, it was highly likely that increases in the rate of long-term brain cancer could be expected (it was never proved).
The Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) reacted by: Setting up the Wireless Technology Research group under George Carlo, and funding it by $25 million to prove that their devices were safe. This accomplished nothing; no significant research was ever done.
An alternative transmission technology called Code Division Multiple Access with no pulsed-power and working at even lower transmission levels was developed by a San Diego company, and this proved to be easy to implement. Rather than admit they had a problem, the CTIA branded the new CDMA systems "G3" suggesting that they were an evolution of the old pulsed power transmitters. Pulsed power GSM and D-AMPS were quietly abandoned.
| Cellphone Industry problems |
|---|
| 1993 Jan 21: The story broke about Florida a woman who had died from a brain tumour; the claim was that the tumour (allegedly) had been promoted by her use of a NEC cell phone. Her husband, David Reynard, was suing two cellular phone companies and the shop which sold the phone. He created a sensation when he appeared live on the Larry King Show and the public learned that no real health research had ever been conducted by the cellphone companies. Share prices in the Cellular phone companies tumbled on Wall Street. |
1993 Feb 1: The Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) president, Tom Wheeler, announced that a special "blue-ribbon" panel would be formed, staffed by representatives from industry and government, to oversee a newly invigorated research project. The industry rejected any plan which had an FDA oversight on the work, and said it would fund the research itself -- but at arm's length. It then bought in John D Graham from the Harvard University Center for Risk Analysis to provide peer-review.
1993 Feb: The Florida lawsuit begins, with David Reynard suing the cellular telephone companies (NEC and GTE) over his wife's fatal brain tumour.
In early 1993, the hypothesis that radiation from cellular telephones might be causally related to brain cancer in users was first advanced in a Florida lawsuit. Officials from industry and government agreed on the need for additional research. (Carlo speech 1995) In February 1993, the United States wireless telecommunications industry made a public commitment to support independent scientific research into the safety of portable cellular telephones and other aspects of wireless communications technology. (Carlo overview report 1995)
1993 April: The establishment of the cellphone industry's Scientific Advisory Group, the precursor to Wireless Technology Research. Dr. George Carlo is contracted the run the organisation.
If you are wondering why he was chosen, you need look no further than Burson-Marsteller -- the PR advisors to both the tobacco industry and the cellphone industry. Carlo is one of their favourite contract researchers.
1993 April: The first Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) of the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) meets under Dr Carlo. Carlo has also recruited a number of his friends from the Society of Risk Assessors and the Harvard University Risk Assessment group. These two organisations are almost synonymous at this time, and the Harvard Risk group under Dr John Graham also worked for and with Philip Morris.
This SAG organisation was specifically charged only with "cellular telephone research" and it did not (as stated later) including health research into "other aspects of wireless communications technology". At this time SAG did nothing other than glance quickly over a few research reports. However, George Carlo later (30 April 97) claimed that this was the beginning of the WTR 'research program' (implying actual research funding). He said:
"WTR has been exploring the concept of cancer promotion since the beginning of our research program in April 1993. As part of our step by step approach to evaluating the risk of human cancer among wireless phone users, our Expert Panel on Tumor Promotion has completed a comprehensive review of the available scientific information regarding RF and promotion.
These leaders in the field of promotion have advised us that the weight of existing science does not support the hypothesis that RF is a tumor promoter."
[It was also reported in this way in a 1995 Carlo overview:
The Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) on Cellular Telephone Research was subsequently established with criteria and procedures guaranteeing non-interference by the industry to assess the public health impact of wireless technology and to recommend corrective interventions when necessary. The SAG began developing its research program by looking at existing research and identifying data gaps.
And also:
The Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) on Cellular Telephone Research was established in April to review the literature, develop an overall research plan and then implement the program of research in independent laboratories. The SAG was supported by a $25 million commitment from the cellular industry. (Carlo speech 1995.)
The actual support was only $2 million at this time as Carlo admits in his 1995 overview report. The $25 million came later -- and then only after pressure from Congress.
The published budget a year later (1994) included more than $2 million for fundamental risk evaluation research in the areas of dosimetry, toxicology, epidemiology, and electromagnetic interference. The Foundation seems to have disappeared into the mire.
1993: At about this time the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) also got the urge to demonstrate how socially responsible it was by establishing an entirely altruistic CTIA Foundation to bring joy and light into the world. Here's what they said at the time:
The mission of the CTIA Foundation is to meet the challenges of the 21st century in areas that are crucial to American society; education, health care, and job creation/productivity, using innovative, groundbreaking applications of wireless technology.
Founded in 1993 on the 10th anniversary of the inauguration of wireless phone service, the CTIA Foundation For Wireless Telecommunications seeks out worthy projects that utilise wireless telecommunications technology for the benefit of their communities. As part of this effort, CTIA member companies make a fair share annual contribution to fund the work of the Foundation.
Through its hands-on support of worthy projects, the CTIA Foundation is showing the nation how wireless telecommunications can help solve society's greatest problems and improve the quality of life for the American people.
1993 July: The FDA admonished the president of the CTIA for making statements to reporters that displayed "an unwarranted confidence that these products [cellphones] will be found to be safe,".
They concluded by saying that the public might "wonder how impartial the research can be when its stated goal is a determination to reassure customers, and when the research sponsors predict in advance that [they] expect the new research to reach the same conclusions ... that cellular phones are safe."
1993 Dec: In order to demonstrate how independent and arm's length all this research was, the new Wireless Technology Research (WTR) under Carlo announces that research pertaining to cellular telephones would be coordinated through the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis - John D Graham's operation known as the HCRA at (but not 'of') the University.
The HCRA had originally been created under the auspices of the Harvard School of Public Health. It now appears certain that the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis was essentially a private operation owned and run by Dr John D Graham and a number of his associates. They paid Harvard University an annual fee for the right to use the Harvard name, and they accepted money from the tobacco companies (even though this was forbidden by Harvard University bylaws). They bypassed this restriction by the simple expedient of having the money paid from a Kraft account, since Philip Morris owns Kraft.
| JOHN D GRAHAM AND THE HCRA |
|---|
| John D Graham later became President George W Bush's director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which gave him oversight on the spending of the major environmental and health regulatory agencies (FDA, EPA, OSHA, etc). Like Carlo, Graham has spent his life as another science-for-sale entrepreneur, but his line was the quasi-science of Risk Analysis which attracts generous funding from industry because it can be manipulated to produce whatever outcome the client requires. Graham spent a lot of time cosying up to the tobacco, food and chemical industries looking for work and grant-funding. You'll find the Harvard group and John D Graham himself, prominentaly featured in the Phillip Morris document archives. He was also on Steve Milloy's TASSC Advisory Board along with George Carlo, and he was involved from the beginning of the tobacco-funded Risk Assessment project called the 'Landsdown Panel' which was the foundation of the London Principles. Graham became a favourite anti-science activist for the Republicans, and they exploited his value to big business in a range of ways. |
When the CTIA announced that the Harvard Risk Group would audit the science conducted by WTR, they didn't spell out what was meant by the term 'independent'. It turned out that Carlo's Health & Environmental Sciences Group Ltd. (supposedly a small company owned by Carlo himself) is the sole small company listed among a few very big and wealthy foundations and government departments in list of donors to the Harvard Center. [A donation of $26,000 was needed to be listed.] Here is the Center's list:
| Restricted grants for project support have been provided by the: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, | American Industrial Health Council | Andrew Mellon Foundation |
| Bradley Foundation | Brookings Institution | Congressional Research Service |
| Health and Environmental Sciences Group | National Institute of Justice | National Science Foundation |
| Trustees of Health and Hospitals; Boston | US. Department of Energy | US. Depart. of Health and Human Services |
| US. Environmental Protection Agency | US. Department of Transportation | |
- Pretty well all of the above organisations are regularly used by big corporations and industries to launder funds being passed to science-for-sale operators.
The only explanations for the above, are:
- Dr Carlo must have been a very wealthy and generous man to afford this sort of donation.
- The HESG has been acting as a front for the Cellular Telephone Industry Association in laundering funds.
- Most of the other institutions were also laundering funds from wealthy cellphone companies from around the world.
What did the CTIA have to hide.? The donations listed above are quite separate from the payment for services which appears (presumably) on the WTR books for auditing services rendered. How can an organisation claim to be independent and arms-length when it is being funded surreptitiously by the organisation it is supposed to audit? In fact, John Graham, who runs the Harvard Risk Assessment Group also appears prominently in the Philip Morris documents, both seeking donations and working for the tobacco company.
1994 early Dr Soma Sarkar of New Delhi, publishes a paper suggesting that EMF can cause breaks in DNA strands.
Dr of New Delhi, publishes a paper suggesting that EMF can cause breaks in DNA strands.Word leaks out that Professor Henry Lai and Dr Narendra Singh, from the University of Washington in Seattle, have found single and double-strand DNA breaks in the brain cells of live rats exposed to only two hours of low-power microwaves at 2.45GHz - the same band as the mobile phones. This is obviously going to be the story of the year. They have been using a special research technique called 'comet assays' (Singh is the world authority on the technique). These two independent scientists had show an increase in damage to the DNA in rat brains after relatively brief exposures to microwave radiation at frequencies just above those used by cellphones. Soma Sakar, had found similar problems in the DNA of cells using a quite different analysis technique.
1994 early
The Lai-Singh evidence of DNA breaks
1994 mid: 1994 Feb 11: The Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) officially becomes known as the "SAG on WT". In a later reported speech Carlo says:
In 1994, the SAG changed its name to the Scientific Advisory Group on Wireless Technology as a reflection of its expanding research role in the areas of telecommunications technology and electromagnetic interference.(Carlo speech 1995).
Actually, this name-change appears to be an attempt to downplay the role of cellular phones, by widening the coverage of the investigations to encompass all radio-emitting devices -- two-way radios, cordless phones, radar, etc. However the funding and the industry focus remained the same.
The Wall Street Journal about this time lists Dr George Carlo as an "Epidemiologist at Georgetown University" when announcing his involvement in cellphone research." Yet The Wall Street Journal must have, in its own files, records of Carlo's antics during the dioxin debate. At about this time Ian C Munro of the Canadian firm CanTox became Carlo's WTR deputy.
1994 May 31 APCO's Margery Kraus and Tom Hockaday write to science corrupter Matt Winokur at Philip Morris. They inform him that Dr George Carlo, who had just conducted a survey on epidemiology (his study proving that anti-smoking scientists are biased, and therefore their research couldn't be trusted) was a member of the TASSC Science Advisory Group, and that he was willing to play an active role in a European Sound Science Program. They have a list of potential "members" of European scientists. They were working on a proposal for a European scientist meeting. This was the "Euro-TASSC project, which became the European Science and Environment Forum. [40]
1994 Nov:The GAO report.
The US General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report concluding that existing research into the safety of cellular phones is inadequate. They do not believe cell phones should be taken off the market, but they say that further research should be done as a matter of urgency to determine whether these new mobiles pose a health hazard. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was also closely monitoring the progress of the SAG group.
1994 Dec 13: A Motorola memo to the industry's PR company Burson-Marsteller (from Norman Sandler to Michael Kehs) shows how close the relationship was between the industry giants and the SAG team.
Sadler said in the memo that Motorola was prepared to tell the media that, until the work was replicated and interpreted
"any conclusions about the significance of this study are pure speculation".
They also note that even if the DNA breaks are found, there is no evidence of increased cancer rates, anyway. The Media Strategy, as listed in a leaked memo, says that it is ...
... "not in the interest of Motorola to be out in front on this issue because the implications of this research -- if any -- are industry wide. Therefore, we suggest that the SAG be the primary media contact followed by the CTIA. It is critically important that third-party genetic experts, including respected authorities with no specific background in R/F, be identified to speak on the following issues." "I think we have sufficiently war-gamed the Lai-Singh issue, assuming SAG and CTIA have done their homework. SAG will be prepared to release the Munro-Carlo memos, which touch on key points made in this material."
The memo shows that they plan tactics to dilute the effect of the report on DNA breaks. They fully expected the so-called 'independent' scientists [Carlo as director of the SAG and Ian Munro as his deputy], to be ready and willing to help them denigrate the legitimate reseach of a number of top independent molecular biologists and researchers in the USA and India, merely because they had produced some alarming results. In the memo, Sadler [from Motorola] is quoted as being ...
"...adamant that we have a forceful one- or two-sentence portion of our standby statement that puts a damper on speculation arising from this research, as best we can."
Sadler goes on to say that:
- Motorola "was insistent as ever about the prominent inclusion" of a phrase attacking the Lai-Singh research on the grounds that it was conducted at frequencies higher than the 800MHz band where cellular communications operates. (Only marginally true; certainly not relevant)
- He also states that Motorola would claim in public that the Lai-Singh findings and other similar research by Dr Soma Sarkar, of the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences in New Delhi (India) were of "questionable relevance."
There is no suggestion that Carlo, Munro and the WTR should be kept at arms-length here. They are to be used a spokesmen for the industry, and they say what the industry wants them to say. The memo defines the main problems to be overcome as:
- "Problems with the Lai-Singh and Sarkar studies."
- "The health implications of DNA single-strand breaks."
Sadler says:
"We do not believe that Motorola would put any one on camera" (Obviously they do not want to be in the front line themselves.) "We must limit our corporate visibility and defer complex scientific issues to credible, qualified scientific experts. We have developed a list of independent experts in this field and are in the process of recruiting individuals willing and able to reassure the public on these matters. "[7]
1994 Dec:Towards the end of 1994 Carlo wrote the introduction to the CTIA's Health and Safety Media Manual, summing up the achievements during they year -- saying that "a concerted industry response succeeded in blunting unsubstantiated allegations about a link to brain cancer in early 1993." His role is obviously seen by himself and the CTIA as primarily one of public relations, not science.
1995 Jan 20: David Rosenbaum (New York Times) reports on the close relationship that has developed between the Harvard Centre for Risk Analysis (which was considered a part of the Harvard University School of Public Health) and Carlo's WTR's SAG group.
1995 Jan 25: Carlo announced to the public that the name "Scientific Advisory Group on Cellular Telephone Research" has now been changed to "SAG on Wireless Technology" and that it is now conducting a wider program of research into all aspects of radio-frequency exposures ... "because the scope of the SAG's scientific research effort has expanded dramatically in the past year, and now involves an evolution to all wireless communications."
- The Wireless Technology Research group is reported as actually underway. The expansion in their interest from just cellular mobile phones to the whole spectrum of radio devices (as indicated by the change in name of the SAG) diffuses their focus.
At this time the SAG evolved into a legally constituted entity, the Wireless Technology Research, LLC., at the recommendation of the US. General Accounting Office. (Carlo speech 1995) The WTR was a limited liability company rather than a trade organisation. The GAO recommendation, quoted below, was intended to maintain an arms-length funding arrangements, rather than for limited liability. It now has three executives:
- Dr. George Carlo oversees epidemiology and human studies,
- Dr. Ian Munro oversees experimental toxicology,
Munro is an old friend and associate of Carlo's from the dioxin days, and he still ran Cantox in Canada. Later he and Carlo both worked for Philip Morris, and more recently they worked together on preparing Environmental Impact Statements for oil companies. - Dr. Arthur W Guy ('Bill') oversees bioelectromagnetics and dosimetry.
In fact, Guy was only paid by the hour to attend as a representative at a few conferences. Guy was an electrical engineer who had made a reputation in the early days of R/F research by conducting a $5 million study for the US Air Force. This was a token employment of a retired gentleman who provided the group with some credibility.
1995 Feb 18:The WTR advertises for grant proposals. These are to be proposed before June 15, 1995. This is now two years since the problem surfaced and grabbed media attention, and to this date nothing had happened.
1995 mid: Dr. Carlo, Health & Environmental Sciences Group, WTR and the CTIA figure in a civil claim before a Chicago court (Cook County). The plaintiff, Debbra Wright was suffering from recurrent brain tumours.
She had worked for many years in the cell phone industry and had attended a San Diego workshop and training program run by Carlo, the main purpose of which had been to provide advice to cellphone industry employees as to how they should to avoid answering direct media questions about cellphone health research, and how to discount any questions about cellphone safety.
She and was furious at the line Carlo and his associates were using in their training program, and charged them with systematic orchestration of a cover-up of health risks. So she included them, along with the CTIA, as part of a conspiracy.
The implications of Debrra Wright's personal conspiracy charge against Carlo were very significant, since he now realised that he was vulnerable. This was the way that the attorneys-general had broken the back of the tobacco industry, by charging the lawyers, scientists and the industry itself with conspiracy to conceal evidence of health harm. Scientists and science-entrepreneurs like Carlo found that they could be held legally responsible for their actions, or for concealing evidence of health risks (despite their confidential contracts), if they were conspiring with the WTR.
- The Debbra Wright case against Carlo was dismissed years later. Judge Paddy McNamara said the Wright case, originally filed against Motorola, included substantial evidence, but nothing linking HES to conspiracy. The Judge said their case had merit. However the Wright case gave Carlo a fright. He says to another scientist "I almost lost my house, my car, and my boat." [He jointly owns, probably with Thorne Auchter, a very large deep-sea sports fishing boat moored in Florida.]
1995 Dec: The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (run by John Graham) lists the following companies as providing grants (as distinct from the main funders of projects -- a list which included Carlo's own Health and Environmental Services Group):
3M, Aetna Life & Casualty Company, Alcoa Foundation, American Automobile Manufacturers Association, American Crop Protection Association, American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Corporation, ARCO Chemical Company, ASARCO Inc., Ashland Inc., Astra AB, Atlantic Richfield Corporation, BASF, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, BP America Inc., Chemical Manufacturers Association, Chevron Research & Technology Company, CIBA-GEIGY Corporation, The Coca-Cola Company, Cytec Industries, Dow Chemical Company, DowElanco, Eastman Chemical Company, Eastman Kodak Company, Edison Electric Institute, E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company, Electric Power Research Institute, Exxon Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Frito-Lay, General Electric Fund, General Motors Corporation, Georgia-Pacific Corporation, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Grocery Manufacturers of America, Hoechst Celanese Corporation, Hoechst Marion Roussel, ICI Americas Inc., Inland Steel Industries, International Paper, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Kraft General Foods, Mead, Merck & Company, Mobil Oil Corporation, Monsanto Company, New England Power Service, Olin Corporation, Oxygenated Fuels Association, PepsiCo Inc., Pfizer, Procter & Gamble Company, Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., Rohm and Haas Company, Shell Oil Company Foundation, Texaco Inc., Union Carbide Corporation, Unocal, USX Corporation, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and WMX Technologies, Inc.
1996 Jan 1: Newsnet report on the beginning of the Debbra Wright case in Chicago. She had charged him and the HESG group with (concealing and distorting evidence). The Circuit Court, Chicago, dismissed Health & Environmental Sciences Group (HES) and Dr. George Carlo as defendants in lawsuit. The remaining case against WTR was resolved in mid-year with a win for the CTIA.
Need fixing
Claims about the WTR's budget.
At this time Carlo makes extravagant claims that the budget is about $10m.
The 1995 Wireless Technology Research budget nears $10 million. All studies conducted pursuant to the research agenda will be subjected to rigorous, scientific peer review, both by the SAG and through the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. In addition, investigators funded through the program will be required to submit their work for publication in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. (Carlo overview report 1995.)
- [The $10m claim is about twice the actual annual figure ($25 m over 5 years). In fact it turned out to be less than $4m p.a. ($27 m over 7 years).
At this time he also presents a paper to the Society for Risk Analysis's 1995 Annual Meeting, which outlines how the WTR is conducting Risk Management. Thus proving, once again, that he is better at dealing with fiction than with fact.
Fake organisations, loaded conferences.
The WTR starts using the old tobacco industry tactics of floating fake science symposiums, and loading them with its own tame scientists. .
ICWCMR
1995 Sep 29: About this time the International Committee on Wireless Communications Health Research (ICWCMR) was formed. Carlo is listed as chairman, and the WTR also funds their conference program and provides keynote speakers. Don't confuse this with the IRCNIP. See ICWCMR
1995 Nov 13-15: The ICWCMR conference was held in "La Sapiencia" in Rome this week with Carlo as the chairman and spokesman. Carlo later summed up the conclusions of the conference to the press, and I'm sure you'll be surprise to find that the conference agreed that there was no health risk. In fact, this organisation was nothing more than a front for the WTR. Some of the documents admit openly that "WTR has been instrumental in forming the ICW." There was no such organisation.
Gert Friedrich of the FGF is listed as member also, and his organisation appears to be a German version of the WTR, which is also funded and controlled by the industry. Carlo was key speaker and chairman of the ICWCMR conference, and the conference appears to have been totally funded by the WTR. Presumably they also selected the speakers.
The CTIA's press report promoted this event:
In October 1995, an international symposium on the health effects associated with wireless phones was held in Rome, Italy. Researchers from throughout the world met to review existing research on this subject. The researchers reported that they were unable to identify any health risks associated with wireless phone use.
| Scientists Strike |
|---|
|
At about this time many of the scientists that the WTR had on contract also become aware that scientists involved in 'scientific research' for the Tobacco Institute and for the tobacco companies, had been charged with conspiracy, along with the companies. This was an entirely new concern which shonky scientists had never faced before. So the WTR scientists all go on strike and refuse to budge until the CTIA indemnifies them against any possible legal action. The CTIA refuses, and there is a stalemate for nearly a year. Fortunately George has other research for other industries to keep his people occupied. The problem comes about because the legal protection afforded by having a lawyer theoretically in charge of all research and funding (to provide protection from discovery, through privilege), had disappeared overnight. The tobacco industry had exploited this 'lawyer-client priviledge', but had found themselves along with the scientists being charged for conspiracy, also. Carlo's J.D. qualification was no longer protection against legal discovery in a court case, if conspiracy to conceal could be shown. This protection of the lawyer-client relationship disappeared when the State Attorneys-General wsued the cigarette companies, and included the tobacco lawyers, the public relations organisations and staff and the scientists, in their charge of conspiracy to conceal evidence about the harmful effects of tobacco smoke. Suddenly, any pseudo or distorted science came under threat if it had the potential to harm customers, and this was a real problem for science-for-sale practitioners. The CTIA made things worse by refusing to pay for this insurance, nor would it pay Carlo's personal legal fees in defending himself in the Wright case in Chicago. So for nearly a year all WTR-funded research work (what little there was) ceased. |
- ↑ Laying Waste: The poisoning of America by Toxic Chemicals. Michael Brown
- ↑ (Carlo's online biography)
- ↑ [Source: Michael Gough's book "Politicizing Science"]
- ↑ [Source: Arkansas Gazette, October 31, 1979]
- ↑ [Source: George Carlo's 1988 C/V as sent to the Tobacco Institute]
- ↑ See US News & World Report article from the 1980s.
- ↑ (Norm Sandler to Michael Kehs)
