Jul 28, 1998
MANIPULATION OF INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATIONS
BY BARRY CASTLEMAN & RICHARD LEMEN*
Penang July (TWN) -- Interational scientific organisations have long been important sources of reports about toxic substances. With the globalisation of trade and information, new problems have arisen as a result of efforts of business interests to influence bodies such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). And with the emergence of the World Trade Organisation as a forum where individual nations' occupational and environmental health regulations can be challenged, the pronouncements of such groups as the ILO and the WHO take on added significance.
The publications of such groups, long important for providing information especially to countries with scant public health resources, may now also be used to both misinform such countries and over-turn worker and environmental protection measures in the most advanced countries.
Serious threats to the 'public credibility' of the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) were reported by Watterson in 1993. The IPCS is located at the WHO in Geneva and is jointly sponsored by the WHO, the ILO, and the United Nations Environment Programme.
Watterson reported that the first drafts of IPCS reports on chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants and the fungicide benomyl were written by manufacturers ICI, Hoechst and DuPont. He raised concerns over undisclosed conflicts of interest by corporate consultants on expert task groups assigned to write IPCS documents. He reported that industry 'observers' usually present at IPCS task meetings were rarely offset by representatives of non-industrial, non-governmental organisations.
The same year, US government scientists found that the IPCS's environmental health criteria document on methylene chloride was based on material drafted by officials from ICI and other manufacturers of the chemical. Scientists from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) criticised the failure of IPCS to modify statements in the report to reflect opposing views within the expert panel.
Moreover, the strong influence of industry 'observers' at the task group meeting gave new meaning to the expression 'observer error'. NIOSH decided to cease all participation in IPCS activities until the IPCS established an objective process to develop criteria documents.
The scientific community's reaction broadened with the refusal of the Collegium Ramazzini to review drafts of the IPCS criteria document on chrysotile asbestos, prepared by 'scientists with close ties to the asbestos industry.' By refusing to become involved at a late stage in the process, the collegium said it intended to avoid inappropriately associating itself with the report.' The effort to issue a chrysotile report remained mired in controversy for years, and publication is finally expected in 1998.
At the invitation of the German government, the IPCS held an 'MCS Workshop' in Berlin in 1996. Led by corporate consultants and chemical industry 'observers,' the panel decided, by an unrecorded vote, to rename Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) 'idiopathic environmental intolerances.'The panel chairman (Dr H Kipen) and Dr C Miller from the US were among those who objected to the name change.
The corporate consultants returned from the conference, promptly representing the workshop's anonymous and unrefereed conclusions and recommendations as WHO policy at medical meetings, in court documents and in media announcements. An industry-funded 'research institute' then paid for the publication of the recommendations in a journal supplement without the knowledge of the IPCS, which still has not published the workshop report. A position statement was drawn up by chemical industry consultants for the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, using the new chemical-free name of MCS and referring to the workshop as a WHO symposium.
A pattern of such events led 81 scientists to send a strong letter to the IPCS and its United Nations sponsors decrying the corporate influence. That, in turn, led the US government agencies that had relations with the IPCS to recommend, through the US State Department, specific changes in IPCS procedures. The WHO responded by drafting 'declaration of interest' guidelines, including a disclosure form to be completed by participants in expert scientific panels. The IPCS participated in this process and circulated the draft guidelines for comment in October 1997.
Meanwhile, the IPCS sent a very incomplete third draft of its report on chrysotile asbestos to the expert panel charged with writing the final report. This was a more balanced and qualified group, and it extensively revised the draft, adding much material that had not been cited. The Canadian scientist selected by the IPCS to chair the panel was persuaded to step down. The sole observer at the week's end, Dr Graham Gibbs, had listed himself as representing the Scientific Committee on Fibers of the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH). Because he was seen by the panel as representing the positions of the asbestos industry, Gibbs was asked to leave the room during the writing of the concluding parts of the report.
The ILO was approached in 1993 to hold training workshops in Brazil and Mexico to train specialists in the reading of chest X-rays. The year before, the ILO had held such workshops in Prague, with the participation of doctors from South America and support from the International Fibre Safety Group (IFSG). The IFSG offered to bear most of the cost of the Latin American workshops. The IFSG's representative was Scott Houston, who actually worked in Quebec at the Asbestos Institute. The IFSG was created as a result of agreements within the international asbestos industry, though its exclusive representation of asbestos interests was obscured by its name. Inside the ILO, the agreements with IFSG were handled by long-time asbestos industry medical representative Dr Michel Lesage, whose position at the Brazil conference surprised participants who expected the ILO to have a position distinct from that of the asbestos industry. Dr Lesage has since returned to Canada.
A monograph on the hazards of fibrous materials was subsequently prepared and sent out by the ILO to scientific reviewers in August 1997. This had been submitted to ILO by the ICOH Scientific Committee on Fibers. Long-time experts on asbestos (W.J. Nicholson, M. Greenberg, J. Dement) were stunned to notice that the asbestos chapter had been written by Dr Jacques Dunnigan, long-time former director for health and environment for the Asbestos Institute, and the editor-in-chief was Dr Graharn Gibbs, the Canadian observer who had been asked to leave during the closing sessions of the IPCS task group meetings on chrysotile in 1996.
Drs. Nicholson, Greenberg and Dement declined to review chapters of the draft ILO report, not wanting to have their names associated with it. Strong protests from unions in the United Kingdom, the Nordic countries and the US followed, along with criticism from scientists, and the ILO soon withdrew the report from consideration as an ILO publication. The ILO went on to acknowledge that it is examining its practices to develop appropriate responses for 1) requests for sponsorship and attendance at meetings arranged by others, and 2) submission of documents to the ILO arising from technical cooperation activities. The ILO may redefine its relationships with such groups as ICOH and the Asbestos Institute.
ICOH Vice President in charge of the scientific committees, Dr Bengt Knave, seemed surprised to learn of all this in January 1998. He points out that ICOH guidelines approved in 1996 require that documents developed by scientific committees be submitted to the officers of the ICOH before publication. He insists that this report was not received and approved by the officers. Dr Knave is at a loss to explain why the ILO's letter to the Nordic unions describes the discredited report as a product of the ICOH fibres committee. He agrees that 'if the name and reputation of ICOH have been improperly used in this matter, it falls to the officers of ICOH to sanction the responsible individuals, publicly set the record straight, and take steps to assure that similar things cannot recur in the future.' The recent events described here and by Grandjean make one wonder whether ICOH is not sometimes used as a 'front' by business interests operating through certain committees.
Dr Knave's parting words reflect greater sensitivity to criticisms of the ICOH than to the need for reforms: 'I take it that this letter brings to a conclusion our discussions, which arose out of a document that does not exist.'
In July 1997, copies of WHO draft reports called 'Asbestos and Health, and 'Asbestos and Housing' became available for technical review. Both report drafts read as if they had been written by the asbestos industry. The housing draft offered only the vaguest information about the hazards of building with asbestos-cement sheets and pipes; it did not warn of the need for special cutting tools equipped with suction hoods and high-efficiency dust capture. It said nothing to direct or encourage people to use safer substitute materials for asbestos-cement pipe and sheet products. The health report described high exposures to asbestos as largely a thing of the past, in complete disregard for the way asbestos products (at least 80% asbestos cement) are made and used today in the poorer countries still using a lot of asbestos.
Critiques of the reports sent to the WHO and also posted on the OEM List on the Internet prompted replies from the WHO-Europe office in Copenhagen, where these reports originated. That office, in turn, sent copies to reviewers, including Dr Morris Greenberg of the United Kingdom, who replied that the reports suffered from many errors of fact and imbalance. He called for a 'radical rethink of the project' and the allocation of resources that the WHO usually requires for major policy documents. He pleaded for a longer timetable for the review process, to safeguard 'the reputation of the WHO'. Dr Philippe Grandjean urged the WHO to emphasise the alternative materials that could be used instead of asbestos cement. Alan Dalton, a leading union health and safety representative in Britain, pressed the WHO to do better, noting that a recent editorial in The Lancet had lamented the decline in the WHO's reputation for technical expertise.
The asbestos industry may soon have need of supportive official documents from the WHO. European unionists report that even as the European Trade Union Confederation calls for a continental ban on asbestos, the industry is seeking to block this through the World Trade Organization (WTO). Canada, the world's largest asbestos-exporting country has taken steps to challenge the 1996 ban on asbestos in France. Canada's Prime Minister has said he will carry the fight to the WTO, where an asbestos ban can be challenged as an unfair trade practice. The industry can be expected to argue that 'controlled use' of asbestos is all the public health protection that can be justified. We leave it to others to fathom the justification for a panel of international trade economists to sit in judgement over national health policies so arduously attained. National asbestos bans are the law, atleast for now, in at least eight European countries.
Though the asbestos industry is prominent in this story, the methods it used could be applied by others. As Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers' International Union President, Robert Wages, wrote to the ILO:
The asbestos industry is relatively small compared to some industries affected by publications on toxic substances. I deal with some of the largest corporations in the world on a day-to-day basis. I have to wonder how hard it will be for the oil and chemical industries to engage in revisionist science to permit the whole-sale exposure of workers to toxics of every variety."
The international health organisations mentioned here, as well as others, should consider their vulnerability to the classes of improprieties recounted here, and they should take steps to protect their credibility and reputations from being hijacked by business interests.
As noted, the WHO has started one type of needed reform. 'Declaration of interest' guidelines are being drafted, so that scientists participating in WHO expert panels will soon be required to complete one-page forms disclosing possible conflicts of interest they may have, involving the subjects of the panels. In this, the WHO has been aided by reference to the disclosure rules used at the Scientific Advisory Board to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Disclosure as required by the EPA, with the forms freely available to the public, would be a sensible practice for all the international bodies named here to adopt.
Governments of the countries most advanced in controlling toxic substances have more reason than ever, in the era of the WTO, to assure that the publications of the international organisations meet high standards of technical quality and scientific objectivity.
Scientists can also be alert to the types of things that have happened to professional organisations, and try to assure that groups with which they are involved are not misused as legitimate-looking facades for corporate influence. The Internet has provided an increased capability for independent scientists to raise concerns and prompt changes in these remote international organisations.
[Barry Castleman is an environmental consultant. Richard A.Lemen is a retired Asst. Surgeon-General, United States Public Health Service. The above, based on a paper presented by them at the American Public Health Association, Indianapolis, Indiana in November 1997, was published in Resurgence]