Publications
For those wishing to support this work financially
In Vested Interests
Volume One and Two
The two volumes of In Vested Interests publish Martin Walker’s essays and articles that have appeared independent of his books in the period between 1993 and 2003. These two volumes will be published in the Spring of 2008, both priced at £5.00.
Both volumes have Preface’s written by people who have been supportive to my work over the last decade. The preface in volume one, is written by Joan Shenton, a tireless film maker and campaigner for the truth in a number of areas of allopathic medicine and illness. The preface to volume two is written by the notable campaigner and leading academic in the field of the distortion by industrial interests in research into environmental causes of cancer.
I look forward to publishing these two volumes and it will be a considerable relief to finally get the majority of my bits and pieces up on the web site and out into the public domain.
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PREFACE: Vol. Two:
Professor Samuel S. Epstein M.D.
Martin Walker's article, Sir Richard Doll: Questionable Pillar of the Cancer Establishment, one of the central chapters in this collection of his articles, papers and essays, is of unique and critical importance in the history of the war against cancer.
With meticulous and reader-
In 1954, together with Dr. Bradford Hill, Doll warned that, besides smoking, exposure to nickel, asbestos, gas production tars, and radioactivity were major causes of cancer. In 1955, Doll published a landmark report warning of high cancer rates in asbestos workers. In 1967, in the prestigious Rock Carling Fellowship lecture, Doll further warned that an ‘immense’ number of substances were known to cause cancer, and that prevention of cancer was a better strategy than cure. In the late sixties, Walker applaudingly comments that Doll could have even been considered a radical.
However, over subsequent decades, Doll drastically changed his views, and gradually emerged as a major defendant of industry interests. This role, still virtually unrecognized, has been reinforced by his key influence on U.S. and other cancer establishments worldwide. In these overlapping roles, Doll has trivialized or dismissed environmental, and other avoidable, industrial causes of cancer, which he predominantly attributed to faulty lifestyle. Furthermore, as the leading spokesman for U.K. cancer charities, Doll has insisted that they should focus exclusively on scientific research, and not become involved in prevention research and education.
Walker details in this essay and two others in this collection, the extensive, and still unrecognized, role of Doll as closet industry consultant.
In 1976, in spite of well-
In his 1981 inept and highly biased report on cancer mortality in the U.S., which unbelievably excluded people over the age of 65, amongst whom cancer mortality is highest, Doll trivialized the role of environmental and occupational causes of cancer. He claimed that occupation was responsible for only 4% of mortality, rather than at least 20%, as confidentially admitted by consultants to the American Industrial Health Council of the Chemical Manufacturers Association.
In 1982, as a longstanding consultant to Turner & Newall (T&N), the leading U.K. asbestos corporation, Doll gave a speech to workers at one of their largest plants. This speech was in response to a TV exposé that forced the Government to reduce occupational exposure limits to an allegedly low level. Doll reassured the workers that the new exposure limit would reduce their lifetime risk of dying from occupational cancer to ‘a pretty outside chance’ of 1 in 40. This, however, is an extremely high risk. Doll also declined to testify on behalf of dying plaintiffs or their bereaved families in civil litigation against asbestos industries and furthermore, he filed a sworn statement in U.S. courts in support of T&N.
In 1983, in support of the U.S. and U.K. petrochemical companies, Doll claimed that lead in petroleum vehicle exhaust was not correlated with increased blood lead levels and learning disabilities in children. Doll's ‘research’ had been generously funded by General Motors.
In 1985, the U.K. Society for the Prevention of Asbestos and Industrial Disease criticized Doll for manipulating scientific information in order to assure that only 1/100,000 people working in an office containing undamaged asbestos ceilings risked cancer and death.
Also, in 1985, Doll wrote to the judge of the Australian Royal Commission, investigating claims of Vietnam military veterans who had developed cancer following exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange. In strong support of the defense claims of its major manufacturer, Monsanto, he claimed that ‘TCDD (dioxin), which has been postulated to be a dangerous contaminant of the herbicide is, at the most, only weakly and inconsistently carcinogenic in animal experiments.’ In fact, dioxin is the most potent known tested carcinogen, apart from substantial confirmatory epidemiological evidence. Doll's defense, resulting in denial of the veterans' claims, was publicized by Monsanto in full-
Doll also dismissed submissions by two distinguished Swedish epidemiologists, Dr. Lennart Hardell and Olav Axelson, to the Royal Commission, with strong evidence of a major increased risk of soft tissue sarcoma and malignant lymphoma subsequent to dioxin exposure.
In 1987, Doll dismissed evidence of childhood leukemia clusters near 15 U.K. nuclear plants. Faced with evidence of a 21% excess of lymphoid leukemia in children and young adults living within ten miles of these plants, Doll advanced the novel, if not absurd, claim that ‘over clean’ homes of nuclear workers rendered their children susceptible to unidentified leukemia viruses.
In 1988, Doll claimed that the excess mortality from leukemia and multiple myeloma among servicemen exposed to radiation from atom bomb tests was a ‘statistical quirk.’ Doll revisited this study in 1993 and eliminated the majority of cases which developed within two years of exposure, claiming that such short latency disproved any possible causal relation.
In a 1988 review, on behalf of the U.S. Chemical Manufacturer's Association, Doll claimed that there was no significant evidence relating occupational exposures to vinyl chloride and brain cancer. However, this claim was based on gerrymandered aggregation of several studies, in some of which the evidence for such association was statistically significant. Walker gets to the bottom of this research presenting previously undeclared information that Doll was at this time – and the time he wrote to the Australian Royal Commission – a highly paid consultant for Monsanto, one of the major producers of vinyl chloride.
In a 1992 letter to a major U.K. newspaper, Doll pleaded with the public to trust industry and scientists, and to ignore warnings by the ‘large and powerful anti-
In January 2000 depositions, Doll had no option but to admit to donations from Dow Chemical to Green College, Oxford, where he has been the presidential ‘Warden.’ He also admitted that the largest ‘charitable’ donation of £50,000 came from Turner & Newall, U.K.'s leading asbestos multinational corporation, ‘in recognition of all the work I had done for them.’
Walker cannot be challenged for dancing on Doll's grave. In fact, Walker published his first summary of Doll's role as a closet industry consultant in a 1998 issue of The Ecologist. While this elicited threats of defamatory legal action by Doll's lawyer, no such action was taken in spite of the heavy burden on libel defendants in the U.K.
Unfortunately, and in spite of Walker's unchallenged documentation of Doll's explicit conflicts of interest, extending to white collar crime, Doll's trivialization of environmental and occupational causes of cancer, apart from avoidable causes due to carcinogenic ingredients and contaminants in consumer products, remains unchallenged by U.K., U.S. and other international governmental cancer institutions, besides cancer ‘charities’ such as the American Cancer Society, and Cancer Research U.K. Their industry-
The essays about the work of Sir Richard Doll make this collection of Walker's writing a must read for every cancer and public health professional and student. It is also a must for the growing number of citizens alarmed by the modern cancer epidemic, and by the denial of governmental and ‘charity’ cancer institutions of citizens' inalienable right to know of avoidable causes of disease and death.
Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.
Professor emeritus Environmental & Occupational Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition
Chicago, Illinois
January 9, 2006