!: Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health

±1±: Now is the time Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health Order Today!

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May 19, 2010 22:20:11

"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."
In this eye-opening expose, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. To keep the public confused about the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials, industry executives have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to dispute scientific evidence about health risks. In doing so, they have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats. The Orwellian strategy of dismissing research conducted by the scientific community as "junk science" and elevating science conducted by product defense specialists to "sound science" status also creates confusion about the very nature of scientific inquiry and undermines the public's confidence in science's ability to address public health and environmental concerns Such reckless practices have long existed, but Michaels argues that the Bush administration deepened the dysfunction by virtually handing over regulatory agencies to the very corporate powers whose products and behavior they are charged with overseeing.
In Doubt Is Their Product Michaels proves, beyond a doubt, that our regulatory system has been broken. He offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and ensuring that concern for public safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy.

Named one of the best Sci-Tech books of 2008 by Library Journal!

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±1±: Best Buy Michaels shows that the same techniques used to successfully delay legislation and regulatory action on cigarettes have since been used on any number of other public-health problems, including today's major global warming concerns. A growing trend disingenuously demands proof over precaution, always disputing conclusions that might support regulation because industry has learned that debating the science is much easier and more effective than debating the policy. It also avoids being simply branded as 'anti-environmental,' etc.

Michaels material shows instances proving the hazards of working with some chemicals was well known long before lawsuits arose. For example, as early as 1918 life insurers declined asbestos workers. Certain dye components were found to cause 100% of bladder cancer in the original DuPont workers back in 1947 - again, before major suits. Reducing lead in paint and gasoline was accomplished relatively easily, despite industry efforts - thanks mainly to the EPA and the effect lead had on catalytic converters, adding auto-makers to those demanding lead's elimination from gasoline.

Industry obstructionists (often led by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton) repeatedly use a strategy of insisting on proof - hard to accomplish because one rarely finds 100% affliction from toxins, even cigarette smoke. The author instead recommends a 'Sarbanes-Oxley' approach to science and toxins. 1)Require full disclosure of any sponsor involvement in scientific studies. 2)Manufacturers must disclose what they know regarding the toxicity of their products and the chemicals used. 3)Rigged data reanalysis should be stopped - creates false findings. 4)Hold people accountable. 5)Protect the independence of federal scientists and science advisory committees - eg. stop asking applicants who they voted for, using panel members with conflicts of interest. 6)Embrace 'as low as reasonably achievable' standards instead of becoming embroiled in endless debates over safe levels.

Bottom Line: "Doubt Is their Product" provides good documentation of industry's non-stop reactionary foot-dragging to any profit impediment vs. public health. However, that scientists can be bought ('fake science') is hardly news to anyone who has followed the global warming debate. Thus, Michaels should have made his book considerably shorter.
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