1400: Conflicted interests in the IARC
From Iris Atzmon:
The below calls demand a full disclosure of very apparent conflicts of interests, one of them replaces Anders Ahlbom who was just kicked from IARC’s committee because of his conflicts of interest.
1) from The EMR Policy Institute, Inc. JNewton@emrpolicy.org
Jack Siemiatycki, University of Montreal, Canada replaces Anders Ahlbom. It seems he did not reveal his interests:
“This appointment [instead of prof Anders Ahlbom], if true, is also troubling given Professor Siemiatycki”™s recent comments quoted in the May 20, 2011 National Post concerning the precautionary principle: “It”™s an interesting question, but if we had applied it 2,000 years ago, we”™d still be in caves making fires by rubbing sticks together. At what point does the precautionary principle paralyze any technological development?”
EMR policy institute: “Does Siemiatycki have a pre-conceived bias against the precautionary principle? Certainly such an expression does not garner public confidence that Siemiatycki has the objectivity or takes seriously the global public health issue of exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields – to chair the IARC epidemiological expert group. He is not an appropriate choice for chair.”
2) From Sharon Noble dsnoble@shaw.ca
The second Canadian observer James McNamee, research scientist, Consumer & Clinical Radiation Protection Bureau, Health Canada, is the new EMR specialist on the editorial board of Radiation Research. He has published three negative papers on microwave genotoxicity in Radiation Research. McNamee also has written a review paper with prof John Moulder [industry consultant] on cell phones and cancer.
Vijayalaxmi, McNamee and Maria Scarfi, an Italian researcher, are authors on 14 of the 42 negative genotox papers. Ten of their 14 negative papers were published in Radiation Research. (Microwave News, July 31, 2006)
Dr. McNamee is on the Board of Directors for the Bioelectromagnetics Society, with his term ending 2008. (www.bioelectromagnetics.org) This Society”™s newsletter is funded by Motorola, and its editor is Dr. Mays Swicord, director of EMR research for Motorola. (Microwave News, July 2004)
Let’s clean house of all of them — and there are so many. Feel free to quote me. The info about McNamee is from a petition my husband and I submitted to our auditor general charging health canada was filled with industry affiliated people. McNamee is just one. Our Royal Panel is filled with them, too.
Sharon Noble
3) From Mona Nilsson:
Vijayalaxmi is also on the list http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Meetings/vol102-participants.pdf
Quote Microwave News:
As shown in Table 2, Vijayalaxmi is the lead author on seven of the microwave-genotox papers. All were funded by the U.S. Air Force, Motorola or a combination of the two.
Last year, while she was still an associate editor at Radiation Research (she stepped down soon afterwards), Vijayalaxmi together with Sheila Johnston, a long-time consultant to the mobile phone industry based in London, launched an aggressive assault against Lai and Singh and their work on genotoxicity. In an e-mail accompanying their analysis of Lai””Singh’s research, Johnston wrote: “Lai’s science has failed CONCLUSIVELY” [her emphasis]. The Vijayalaxmi””Johnston rant was so amateurishly written that it was largely ignored. What’s harder to forget is the virulence of their attack. “They are not scientific statements,” Singh told us at the time, “they are personal attacks. They do not want to solve problems, they want to eliminate us.” http://www.microwavenews.com/RR.html
Leave a reply →