[Greenbuilding] Doubt is Their Product by David Michaels

Fri May 9 09:02:16 CDT 2008

What I don't understand is why people are "shocked" - our economic system motivates this behavior, why are we then surprised when people do they're encouraged to do!

On 5/7 I went to a lecture by Dr. Michael Greger (birdflubook.com) - he talks about how factory farming is causing the mutations of viruses, some may become as great a threat to humanity as global climate change... Again, industry knows all the risks, but it's not in it's interest (at least short term) to change.

Would we too act like the people we criticize, if we were in their shoes? 

~sanjay

Leslie Moyer <Unschooler at atlasok.com> wrote: Book review from Healthy Building Network--sounds good!

http://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threatens/dp/019530067X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210300083&sr=8-1
*Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens 
Your Health*
by David Michaels

--------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Healthy Building Network 
Date: Wed, May 7, 2008 at 1:15 PM
Subject: HBNews - Read This Book

AN INSIDE LOOK AT EMERGING MARKET AND POLITICAL TRENDS
Healthy Building News

Read This Book

Doubt Is Their Product,
David Michaels

By Bill Walsh, Executive Director
Healthy Building Network

May 7, 2008

"
 manufacturers of dangerous products tout "sound science" . . . .
Only the truly naive (if there are any of these folks left) will be
surprised to learn that the sound science movement was the brainchild
of Big Tobacco." --DOUBT IS THEIR PRODUCT, David Michaels, Oxford
University Press

" 
 how pervasive, effective and stealthy this science-for-hire is-as
masterfully documented by David Michaels-will shock anyone . . . ."
--Newsweek, May 12, 2008 issue

For nearly a decade, the chemical, plastics and timber industries have
been attacking efforts by the US Green Building Council to establish
LEED™ credits that would discourage the use of materials such as vinyl
and unsustainably harvested timber. If you think this is because there
are strong scientific arguments in support of their positions, a new
book will change your perspective on these enduring controversies.

In Doubt Is Their Product, Dr. David Michaels, a former Assistant
Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety and Health under President
Clinton, exhaustively documents the rise of the "product defense
industry" and its strategy of using scientific discipline to establish
controversies (i.e., starting something that is intended to continue
or be permanent[1]), rather than establish facts (i.e., investigating
something to confirm its truth or validity[2]) as a means of
frustrating efforts to address public health risks from asbestos,
benzene, aspirin (Reye's syndrome in children), global warming and, of
course, vinyl.

"Doubt is our product," wrote a Brown and Williamson[3] executive in
1969, three years after the iconic warning label first appeared on
cigarette packs, "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."[4]

The business of establishing controversies in the 1960's and 70's
fathered the contemporary "sound science" movement, which was born on
December 13, 1993, according to an ignoble birth certificate Michaels
locates among the infamous "tobacco papers," Document No.
2046988980/8982. It's a press release from The Advancement of Sound
Science Coalition (TASSC) dedicating itself "to ensuring the use of
sound science in public policy decisions" and according to Michaels,
the "the first entity to carry the official 'sound science' flag."[5]
The TASSC was actually a tobacco industry front group.[6]

The success of TASSC[7], now defunct, spawned a network[8] of
"specialty boutiques run by scientists" that "go through the motions
we expect of the scientific enterprise" and "play by the rules of the
discipline," but whose "work has one overriding motivation: advocacy
for the sponsor's position. . . ."[9] An essential part of these
operations are deceptively named "public policy" think tanks and
peer-review journals which sound neutral, e.g., the Journal of
Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, but which are dependent upon
industry funding and routinely salt the scientific literature with
controversial industry-funded studies.[11]

Michaels concentrates his reporting on his considerable first-hand
experiences where, he writes, "I had the opportunity to witness what
is going on at close range."[11] He bears witness for 256 pages and
backs up his observations with an additional 119 pages of endnotes,
many of these referencing original documents that can be accessed
through his website, www.defendingscience.org.

One of his first-hand experiences involves polyvinyl chloride plastic,
also known as PVC or vinyl. The story of the vinyl industry's cover-up
of rare cancers among its workers in the mid-1970's has been well
documented elsewhere[12], including the documentary Blue Vinyl and the
PBS investigative report Trade Secrets. Michaels connects the dots,
documenting how, in 1974, the same public relations firm that created
the "selling doubt" strategy for the tobacco industry would "establish
uncertainty" about the risks of vinyl chloride for the PVC industry.
They're still at it.

Doubt Is Their Product concludes with a chapter offering "a dozen ways
to improve our regulatory system." Many of these could be adapted by
green building policy makers such as the LEED™ Steering Committee, or
by anyone interested in testing whether an industry stakeholder is
interested in establishing the facts, or just establishing a perpetual
controversy.[13] It will most certainly cast a new light on the
arguments being advanced today by the chemical, plastics and timber
industries to water down green building policies like LEED™.[14]

Support HBN and receive a copy of Doubt Is Their Product.

Footnotes

[2] Ibid.

[3] Brown & Williamson was an American tobacco company and subsidiary
of the giant British American Tobacco, that produced several popular
cigarette brands including: Kool, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Viceroy.
It became infamous as the focus of investigations for chemically
enhancing the addictiveness of cigarettes. Its former vice-president
of research and development, Jeffrey Wigand, was the whistleblower in
an investigation conducted by the highly respected CBS news program 60
Minutes, an event that was dramatized in the film The Insider. Wigand
claimed that B&W had introduced chemicals such as ammonia into
cigarettes to increase nicotine delivery and increase addictiveness.
Brown & Williamson had its headquarters at Louisville, Kentucky until
July 30, 2004, when the U.S. operations of Brown & Williamson merged
with R.J. Reynolds, creating a new publicly traded parent company,
Reynolds American Inc. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_and_Williamson.

[4] Doubt Is Their Product, p. 11, footnote 43, document available at
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/nvs40f00.

[5] Doubt Is Their Product, p. 58.

[6] TASSC was established by APCO Associates, a public relations firm
spun off from the Washington DC law firm Arnold and Porter.

[7] Federal regulatory initiatives were underway to target second-hand
smoke based upon emerging science about its hazards and growing public
support for precautionary measures. TASSC's mission was to beat those
initiatives back. The gradual success of state-level public smoking
restrictions often obscures the fact that TASCC in fact succeeded in
frustrating efforts to regulate second-hand smoke by OSHA, EPA and the
FDA. See, Doubt Is Their Product, p. 90.

[8] These include, among others: ChemRisk, Exponent, Inc. the Weinberg
Group. "In field after field, year after year, this same handful . . .
. comes up again and again." Doubt Is Their Product, p. 46.

[9] Doubt Is Their Product, p. 46-47.

[10] Sometimes the connection between industry and a journal or
organization is deliberately hidden, see, e.g., the tobacco
industry-financed journal Indoor and Built Environment. Doubt Is Their
Product, p. 53.

[11] Doubt Is Their Product, Introduction, p. x.

[12] See, e.g. Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial
Pollution. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. University of California
Press, 2002. See also Toxic Sludge is Good For You and Trust Us We're
Experts, both by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, and The Republican
War on Science, by Chris Mooney.

[13] These include e.g., (#1) Require full disclosures of any and all
sponsor involvement in scientific studies; (#3) Manufacturers must
disclose what they know about the toxicity of their products; (#5)
Hold real people accountable for the accuracy-and completeness - of
statements of corporations and trade groups.

[14] See, e.g., "sound science" policies statements by the Vinyl
Institute, p. 16, https://www.usgbc.org/Docs/LEED_tsac/PVC - Vinyl
Institute - Nov20-2000.pdf and most recently at
http://www.vinylinfo.org/HealthCare/VIResponsetoLEEDHC.aspx and
http://www.vinylinfo.org/HealthCare/VIResponsetoLEEDHC/Question2.aspx
: "PBT reduction strategies based on sound science have already been
widely and effectively implemented . . . ."; see also, "sound science"
policy of Weyerhaeuser timber company at p.16)
http://www.weyerhaeuser.com/pdfs/Sustainability/Weyerhaeuser_LookForProof.pdf

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