conflict of interest: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )
Industry-funded studies have promoted false doubts about EMF cancer risks and led to the failure of the public health community to reduce exposures, argues David Carpenter in a paper published last week in Environmental Research.
Carpenter, the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany in upstate New York, shows that, over the last 20 years, findings on the link...
By Lennart Hardell. A review of WHO and ICNIRP’s roles in the ongoing evaluation of RF and health. Includes details of a March meeting with WHO’s Maria Neira, who denied there are any conflicts of interest at work. Open access.
“This historical account of industry efforts demonstrates the importance of having reviews written by people without conflicts of interest and the need for financial disclosure.” From Stanton Glantz’s Center for Tobacco Research. Open access. More than 10 years ago the electric utility industry paid Leeka Kheifets $50,000 for a literature review.
“[F]inancial relationships are clearly associated with the direction of reported scientific findings.”
“Our study demonstrated that the cohort studies on occupational exposures and cancer published by authors belonging to the private sector (industry or consultant), or funded by the private sector, concluded significantly less often that an excess of risk of cancer was found than those published by authors affiliated to universities or public institutions. Furthermore, private authors more frequently downplayed the risk in the Conclusion section of the abstract, as compared to the Results section, than public authors did.”
Lancet Oncology, the journal which published the official announcement of IARC’s decision to designate RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen, has issued a correction to the conflict of interest (COI) statement it had included for...
Judith Richter of the University of Zurich’s Center for Ethics, asks: “Why do member states find it acceptable that an international public agency can be funded by corporate donors?” See also her related commentary in Social Medicine.
Riccardo Staglianò profiles Paolo Boffetta, “The Devil’s Advocate,” currently the director of the Institute for Translational Epidemiology at Mount SInai Hospital in New York City.
Last year, sensing that the upcoming IARC assessment might undercut his legacy at both the WHO and ICNIRP, Mike Repacholi assembled a team to prepare its own assessment of the possible tumor risks from RF radiation: That review has just been released by the journal...