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Doubt is Their Product
How industry's assault on science threatens your health
Edited by David Michaels
384 pages
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10 illustrations
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234x156mm
978-0-19-530067-3
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Hardback
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01 May 2008
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- A controversial account of how regulatory agencies are being undermined - and public health endangered - by unethical corporations and the scientists who work for them
"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 behaviour 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.Readership: Health service managers, health policy makers.
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Edited by David Michaels, Research Professor and Associate Chairman, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, USA
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"...a powerful, thorough endictment of the way big business has ignored, suppressed or distored vital scientific evidence to the detriment of the public's health." - Nature
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Introduction: "Sound Science" or "Sounds Like Science?"
1: The Manufacture of Science
2: Workplace Cancer before OSHA: Waiting for the Body Count
3: America Demands Protection
4: Why our Children are Smarter Than We Are
5: The Enronization of Science
6: Tricks of the Trade: How Mercenary Scientists Mislead You
7: Defending Secondhand Smoke
8: Still Waiting for the Body Count
9: Chrome-Plated Mischief
10: Popcorn Lung: OSHA Gives Up
11: Defending the Taxicab Standard
12: The Country has a Drug Problem
13: Daubert: The Most Influential Supreme Court Ruling You've Never Heard Of
14: The Institutionalization of Uncertainty
15: The Bush Administration's Political Science
16: Making Peace with the Past
17: Four Ways to Make the Courts Count
18: Sarbanes-Oxley for Science: A Dozen Ways to Improve Our Regulatory System
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