| TOXIC TRUTH A Scientist, a Doctor, and the Battle over Lead Lydia Denworth Boston: Beacon Press, March 2008 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-8070-0032-8 | ||||
| ISBN 0-8070-0032-9 | 249pp. | HC | $27.95 | |
I've noted elsewhere that the hallmark of a scientist is the passion to discover how some aspect of the world works: to ask a profound question, to restlessly seek to answer it, and to accept the answer — no matter what the answer turns out to be. For Clair Patterson, the question was "How old is the Earth?" Finding the answer led him to spend years building a laboratory clean enough of lead that he could accurately measure the minute quantities left in meteorites by the radioactive decay of uranium. His laboratory and the rigorous procedures his work required became a refuge from a world of contamination, in more than one sense. For objective truth is also subject to contamination by factors the true scientist instinctively shuns.
Just like the lead spewing from automobile exhaust, once Patterson's theory was out in the world, it would never entirely go away. Industry was going to have to deal with it. And so, for that matter, was Patterson. Like many scientists, he preferred the purity and objectivity of science to the messy, emotional world of politics. Science came naturally to him; activism did not. "There's a bewitching attraction to pure science," he said. "It remains an abstract, beautiful refuge ... disconnected from the dirty world." – Page 57 |
But, as the author notes in the following paragraph, there came a point where the implications of his discoveries forced him to engage the forces of the "dirty world." He did so with enthusiasm.
Herb Needleman, a physician, was always involved in the messy real world. Yet like any dedicated healer he held on to his ideals. After he had moved from Philadelphia to Harvard Medical School, his pioneering work on diagnosing and treating lead poisoning in children brought him wide recognition, and he received many invitations. One was to a swanky dinner at Boston's St. Botolph Club. Briefly, what happened was that the after-dinner speaker expressed the view that since pollution was here to stay, the thing to do was to study how to make the human body resistant to its effects. The author has the story of Needleman's response on pages 138-9.
One by one," says Needleman, "these stars got up and said this was the way of the future, that they had to work with the oil industry." [...] "I kept telling myself to shut up. I knew if I spoke up, I'd pay for it. But if I didn't, I'd pay for it in other ways. It would haunt me. One has to live with oneself." He raised his hand and stood. "I depend on research support and hustle grants as much as anyone here, but what I've heard tonight goes against the grain of one hundred years of public health history," he said. "The first step in dealing with environmental toxicants is to stop their production; the second is to build barriers between the toxicant and the host; and, finally, when those two have been accomplished, to strengthen the resistance of the host to the agent." – Page 138 |
He sat down amid silence, Denworth reports — until an epidemiologist rose to point out that the funding potential was not just millions but hundreds of millions. That's an impressive figure, to be sure. Equally impressive is the potential for corruption.
Health policy expert Lisa Bero of the University of California San Francisco has done extensive research on the quality of industry-funded research. She found that researchers with industry ties were 88 times more likely to find no harm from secondhand smoke. In studies comparing the efficacy of cholesterol drugs, work funded by drug companies was twenty times more likely to favor the drug of the sponsor. – Pages 139-40 |
So the captains of industry, worldly defenders of the free market, have a refuge of their own. That is the status quo, the refuge of business as usual. It seems to me a poor sanctuary. Few things are as transitory, as evanescent, as the status quo — in token of which some feel it must be defended by all sorts of subterfuge and, power permitting, by outright oppression. But oppression by corporations is more expensive to maintain, and more fraught with risk, than a dictatorial government. The corporation's power flows from profits, and profits flow from purchases by a willing customer base. Any product or service that harms its purchasers will quickly be abandoned, unless it is essential and no superior alternative can be found. History shows that prospect to be unlikely in the extreme. For this reason, enlightened corporate executives will admit problems and seek to resolve them. They know that neither subterfuge nor coercion can sustain a business for long.
Say what you will about the egghead academic or the ivory-tower scientist, incapable of understanding or functioning in the real world. They do exist. But those who depend on this stereotype to deride all scientific work they dislike forget that the essential nature of science is to be self-correcting. Flawed theories cannot survive, because there will always be another scientist who finds the flaws and reveals them to the world. The science establishment is set up to foster this correction; it is how the upstart makes his reputation. The same process shuts down the upstart if he is the one propounding the flawed theory. When a valid theory arrives, it endures until something better comes along. All the industrial might in the cosmos cannot change a scientific truth.
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"Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger." – Gordon Dickson, The Tactics of Mistake |
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