Cancer adviser 'paid by chemicals firm'
Sir Richard Doll advised on links between cancer and chemicals for 20 years
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Friday, 08, Dec 2006 02:02
An internationally-recognised expert on the causes of cancer received a daily consultant's fee from a US chemicals company for 20 years during his investigations, it was today claimed.
According to the Guardian newspaper Sir Richard Doll, who died last year aged 83, was paid $1,500 (£765) a day from Monsanto while advising on one of their products to the royal Australian commission.
The Briton, who was the first person to make the connection between smoking and lung cancer, told the commission that there was no evidence linking Agent Orange, a chemical manufactured by Monsanto, to cancer.
In addition, the paper says that it has seen documents that reveal the epidemiologist was paid a one-off fee of £15,000 by the Chemical Manufacturers Association, as well as receiving payments from Dow Chemicals and ICI.
The view that increased cases of cancer across the world are attributable to modern lifestyles and not the prevalence of chemicals and other pollutants is largely a result of Sir Richard's conclusions.
But Sir Richard Peto, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at the University of Oxford, today denied the claims that his former colleague was influenced by the money he received, instead saying that he donated the majority of his earnings to charity.
"Everybody working in this area knew that Richard worked for industry and consulted for industry, and would do court cases. It does not in any sense suggest that his work was biased. He was incredibly careful to avoid bias and to avoid conflicts of interest," he told the Today programme.
"He didn't keep the money himself in general - I don't know whether he ever kept any but in general he just gave it away."
Speaking on the same programme, however, professor Lennart Hardell of Sweden's University Hospital Orebro said that Sir Richard purposefully played down connections between chemicals and cancer risks.
"He was a paid consultant for these companies and he was giving advice to these companies, but he was also writing scientific papers re-evaluating the issues, and without acknowledgement of his payment from the chemical industry," he said.
"This will cause a moral and ethical problem also because if you know any conflict of interest regarding the authors of an article you can of course make another judgement of their work."