Welcoming the Post-IARC World
The US Government puts a health warning on the cancer agency’s low-quality hazard assessments
This week the US Department of State, together (nominally) with the Department of Health and Human Services, effectively discredited any scientific decisions coming out of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Their media note from June 8 concluded that IARC’s hazard assessments were inconsistent, not transparent, and not applicable to any real-world situations. In other words, its science was junk and any IARC findings should not be treated as “definitive” in the United States. Every country should come to this same conclusion.
While I am very pleased with these pronouncements that echo what I have been arguing for over a decade, I somehow cannot imagine that RFK Jr actually signed on to this decision. The former tort lawyer’s law firm, now called Wisner Baum, has pocketed millions of dollars from glyphosate lawsuits solely based on the corrupted IARC Monograph 112 – the only scientific agency document to have claimed that glyphosate was probably carcinogenic.
Surely RFK Jr could also not possibly accept the criticisms of IARC in the Department of State media note. Here are some of the more damning charges:
“Too often, broad classifications based on limited or theoretical risks can create unnecessary public confusion, undermine confidence in everyday products and industries, and lead to policy outcomes that are disconnected from actual exposure and modern scientific standards.” In other words, IARC’s junk science only creates public fear and distrust of actual exposure levels and modern science.
“IARC’s findings and monographs often blur the line between hazard and true risk, while diminishing independently verified findings of other research institutions.” That means to say that IARC’s hazard assessments have repeatedly undermined conclusions from regulatory risk assessment agencies like the US EPA and FDA.
“Furthermore, IARC’s research provides diminishing returns on scientific enterprise, while advancing politicized narratives that are often cited for U.S. domestic legal contexts.” The Department of State has recognized that IARC monographs are misused by the US litigation industry. The politicized narratives” refer to activist NGO fear campaigns built upon IARC claims.
The phrase “diminishing returns on scientific enterprise” implies that IARC’s monographs are political, activist driven and opportunistic – anything but scientific. These quotes seem to suggest that people in the Department of State had read the recent monograph on IARC by Nathan Schachtmen (see the Firebreak’s review of this damning report).
A Post-IARC World
As IARC seems to finally be done and dusted, we need to ask what a post-IARC world will look like. In reality, it will look quite good.
Fewer Predatort Extortions. Without the influence of IARC’s manufactured evidence on the US litigation industry, there will be fewer bogus lawsuits filed solely on claims that a WHO cancer agency has determined a substance to be carcinogenic (spoiler alert: all IARC monographs conclude carcinogenicity). There would never have been the hundreds of thousands of glyphosate or talc lawsuits had IARC been a responsible research agency.
Fewer Corrupted Scientists. With the loss of lucrative funds for “litigation consultants” (averaging more than $500 an hour), scientists will lose interest in being involved with or supportive to the monograph program. As IARC becomes stigmatized, fewer opportunistic scientists will also be involved with the Collegium Ramazzini, an organization that is now also struggling to survive.
Less Fearmongering Activism. As IARC pronouncements become meaningless, NGOs, law firms and special interest groups will not be able to manipulate the public, regulators or the media with bogus, fear-laden claims based on useless hazard assessments. You will no longer hear claims like: “The WHO cancer research agency has declared…”
Less Ignorance. IARC monographs have been used as a basis for disinformation campaigns by opportunistic Predatort lawyers, activist NGOs and controversy-driven journalists. The fear their monographs have produced has resulted in a rush to alternatives (often more harmful), a distrust of industry and pointless public disquiet. Fear leads to misunderstanding, so the muting of IARC will reduce ignorance.
One interesting point worth noting. No one is arguing that a world without IARC will have negative consequences for our understanding of carcinogens or the advances in finding cures. Most significant research and development in cancer detection and treatment comes from industry, and IARC has prohibited any involvement with any scientist remotely tied to industry. Nothing positive will be lost when IARC shuts down.
Slowly but surely, other IARC member countries will pull back their funding and involvement, and budgets will have to be slashed. The IARC Monograph Program will likely be forced to take the WHO’s tobacco control route and rely fully on philanthropist project funding to survive. And like the decline of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, expect lower quality science and even higher political inputs as IARC has to submit to some special interest foundations and billionaires to pay the rent.
How Did This WHO Agency Go Off the Rails?
There are many reasons why IARC’s decline evolved to the state it is in today.
Corrupted, Politicized Activist Science. At one point in my IARC curation, I catalogued 30 scientific integrity transgressions. I called it IARC’s Dirty Thirty, but I was more stunned that these activist scientists felt they could operate with impunity. Shortly after that, the head of IARC’s monograph program, Kurt Straif was “hurriedly retired”, but it seems with recent monographs like gasoline and talc, that they are back to their same old shenanigans.
Close Ties to the US Litigation Industry. It was impressive that the Department of State media note expressly mentioned the role IARC has played in providing doctored evidence bespoke for law firms suing industries, in what has been called the La Jolla Playbook. The close ties between IARC (Ramazzini) connected scientists and the law firms that employ them to produce research, documents and testimonies has tarnished the reputation of the cancer agency. It is absurd to think that IARC was actually compelled to hold a supplementary monograph meeting on benzene because the law firms the IARC-networked scientists were working for had a large number of plaintiffs that needed a report that links benzene with a certain type of cancer.
Overly Zealous Cancer Classifications. IARC’s hazard-based approach has been misused to produce an excessive number of carcinogenic classifications that have become meaningless from a practical point of view. But one could argue that a hazard assessment is the first step in a risk assessment (if only IARC had considered that their role ended there). However, ten scientists tied to both IARC and the US litigation industry, pushed the classification process too far and too fast with their Ten Key Characteristics of Carcinogens (that was then rushed into the IARC Preamble). This checklist approach allowed any substance to be classified as a carcinogen, allowing IARC to “upgrade” its past classifications to make substances more convincingly carcinogenic in a court of law. There was no scientific value to this checklist and the Department of State has finally taken notice.
IARC may survive for a few more years as a hollowed shell, providing shared data on cancer rates and organizing a conference or two each year. The monograph program will be cut back into obscurity, and the organization will lose its platform for activist Ramazzini scientists to run their campaigns for their clients. IARC will soon be forgotten.
A personal note
To close on a personal note, many people know how long I have been challenging IARC’s activism, the consequences I have suffered and the walls of silence in the media I have been confronting. Several have asked me how I feel after seeing this statement by the US government that confirms what I have always been working toward. My feelings haven’t changed from that day nine years ago when I first discovered how an IARC insider, Christopher Portier, had worked as a liaison between IARC, Ramazzini and the US litigation industry to produce evidence for hundreds of thousands of glyphosate lawsuits, earning billions for the litigation industry (but not for the plaintiffs). That exposé broke the image of IARC as a credible research agency, so perhaps my reaction on that first day is still suitable today, as IARC is facing the coming end to its days.
IARC has intentionally caused such a colossal waste of time, money and energy. I won’t feel sad when that dreadful WHO agency finally shuts down.