CREATED 10/10/2010
WARNING:
This site deals only with the corporate corruption of science, and makes no inference about the motives or activities of individuals involved.
There are many reasons why individuals become embroiled in corporate corruption activities - from political zealotry to over-enthusiastic activism; from gullibility to greed.
Please read the OVERVIEW carefully, and make up your own mind.
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OPINION ONLY
C Stephen Redhead
— A physiologist at the Congressional Research Center who became friends with Steven Milloy. He was embroiled in controversy over the Granvelle CRS report attacking the EPA's anti-tobacco stance. —
Some key documents • Redhead was a physiologist working with the Congressional Research Center,
1993 Apr 20: Congressional Research Servioe. Mortality and Economic Costs Attributable to Smoking and Alcohol Abuse, Report 93-426 SPR by C. Stephen Redhead,
 
1994 Mar 8: The Report on the economic costs of ETS are presented to Congress by the report's authors, economists Jane G Gravelle and Dennis Zimmerman. This is dealing with the fairness of funding health care reform via cigarette taxes.
1994 Mar 23: Gravelle and Redhead answer a request for information as to the source of the estimated premature 50,000 deaths from passive smoking. The EPA says these number 3,000 — but this refers only to lung cancer. The figure of 50,000 came from the 21 July 1993 testimony of AMA's Health & Environment Subcommittee to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and they apparently took it from A Judson Wells estimates made in 1988.
1995 May 24:: Meeting over CRS report - [517496564]
1995 May 22: Worked on Draft report on the Second CRS workshop s with Dr Rowberg. They are formulating another CRS report into ETS and meeting with tobacco people for data. [528170134/0136]
1995 Jun 13:: good friends with Steve Milloy - [525312064]
1995 Jun: A workshop to evaluate the draft turned into a "shouting match" — The CRS had relied on unpublished, industry-funded data on workplace exposure,
and one of the sponsors, Senator Ford, planned to use it to "kill OSHA's rule"
1995 Jun: CRS Workshop Draft on ETS and lung-cancer. This focuses on three epidemiological studies not considered by the EPA - Brownson, Stockwell and (1994) Fontham (1991 Fontham was considered by EPA)
It"departs from previous CRS analysis of the ETS issue in that it concludes that:
- ETS satisfies the criteria for causality in relation to lung cancer risk,
- There is a discernable risk of lung cancer for non-smoking spouses (with "heavy" smokers)
- possible to calculate approx 700 to 1780 lung cancer deaths from ETS exposure in US.
Says C Stephen Redhead and Richard E Rowberg did this Draft analysis, Previous reports and testimony were principally authored by Jane Gravelle.
1995 June 2: Brown & Williamson Tobacco have received a draft copy of a cover-note of the CRS Workshop's review of EPA's risk assessment on ETS, by C Stephen Redhead and Richard E Rowberg. This is a CRS internal audit, they are reviewing the original report made by their associate Jane Gravelle about the quality of the EPA's risk assessment of passive smoking. They say:
The main conclusions of the EPA risk assessment are: ETS causes lung cancer in nonsmoking adults; ETS is responsible for approximately 3,000 nonsmoker lung cancer deaths per year in the US; ETS is classified as a Group A ("known human") carcinogen, and ETS exposures are causally related to respiratory symptoms and disease in children. They also characterise the previous Gravelle & Zimmermann report as: Previous CRS analyses of the EPA's position concluded that the statistical data relied upon by the EPA do not support the claim that ETS is a Group A carcinogen. They then examine the evidence used by the EPA.
The report was heavily criticized for a number of shortcomings. One criticism, pertinent to the currant CRS workshop Draft, was that the EPA did not include in its analyses the data from two publicly available spousal smoking studies. Those studies were conducted by Brownson, at al. (1992) and Stockwell, at al. (1992).
It was argued that had the EPA included the data from the Brownson, et al. and Stockwell, et al. studies, it would have been unable to reach its conclusion on ETS. It then focussed on these two studies, and included a third, the 1994 Fontham study.
It comes to the conclusion that all three of the new studies support the EPA and that: - passive smoking can be said to cause lung cancer
- heavy smokers can give their non-smoking spouses lung-cancer
- this probably results in between 700 and 1780 lung-cancer deaths each year in the US.
[B&W and BAT would probably have received this draft via the APCO/Steve Milloy's Issueswatch operation]
1995 Jun 13: good friends with Steve Milloy - [525312064]
1995 Nov: Reference: "Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer Risk"
C. Stephen Redhead, Analyst in Life Sciences and Richard E. Rowberg, Senior Specialist in Science and Technology. Science Policy Research Division. Congressional Research Service, November 1995
1995 Nov 17: (Faxed from CIAR) "A report to be released withing a few days.. cast doubt on ETS serious cancer risk "An early draft of the CRS report, done at the request of Waxman and Ford, came down hard on OSHA, concluding the risks are significant only for highly exposed groups such as spouses of heavy smokers
1996 Jan: /E In early 1996 the CRS had written to Philip Morris wanting to know what they were doing about underage access to cigarettes.
1996 Jul: /E An Americans for Non-Smokers's Rights (ANR) newsletter reports that Redhead told a Canadian newspaper that the tobacco industry was mis-using his report paper. He said the report agreed with the EPA's carcinogenic classificiation. [Actually, they confuse two CRS reports, one which does and one which doesn't.
Redhead appears genuine, but he initially supported Gravelle in the dubious initial pro-tobacco CRC report on ETS, and he may later have been conned by his friendship with Steve Milloy.] [2057980926]
1996 Feb 9.: S Katherine Hammond of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, writes a scathing commenary in her peer review of the Workshop Draft of ETS and Lung Cancer (which had been written by C Stephen Redhead and Richard E Rowberg) at the CRS: The May 24 Draft of the Congressional Research Service report on Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer is superficial, inaccurate, and careless in the extreme. It will require extensive revision before it is of acceptable quality to be released anywhere.
As the report is currently written, I would reject it if it were submitted to a peer-reviewed journal; furthermore, I would find this I unacceptable work from a graduate student. This document is an embarrassment to the Library of Congress and the Congressional Research Service. As a taxpayer , I am shocked and deeply disturbed by this shoddy, sloppy report from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress.
The report reflects an inadequate understanding not only of epidemiology and risk assessment, but, more fundamentally, of science itself.
[There are another 13 pages of detailled criticism in the same vein]
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WORTH READING
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