Monsanto bribed scientist on Agent Orange and cancer

This video is about the consequences of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Tainted legacy

(Friday 08 December 2006)

THERE is a lesson in the news that Prime Minister Tony Blair should take to heart and that is that history does not absolve you and it does not forgive.

Professor Sir Richard Doll, the eminent scientist whose professional opinion cleared the virulent defoliant Agent Orange of causing cancer during its use by the US in the Vietnam war, died last year.

But among his personal papers has been found a contract with Monsanto, the firm now best known for its work on genetically modified crops, but which, back in the days of the Vietnam conflict, manufactured – Yes, you’ve guessed it – Agent Orange.

And this was not just a one-off contract.

It was an extension of a commission that ran from May 1979 until its one-year renewal at a fee of $1,500 a day in 1986.

It was during that extension that he wrote his evidence to an Australian commission on Agent Orange, declaring that there was no evidence that it caused cancer.

Sir Richard was also paid a £15,000 fee by the Chemical Manufacturers Association and chemicals companies Dow Chemical and ICI for a review of vinyl chloride, which is used in plastics manufacture, clearing the substance of any link with most cancers, a view to which the World Health Organisation takes decided exception.

However, even in the light of this, it would be wrong to write off all of Sir Richard’s work. He gave valuable service on, among other things, asbestos contamination and he made no secret of his forthright anti-Iraq war position.

But these revelations cast a long shadow over his evidence in relation to Agent Orange and, in this context, it is not sufficient to say, as US politician Madeleine Albright famously claimed: “We need more facts.”