In February 2019, I released my most damning exposé on corruption inside the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), revealing four egregious scandals in one article. As the research was thorough, the article was quite long. It was also a sub-section of a complex series on how US tort law firms are manipulating scientists and the regulatory research process. I have been advised to rewrite the content outside of the SlimeGate series vocabulary putting them into shorter articles. So the content of that exposé has been broken down into four separate scandals presented with clearer journalistic vocabulary and images. I have also added a significant amount of new research to each section.
Part 1: IARC Monographs Produced for US Tort Law Firms
Part 2: IARC Hiding Conflicts of Interest
Part 3: The Glyphosate Gameplan
Part 4: IARC’s Ruthless Mercenaries

This section closes the Corruption of IARC series by examining the ruthless tactics used towards those who would dare disagree with IARC’s monograph series.

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When an organisation is consciously corrupt, it tends to spend a good part of its time covering up transgressions and trying to defend itself with walls of deception. IARC does this by aggressively attacking those (institutions, regulatory agencies, media and scientists) who challenge them. I have frankly never seen an agency that is so ruthlessly relentless towards parties it has deemed a threat.

This section will show several cases of the bully tactics IARC uses on their “enemies” (scientists who disagree with them). While any science organisation or scientist should welcome an engaging debate on theories or documents (a robust science is one that can withstand challenges or attempts to be falsified), IARC responds with ad hominem attacks on scientists, underhanded third party critiques, the unleashing of a pack of feral journalists and outright bullying on journals who don’t give in to their demands.

From such hostile and arrogant activities, this article will conclude that IARC does not behave like a reputable scientific organisation. It has demonstrated an obsessive, disgraceful and irresponsible behaviour that, in itself, apart from the ethics and poor research levels, should call into question its very right to exist. In short: IARC is corrupt.

Mission: Stop EFSA

After IARC published its monograph on glyphosate in 2015, EFSA went back and reexamined the evidence relative to their own risk assessment and concluded there was no new or worthwhile evidence in the IARC monograph to justify the claim that glyphosate is carcinogenic to humans. OK, not a big deal: IARC did a hazard assessment which has limited value (as an indicator for more research) in merely recommending that risk management authorities like EFSA should then conduct a proper risk assessment.

Well maybe EFSA did go a bit further – it actually contradicted IARC in concluding that glyphosate was not even a hazard, let alone a risk.

“Following a second mandate from the European Commission to consider the findings from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) regarding the potential carcinogenicity of glyphosate or glyphosate‐containing plant protection products in the on‐going peer review of the active substance, EFSA concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans and the evidence does not support classification with regard to its carcinogenic potential according to Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008. “

So according to EFSA, IARC really got it wrong … even as a mere hazard assessment. From this, IARC adopted a war footing against EFSA.

The lead author of IARC’s glyphosate monograph, Kate Guyton took to criticising EFSA via journalists. Kate’s go-to person to get IARC’s position transmitted word-for-word in the press is Le Monde’s anti-industry feral reporter, Stéphane Foucart. When EFSA’s clear position was making IARC look bad, Guyton fed Foucart an info-package on how IARC has better qualified scientists than EFSA. When I reported on how IARC was using Foucart as their puppet in their little ‘spat’ with EFSA and that the Le Monde journalist was merely aping IARC’s talking points, the French daily and Foucart threatened to sue my blog-host at the time, EurActiv. Seeing released annex documents from the Portier Daubert hearing I shuddered at how Guyton indeed had contacted Foucart to push IARC’s interests in this EFSA attack article (with Chris Portier in tow no less). Foucart’s lawsuit threat turned out to be hollow hypocrisy.

Stéphane Foucart claims to be a journalist but his anti-industry activist bias leaves him as perhaps the most disgraceful symbol of the decline in French intellectualism. Defined by his dogma, IARC has found the perfect puppet to spread their PR and activist science. Foucart has even expressed a readiness to parrot whatever Portier wants him to say … on a weekly basis. While Stéphane may be thrilled to be IARC’s little man in LeMonde, this idolatry is certainly not journalism (… it is actually quite sad).

After I had released the Portier Papers showing that the key actor to defend IARC was secretly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from US tort law firms suing Monsanto for cancers they allege were caused by glyphosate, IARC again fed Foucart with information for a response article. IARC even gave Le Monde a quote of the Monsanto observer expressing positive comments on the IARC process. Foucart was so livid about the Portier Papers, he couldn’t even use my name, instead, in true yellow journalism tradition, he referred to my blog as “Monsanto’s last manoeuvre”. A few weeks later, in a press statement attacking Reuter’s Kate Kellland, IARC quoted and referenced this combined effort in Le Monde.

I sometimes wonder whether IARC’s Kate Guyton actually thinks she is as a scientist or does she fancy herself more as an activist meddling in European Union affairs? See a high-level internal email on the progress in IARC’s apparent campaign to ban glyphosate (that Guyton felt compelled to then forward to two IARC Good Old Boys involved in the IARC Monograph 112, Ivan Rusyn and Chris Portier). Does IARC use its over-paid manpower to provide quality scientific data or to run puerile activist campaigns? It is important to know Guyton’s motives as she is presently “Acting Head of IARC’s Monograph Programme” and may soon be promoted to permanent head. With all of her meddling and bias outside of the scientific domain, Guyton should be fired and the Monograph Programme shut down.

The then head of the IARC Monograph Programme, Kurt Straif, was no better given his own ad hominem attacks on other scientific institutions. He went on EuroNews to express how concerned he was that other agencies (including the WHO) collude with industry. When the journalist repeated an activist claim that a large number of scientists in a study that contradicted IARC’s glyphosate conclusion “received payoffs by Monsanto”, Dr Straif could have defended the vast majority of members of the scientific establishment who work with dignity and integrity. He could have corrected the journalist on her cheap fear-mongering behaviour. Instead he agreed with the unfounded claim, nodding his head and saying this was “an important topic that needed important scrutiny”. What a disgraceful thing to do for a man representing a WHO scientific organisation.

The Mercenary Man

The main defence tool in the IARC Glyphosate Gameplan though was Chris Portier who was apparently designated to protect the credibility of the glyphosate monograph amid criticisms from other scientific institutions.

According to Portier’s Daubert hearing testimony, on November 9, ten days after EFSA published their reaction to the IARC monograph citing no evidence to suggest glyphosate was a carcinogen, Chris wrote IARC reassuring them he did not intend to let others undermine the process or content of Monograph 112. The man with serious skin in the game stated emphatically “I do not intend to let this happen!” I imagine IARC must have been aware that Chris was being paid by several US tort law firms for all of his time spent attacking the EPA, EFSA and the BfR on their behalf.

Two weeks later, Portier wrote a letter to Dr Andriukaitis demanding the European Health Commissioner “disregard the flawed EFSA finding” on the safety of glyphosate. We know that Portier got support from Linda Birnbaum’s office on the content of that letter and many of the names of the 96 signatories (Chapter 7 of SlimeGate will discuss this stealth institutional meddling), but how much help did IARC’s Straif and Guyton lend to Chris? We also know IARC was involved with this anti-EFSA letter as they gave a list of emails to Portier to trawl for signatories for his letter. Chris was not working alone in the campaign against EFSA on glyphosate.

I am sure IARC had written this passage of the Andriukaitis letter:

“The IARC WG decision was reached relying on open and transparent procedures by independent scientists who completed thorough conflict-of-interest statements and were not affiliated or financially supported in any way by the chemical manufacturing industry. “

… because poor Chris had so many tort lawyers breathing up his backside on this letter there would be no way his conscience would have allowed him to stomach such a lie (although indeed in this letter Portier somehow still failed to claim the conflict of interest of his affiliation with the law firms paying his rent).

In March, 2016, Portier published another letter (this time in the BMJ) once again extolling the virtues of IARC with similar criticisms hurled on EFSA (again signed by 95 scientists, mostly IARC Good Old Boys).

In 2017, Chris was again recruited into action writing a letter to Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, this time trying to catch EFSA on a mistake in their data interpretation. Portier was being handled on this campaign by Corporate Europe Observatory’s Monsanto-hunter, Martin Pigeon, and their letter once again used vocabulary like: “lack of transparency” or “scientifically flawed”. Because CEO used Portier’s research for an anti-industry slam, nobody took much notice. The bias was no longer subtle and was becoming boring.

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When we see IARC secretly pulling strings behind journalists and litigation consultants, we need to ask: Should an international scientific agency with a mandate to present the best available science on cancer research be spending so much of its time attacking other institutions, using journalists and getting involved in policy?

Unfortunately, it gets worse.

The Tarone Tactic

But what about when respected academics criticise IARC? Will they listen respectfully or will they get the heavy artillery out?

Dr Robert Tarone is a distinguished scientist who recently retired after 28 years as Mathematical Statistician at the US National Cancer Institute and 14 years as Biostatistics Director at the International Epidemiology Institute. He published a paper in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention (EJCP) entitled “On the International Agency for Research on Cancer classification of glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen”.

Tarone noted serious issues with the IARC Monograph 112 chapter on glyphosate, notably the omission of exculpatory tumour data, faulty statistical analyses of rodent tumour data, a flawed summary of research in certain papers and the exclusion of relevant US Agricultural Health Study (AHS) data that would have affected the conclusion on glyphosate’s carcinogenicity. He also noted that IARC’s routine, selective exclusion of researchers with ties to industry from Monograph Working Groups almost certainly led to systematic bias which increased the likelihood of incorrect classifications of potential carcinogenic risks.

After Dr Tarone’s article was published online, IARC Monograph staff Dana Loomis, Kurt Straif and Kate Guyton submitted a response letter to the EJCP journal editor in December 2016.  The IARC response did not provide evidence to rebut Tarone’s criticisms, and in particular, it did not refute that strong exculpatory rodent tumour evidence had been excluded. 

The IARC letter raised technical issues about whether Tarone’s paper should be considered a research paper and questioned whether Tarone had a conflict of interest regarding Monsanto (Dr Tarone advised a Monsanto lawyer on a general question but had a fee of 750 USD paid to the International Epidemiology Institute – he personally received nothing).  Tarone agreed that the IARC letter should be published along with his letter rebutting the IARC response, and both letters were initially accepted for publication in the EJCP.   

Then things got very strange. EJCP’s publisher, Wolters Kluwer, intervened to stop the publication of the two letters (from Loomis, Guyton and Straif and from Tarone), citing the controversial nature and tone of the conversation, indicating that changes should be made in the original paper. The letters were never published. Dana Loomis, the deputy head of the IARC Monographs Programme, then threatened to open a COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) investigation on the journal if Tarone’s original paper was not amended to IARC’s satisfaction.  The journal editor stood firm in his support of the paper, agreeing however, to some minor changes to try to placate IARC.

Apart from this, IARC posted a statement on its website in June 2017 raising questions about Tarone’s industry conflicts of interest (because he had dared to criticize the IARC glyphosate classification).  IARC’s network of feral journalists fell in line, using the IARC post to publicly paint Tarone as a Monsanto shill.

A COPE ethics investigation was initiated, reportedly by Loomis on behalf of IARC, but the attempt to discredit the scientist failed.  The ethics complaint was resolved, but the COPE investigation probably contributed to delaying the print publication of Dr Tarone’s article by over a year. It appeared online in August 2016 and in print in January 2018.

Some questions need to be asked here. Should IARC resources be wasted on such obstructionist nonsense? Should a supposedly science-based agency try to bully authors, journal editors or publishers when they disagree with research content? Should IARC resort to unfounded ad hominem attacks on distinguished scientists when the cancer research agency is unable to provide scientific rebuttals to legitimate criticism? It would appear that this WHO agency was behaving in an immature, irresponsible manner.

This was not the last word from IARC.  Their relentless ruthlessness reappeared when IARC recruited four of its Good Old Boys, including two past directors of the IARC Monograph Programme,  to take another swipe at Dr Tarone a month after his article finally appeared in print.

The Infante Terrible

Peter Infante is a good example of an IARC Good Old Boy. A Ramazzini fellow, he does not work as a scientist but as a litigation consultant (mostly on benzene). He attended the last two IARC benzene monographs as an observer (a position usually reserved for people with conflicts of interest like industry actors or governments who will be affected by the consequences of IARC monograph conclusions). He openly declared his interest: representing tort law firms for benzene lawsuits.

In early 2018, Infante wrote a scathing article against anyone who would dare question the pronouncements of IARC and the value it provides to scientists like, well, himself.  The title said it all: “IARC Monographs Program and public health under siege by corporate interests”.  Infante reinforced the “Monsanto bought the world” conspiracy theory, even referencing sources and documents from activist lobbyists in US Right to Know and Corporate Europe Observatory (I wish I were making this up!). It was co-authored by other IARC Good Old Boys, litigation consultants and Ramazzini fellows: James Huff, Ronald Melnick and Harri Vainio, former IARC manager now serving as a toxicologist at the Kuwait University (also the better half of Elisabete Weiderpass, IARC’s new Director who seemingly stopped using her hyphenated married name when her star started rising within IARC … Ouch!).

The commentary piece was stunning in its visceral and indignant attacks accusing, for example, scientists like Robert Tarone (see above) of being in the pocket of Monsanto. Then, Infante took aim at Reuters journalist, Kate Kelland (see below), claiming she was a Monsanto mouthpiece. At one point, the commentary rifled off a series of academic references referring to all of them as funded or influenced by, yes, Monsanto. These apparently derogatory claims were made without any evidence but made to sting and slander anyone who would dare question IARC’s legitimacy. Dr Tarone wrote a measured reply to Infante’s rage, reminding him of some basic rules of scientific integrity. Tarone states:

“It is incumbent upon the defenders of IARC to address the highly questionable and selective summary of glyphosate rodent studies forthrightly, rather than to question the motivation of critics of the IARC glyphosate classification and to continue to argue from authority that IARC Monograph procedures are beyond reproach.“

I have never seen IARC engage in scientific discussions post-publication (they, rather, assume an “arrogance of infallibility”) and frankly I feel the present cabal in Lyon is incapable of such basic scientific responsibility. But to recruit someone like Infante (and three other litigation consultants) to reinforce IARC’s “Us against Monsanto” messianic complex defies logic at any level.

Infante was, in ice hockey terms, playing the role of IARC’s “enforcer”, ready to beat up and discredit anyone who was a threat. The gloves were off but who was giving the marching orders? It is curious that while Infante gave no proof to his claims on Kate Kelland, about a year after his outburst, it was revealed that an email between a Monsanto manager and the Reuters journalist was sealed in court. Were lawyers suing Monsanto leaking confidential documents to IARC and Infante for his article? Was that illegal? Shortly after, the usual suspects in IARC’s corral of feral journalists were laying into Ms Kelland on the basis of this mystery email, freely adding their own malicious yet unfounded content.

Now comes the hypocrisy hypothesis.

How much was this “Infante Terrible” profiting from IARC and the tort law firms. Well, according to a well-researched analysis by Nathan Schachtman, Peter Infante’s name has come up as a litigation consultant in at least 141 toxic tort cases, all on the plaintiff’s side. A back-of-the-envelope calculation would suggest Peter Infante has earned at least three million USD as a litigation consultant (a week socialising in Lyon as an observer to the IARC benzene panel could easily fill Peter’s time-sheet to the tune of around $50,000 … not counting possible double or triple billing to different law firms). And he was banging on about a small fee that a distinguished scientist did not even personally receive???

Money aside, should Infante be the best choice to question the quality of other scientists? In another article by Nathan Schachtman, it is obvious Peter’s scientific skills were not the finest. In the “Burst” benzene case, Infante “ransacked the catalogue of expert witness errors”.  The judge highlighted how Infante committed 12 basic scientific transgressions from cherry-picking to manipulating data to relying on irrelevant studies. To his defence, Infante claimed he was using IARC methodology … enough said.

So Infante writes an article attacking anyone who threatens his little business empire by accusing them of being in the pocket of … business. Really now! As any epidemiologist worth his salt would attest, evidence matters. There was no evidence to back up Infante’s charges but this little scoundrel’s own closet was so full of damning skeletons. That he was acting with other IARC Good Old Boys to do the agency’s bidding is just pathetic.

Reuters: You’re “Fake News”

Whenever Donald Trump indignantly scowls at a news organisation dismissing them as “fake news” for not recognising perfection when they see it, I think to myself: “What a self-obsessed petulant little child.” Shouldn’t the office rise above the mudpit and let others decide if a media piece has merit? IARC should have likewise learnt that lashing out against credible research that does not recognise their perceived infallibility is, well, self-obsessed and immature.

Reuters journalist, Kate Kelland, wrote several ground-breaking and award-winning exposés on unscientific practices in IARC and she has paid a price personally for it, not only from IARC’s corral of feral journalists, Carey “Gulp” Gillam and their network of Good Old Boys (see above), but also via direct press statements from the incessantly intolerant IARC Communications Unit. I wish I were making this up, but here are a series of belligerent reactions to Ms Kelland’s well-researched investigative journalism articles.

2016: Reuters was bought by Monsanto

In 2016, Kelland published an article showing how Kate Guyton instructed the US glyphosate Working Group panel members to not comply with US transparency rules regarding IARC-related emails. IARC defended their action by claiming that Monsanto lawyers were “intimidating” their scientists. Fact-check: E&E Legal were not lawyers representing Monsanto. Fact-check: Four of the scientists from the glyphosate panel that IARC was claiming to protect here were actually paid litigation consultants for the tort law firms representing plaintiffs against Monsanto. So in reality, IARC was lying and trying to cover themselves.

Of course the IARC scientists were not the only victims of that awful attack. IARC itself was the true victim. The press statement cries out:

“The article by Reuters follows a pattern of consistent but misleading reports about the IARC Monographs Programme in some sections of the media, beginning after glyphosate was classified as probably carcinogenic to humans. “

Poor IARC. Or maybe not. See how irresponsible IARC behaved in the presentation of their response to the Reuters article. At the very top of their press statement they offer a screenshot suggesting the Reuters article was paid by, yes, Monsanto.

By providing a screenshot of the Reuters page including, quite unnecessarily, a pop-up advertisement on the right column from Bayer (with a link offering to answer questions about their acquisition of Monsanto), IARC was behaving in a deceitful, dishonest and disgraceful manner. They were suggesting that Reuters was in the pocket of the chemical industry. They did not need to put the screenshot in their press statement and merely wanted to malign Reuters’ reputation. This was disgustingly juvenile and in no way how a credible international science agency should behave. If Elisabete Weiderpass had any integrity, she would offer Reuters and Ms Kelland an apology and take down this cowardly smear.

2017: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

In 2017, Kelland published an article based on the deposition of the chair of the IARC Monograph 112, Aaron Blair, showing how he knowingly withheld data from the US Agricultural Health Study (AHS) that Blair admitted, under oath, would likely have influenced the IARC decision on glyphosate. How did IARC respond to this excellent example of research journalism? By screaming “Monsanto shill” of course!

Kelland had interviewed Dr Robert Tarone (see above) among many others in her article and this just sent IARC into a obsessive tizzy. A good part of their reaction to the Blair scandal was to accuse Tarone of being a Monsanto shill and to recount how betrayed they felt by the European Journal of Cancer Prevention (see above). I wish I were making this up, but in their press statement IARC rambles on:

“The journal article by Tarone referenced in the Reuters article acknowledges that the author consulted with a lawyer representing Monsanto and that payment was received for that consultation. IARC scientists took note of the article and submitted a Letter to the Editor of that journal in December 2016. To date, this letter has not been published. However, the journal’s editors have indicated, most recently in correspondence dated 17 May 2017, that the article by Tarone will be corrected to report the author’s paid consultation with Monsanto as a conflict of interest. In additional (sic), the journal editor indicated that the text of the published article itself will be changed and that the revised article will be characterized as an “opinion paper” rather than a “research paper”. “

My apologies for having to reference their entire tirade, one that had nothing to do with the main point of Kelland’s article (the withholding of important data that would have changed the conclusion of a scientific report), but we need to see how obsessive and irrational the IARC Communications Unit has become. Fact-check: Dr Tarone had declared that the funds for answering a question from a Monsanto lawyer (750 USD) were given to the International Epidemiology Institute and not to him personally (and IARC is fully aware of this). Fact-check: This is the equivalent of what Dr Blair makes for 1.5 hours of work as a litigation consultant for law firms suing Monsanto thanks to his work at IARC. Fact-check: This tirade has nothing to do with the fact that Blair had admitted, under oath, the data from the AHS would have changed the IARC conclusion on glyphosate. Fact-check: The changes to Dr Tarone’s article were small, IARC’s letter was never published and they lost their COPE ethics complaint.

This confused press statement is no longer accessible from the IARC News web-page (probably out of sheer embarrassment). But IARC’s corral of feral journalists loved this display of anti-Monsanto fresh meat. It is interesting that on the same day as IARC’s press statement, US Right to Know’s lobbyist, Carey Gillam (who likes to pretend she is still a journalist) published an article with all of the IARC press release talking points (including a slam on Tarone). Did IARC feed this information to the American organic food industry lobbyist in advance? If not, it would be a stretch to call this a coincidence.

2017: You’re “fake news”!

Kelland’s most damning exposé, later that year, showed how IARC edited text from their glyphosate monograph after the close of the panel meeting to make the conclusions portray glyphosate as more carcinogenic than the original text had intended. This gets at the heart of the corruption in IARC and I salute Ms Kelland for this excellent investigative research. IARC though, did not share the same sentiment.

In a press statement entitled “IARC rejects false claims in Reuters article”, IARC simply denied it was true. Point! Kate Kelland clearly demonstrated ten cases of changes between the Monograph 112 text at the end of the Working Group meeting and the final publication; she lined the texts up side by side. All ten cases show clear editing, and in all cases, the purpose was to make glyphosate smell more carcinogenic than the working groups had concluded. IARC did not address those points except to say:

“IARC staff do not draft or revise the Monograph text. Only the Working Group writes and revises the text, as described in the Preamble to the IARC Monographs.”

Fact-check: IARC does revise its documents. In Part 2 of this series, I showed how, after Elisabete Weiderpass took over as Director, IARC went through a large number of published monographs to “update” conflict of interest declarations. IARC just doesn’t tell you what has been changed by deliberately making the updated pages invisible to Wayback Machine.

Then the IARC press statement got very strange (once again, on an anti-Monsanto tirade). They first suggested that Ms Kelland was harassing IARC working group members by contacting them to confirm if they were aware of how the glyphosate monograph had changed (and even declaring that one of the scientists … out of 16 mind you … had defended IARC). And from that, IARC put their cards on the table:

“IARC will not respond to baseless, defamatory statements about IARC or its Working Group, whether these are issued by Monsanto or other interested parties, directly or through third parties, including media contacts.”

Fact-check: Kate Kelland does not work for Monsanto. IARC, as an agency affiliated to the United Nations, has to stop making such ridiculous and irresponsible remarks. Once again: if Elisabete Weiderpass had any integrity, she would offer Reuters and Ms Kelland an apology and take down this cowardly smear.

This is not the way a UN science-based agency should behave. … But somehow I suspect, rather than being fired or resigning out of a sense of integrity, Kate Guyton will likely be promoted to permanent Head of the IARC Monographs Programme.

A Price worth Paying

In 2017, Kate Kelland deservedly won the Foreign Press Association Media Award for Best Science Story of the Year for her exposé “Cancer agency left in the dark over glyphosate evidence” – about how Aaron Blair withheld the data from the AHS research that would have changed the IARC conclusion. But Ms Kelland has paid an enormous price with a long series of personal attacks, threats and smear campaigns (often instigated by IARC, their corral of feral journalists and their Good Old Boys network).

IARC has exhibited a zero tolerance for dissent and their bully tactics have, to some degree worked to keep other journalists from following Ms Kelland’s footsteps into investigating the corruption at the heart of IARC.

This four-part series (originally published as part of SlimeGate) provides clear evidence of corruption in IARC, namely:

• IARC conducts monographs at the behest of US tort law firms (via their network of litigation consultants) and are complicit in the objective of using their monographs to sue industry as part of an alternative (“adversarial”) regulatory approach (Part 1);
• IARC cherry-picks the scientists involved in their working groups from a closed network of activist scientists and edits their monographs to cover-up any conflicts of interest with US tort law firms (Part 2);
• IARC was used by actors in the American anti-GMO campaign movement to include glyphosate at a late stage in the Monograph 112 preparation process (following the same US tort litigation gameplan as benzene) (Part 3); and
• IARC aggressively and relentlessly attacks, smears and bullies their critics either directly, through their media contacts or via third party actors (Part 4).

There is corruption in IARC.
This is a scandal.
The reputation of science and the regulatory risk assessment process are under serious threat.

There are thousands of lawsuits in the US founded on this abuse of science (jobs and technologies will be lost and American consumers will have to pay for the billions in fees the lawyers will make off with) but because of the ruthless aggression on anyone who would dare to challenge IARC, most journalists have decided this story is not worth the personal price they would have to pay.

My role as a blogger is to freely provide accessible research to journalists and policy-makers on science and risk issues. I practice what I teach. When this exposé was first published in February, 2019, not one journalist decided to run this story. I suppose it is just not worth the personal hassle.

The Risk-Monger is available to any media interested in following up this exposé on the Corruption of IARC.

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