New evidence of corruption at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Last year the people of the Hometown area bore witness as representatives of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lied to us in an effort to hide inconvenient truths about pollution's impact on our health.

During an October meeting in Hazleton, we heard representatives of the ATSDR tell us that a study into the area's unusually high rate of polycythemia vera conducted by the agency and independent researchers found no environmental factors contributing to the rare blood malignancy's prevalence. Soon after that, however, we discovered an abstract of that very study posted online that said the researchers found an unusual cluster of the disease centered around the McAdoo Associates Superfund site just north of Hometown. Even after ATSDR officials disavowed that finding, saying the study contained "erroneous information" and needed to be revised, the researchers continued to insist that their data points to an environmental factor behind the elevated incidence rates. One of the researchers confided to me that they were feeling pressure from higher-ups at the CDC to back off from those claims.

Now more evidence has emerged of the CDC's eagerness to cover up inconvenient scientific truths -- and to punish the researchers who unearth them.

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, last week published a story that describes how the CDC blocked publication of an ATSDR study into environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states reportedly because of its alarming findings about health effects. The study -- which was conducted at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent organization that advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on the quality of boundary waters between the two countries -- found that more than nine million people who live in some two dozen communities including Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee may face elevated health risks from toxic exposures. It also found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from various cancers with environmental links.

The CDC's response? Bury the study.

Reports CPI:

Last July, several days before the study was to be released, ATSDR suddenly withdrew it, saying that it needed further review. In a letter to Christopher De Rosa, then the director of the agency's division of toxicology and environmental medicine, Dr. Howard Frumkin, ATSDR's chief, wrote that the quality of the study was "well below expectations." When the Center contacted Frumkin's office, a spokesman said that he was not available for comment and that the study was "still under review."

And guess what happened to De Rosa? After complaining to his bosses that the withholding of the study smacked of scientific censorship, he was demoted. He's currently trying to get his old job back, claiming that the demotion represented illegal retaliation by Frumkin.

Why would the CDC squelch such an important study and punish the renowned researcher behind it? CPI asked Canadian biologist and IJC member Michael Gilbertson, who was also one of the study's peer reviewers, for his thoughts:

"It's not good because it's inconvenient," Gilbertson said. "The whole problem with all this kind of work is wrapped up in that word 'injury.' If you have injury, that implies liability. Liability, of course, implies damages, legal processes, and costs of remedial action. The governments, frankly, in both countries are so heavily aligned with, particularly, the chemical industry, that the word amongst the bureaucracies is that they really do not want any evidence of effect or injury to be allowed out there."