Abstract

Cancer, Chemicals and History

The article focuses on the link between cancer and vinyl chloride-based consumer products. Twenty of the biggest chemical companies in the United States have launched a campaign to discredit two historians who have studied the industry's efforts to conceal links between their products and cancer. In an unprecedented move, attorneys for Dow, Monsanto, Goodrich, Goodyear, Union Carbide and others have subpoenaed and deposed five academics who recommended that the University of California Press publish the book "Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution," by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. Markowitz is a professor of history at the CUNY Grad Center; Rosner is a professor of history and public health at Columbia University and director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia's School of Public Health. The reasons for the companies' actions are not hard to find: They face potentially massive liability claims if cancer is linked to vinyl chloride-based consumer products. For Rosner and Markowitz the story began in 1993, when they traveled to Lake Charles, Louisiana, to look at what they were told was "a warehouse of material" about vinyl chloride and cancer.