NIEHS Toxicologist Receives a 'Gag Order'
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NIEHS Toxicologist Receives a 'Gag Order'
Date:
Tue, 13 Aug 2002 11:54:46 -400
From:
Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide
Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
This story appeared in Science this past Friday (Aug 9). Although the issue of NIEHS attempting to 'gag' one of its senior scientists is appalling, the questions remain: from how far up the chain of command did this order originate? How wide-spread are such formal or informal 'gag orders' for gov't scientists and gov't scientific advisory panels? How deep is the influence of the regulated industries in governmental scientific and regulatory bodies? What is the impact? For OEM discussion...
Ferber, D. NIEHS toxicologist receives a 'gag order'.
Science. 2002 Aug 9;297(5583):915-6.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE:
NIEHS Toxicologist Receives a 'Gag Order'
A toxic tiff at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) seems to have escalated into a cause célèbre that has even caught the attention of a member of the House Committee on Government Reform. At the center of the dispute is James Huff, a 23-year veteran of NIEHS's carcinogen testing program and an outspoken critic of the chemical industry. Last month, after clashing with his supervisor, Huff received what he calls a "gag order," a proposed agreement forbidding him from criticizing NIEHS in public. The agreement itself was soon circulating in e-mails, and when outsiders learned about it last week, NIEHS apparently withdrew the order.
Huff, 64, is no stranger to controversy. Beginning in 1979, he helped develop a high-profile program at NIEHS that tests suspected carcinogens on mice and rats by feeding them chemicals over an entire lifetime. Regulators have used such long-term assays to decide which chemicals might cause human cancer--and have come under intense fire for using methods that industry believes exaggerate risk. Huff, the author of more than 300 published scientific papers, has defended the validity of these methods and publicly criticized attempts by NIEHS and industry officials to revise them. Last year Huff publicly blasted a $4 million NIEHS-industry research collaboration on the effects of chemicals on human reproduction and early development.
The draft agreement, which Huff says he received 23 July, came after NIEHS scientific director Lutz Birnbaumer asked Huff to stop other research and prepare a report on a topic Huff isn't interested in. In an e-mail, Birnbaumer said that the disagreement arose because Huff "has refused to review and summarize" an area of cell biology "in a timely manner."
The NIEHS agreement would have required Huff "not to send any letters, emails or other communications that are critical of NIEHS as an Institute or its scientific work to the media, scientific organizations, scientists, administrative organizations, or other groups or individuals outside NIEHS." It also states that if Huff violates the agreement and can't provide a satisfactory explanation to the NIEHS director, he must retire or resign "voluntarily" within a week, and that he must retire by December 2003 in any case. Francine Little, an NIEHS administrator whose name appears on the memo, declined to comment on it, describing it as a "confidential personnel matter." But she noted that it was part of a negotiation and not "a done deal."
News of the threatened action spread rapidly among toxicologists and public health advocates. Some said they were upset by what they saw as an attempt to silence internal dissent. Lorenzo Tomatis, former director of the respected International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, who collaborates with Huff each summer at NIEHS, said the draft agreement "had the tone you would expect to find under a dictatorship." And Christopher Portier, director of NIEHS's environmental toxicology program, said he had not seen the memo firsthand, but "it sounds somewhat extreme."
Congress is getting into the fray as well. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), in a letter he sent last week to NIEHS director Kenneth Olden and Little, demanded information on Huff's case and NIEHS policies on gag orders. "NIEHS should be determining the incidence of human illness caused by chemical, pollutant, and other environmental causes, not putting a gag order on one [of] its best scientists," Kucinich wrote in an e-mailed statement to Science.
Olden, who was away on vacation, could not be reached for comment. But David Brown, an assistant to Olden, said Olden telephoned Huff on 2 August and offered him a new job in the director's office. Brown concludes, "There's no story now." Huff says he's encouraged by the offer but adds: "No commitments have been made. ... I want to see what they put in writing."
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