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Cell Phone Radiation Industry Belated
Background Check Or Mis-information? Part 1
In mid-May 1993 Wheeler opened a meeting of his top policy
and public-relations advisers and his science adviser,
Carlo, in the CTIA boardroom by announcing that their agenda
for the session consisted of two items: One was the
credibility of Carlo, and the other was the credibility of
the SAG program Carlo had been appointed to run
just a month earlier. Wheeler had a habit of writing
meticulous, printed notes in his day-timer calendar, and he
was reading from those notes.
"What do you have to say about the flap in Science
magazine?"
Wheeler was looking directly at Carlo, who was clearly
caught off guard. He was referring to a magazine article
about a controversy that had caused Carlo to end his
six-year relationship with the Chlorine Institute—after the
industry's public-relations representatives had put Carlo's
name on top of a PR paper that he had not only never written
but never even seen. Wheeler had never mentioned this issue
before—it seemed obvious to Carlo that someone had brought
the matter to Wheeler's attention as a way of questioning
whether Carlo should be running the industry's science
research program.
Carlo explained the dioxin uproar: In February 1991 Science
carried a story about a controversy that had erupted after
publication of a paper listing Carlo as its author. It
characterized the views of a scientific advisory group
sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
official. When one participant wrote an angry letter to
Carlo and others protesting these comments Carlo had
allegedly written, Carlo was shocked. He had not written the
paper, and had not even seen it before. All he had done was
write a summary of a conference he had attended which
carried the notation that "the meeting reinforced the notion
that dioxin is much less toxic to humans than originally
believed." That phrase became part of a new chlorine
industry position paper The chlorine industry officials told
Carlo they had put his name atop the paper as its author to
give the document added credibility. The industry and the PR
firm each said they thought the other had told Carlo about
it—which of course would still have been unacceptable
because he simply hadn't written the document. |
