We reported this morning about the latest study from the C8 Science Panel, the group of three scientists getting paid to examine whether DuPont Co.’s toxic chemical is making people sick. I’ve posted the report here.
What I didn’t get into in that story is that, while the study was filed in Wood Circuit Court, the C8 Science Panel hasn’t done a darned thing to let Mid-Ohio Valley residents know about it. They haven’t issued a press release, or held a community meeting, or even sent out a notice about it with their fancy new e-mail system that’s touted on their Web site.
That’s too bad, because the Science Panel is ultimately being paid for by the people of the Parkersburg area. When they settled their lawsuit, those folks could have just split up the more than $100 million they got from DuPont. Instead, they decided to use the money to help the world figure out what C8 and similar chemicals are doing to us. So it seems like they should be the first to know about any of the panel’s findings.
[UPDATED 3:06 p.m. Friday, March 20: The C8 Science Panel has now added this study to its Web site here.]
But from what I can tell, the first folks to hear about these new findings — that C8 may be changing the human immune system — were apparently first shared with a bunch of academics at the Society of Toxicology’s annual meeting in Baltimore, where Science Panel member Tony Fletcher (left) was speaking earlier this week.
I reported in 2007 about how the Science Panel wouldn’t release details of how it is spending the money from the lawsuit to do its work. And Callie Lyons previously disclosed how the Science Panel had planned to hire a PR consultant with ties to DuPont.
And earlier this year, Wood Circuit Judge J.D. Beane conducted a private, closed-door meeting with the Science Panel, despite the requirement in West Virginia’s state Constitution that the courts be open to the public. This, after Beane last year sealed raw data from the C8 project — including versions both with and without information that would identify individual study participants — from the public.
If you’d like to tell the Science Panel your views on any of this, they list an e-mail address on their Web site. Or, just comment on Sustained Outrage in the form below.
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I can give you an update on this week’s status report related to immune markers, it is now on our website for easy public access. In addition, we are giving a press conference next Thurs which has been announced. There we will present the findings from this and two other studies, and take questions from the press.
We have no desire to be secretive and we are making efforts to disseminate as openly as we can. To improve our dissemination, in addition to putting our results on our website and publicising through the press, we are establishing a newsletter so people can get direct alerts into their email boxes. They can sign up through our website http://www.c8sciencepanel.org.
As you know, we have to respect the condition of the settlement which requires us to inform Judge Beane at the Court before we can release any findings to the public. We were simply planning to discuss three studies at one time, at next week’s meeting. The updates were on the way to the website and the email inviting you to the press conference, as you were “bloggingâ€. I look forward to seeing you at our next press conference.
Tony Fletcher of the C8 Science Panel
Thanks for commenting, Tony. I’m sure our readers are happy to hear from you, and we’re glad you’re a regular reader of Sustained Outrage.
Perhaps you could point us to the section of the Settlement Agreement that requires you to inform the judge prior to notifying the people (the people affected by all of this and who are paying for it).
I don’t see any language that in any way limits your ability to meet with and provide information to the public. It simply limits your ability to talk to the lawyers on either side and sets out how you can provide information and otherwise communicate with them.
Section 12.2.3 governs any finding of association or no association, and requires you to provide a copy of your Phase I and Phase II reports (if phase II is necessary) to the Class Action Administrator within 10 days of completing the studies.
Section 10.2.2 (6)(i) sets out how the Class Action Administrator will handle communications you send them to be distributed to the parties.
Of course, there is the language in Section 12.5 which says you shall conduct your work “in private.” But if that were an absolute, you couldn’t have a Web site or hold press conferences.
I’ve posted the settlement agreement here:
http://wvgazette.com/static/watchdog/leachsettlement.pdf
Perhaps you could clarify what you believe limits your ability to meet and provide information in a timely fashion — meaning before you go giving presentations at an academic conference — to the people of the Mid-Ohio Valley.
Ken Ward Jr.
It will be telling if DuPont’s truculent Management and their PR con artists attempt to upstage the Panel’s planned press conference by firing off a premature DUPONT PRESS RELEASE, or feeding the media spin and dissimulation as they have done in the past!
They’ll go to frantic lengths to confuse and convince consumers, regulators, and investors, not to mention thousands of their own Teflon workers and Teflon factory neighbours, this extraordinarily toxic, bio-persistent, likely cancer-causing chemical is perfectly SAFE, as innocent as Snow White, and has “no human health effects”! …funfun..