Suppressing Cancer Research at the Saranac Laboratory, 1936-1951
On November 20, 1936, Johns-Manville hired Saranac Laboratory in upstate New York to do some research on the hazards of asbestos. Johns-Manville wanted all results to be kept confidential, i.e., not available to workers or the public.
On February 24, 1943, after six years of work, Dr. LeRoy Gardner gave Johns-Manville the results of Saranac Laboaratory’s asbestos research. Dr. Gardner’s findings spelled a potential disaster for the asbestos industry.
Dr. Gardner’s animal studies had revealed that asbestos was likely a carcinogen. The Saranac studies found an incidence of cancer as high as 81% in mice exposed to long asbestos fibers. The studies also confirmed what the asbestos industry already knew – that the supposedly “safe level” of asbestos (set at 4 million particles per cubic foot), was not low enough to prevent disease. Thus, Dr. Gardner informed Johns-Manville in early 1943 that “[t]he question of cancer susceptibility now seems more significant than I had previously imagined.”
Tragically for the public, the asbestos industry made sure that the Saranac Laboratory would never publish this evidence.
Dr. Gardner died on October 24, 1946. After considerable delay, Dr. Arthur J. Vorwald, the new Saranac director, finally presented Johns-Manville with a report of Dr. Garner’s findings on September 30, 1948. The draft report contained Dr. Gardner’s conclusion that asbestos was a likely cause of cancer.
The asbestos industry could not tolerate this conclusion. They decided that Dr. Gardner’s results would have to be suppressed. Johns-Manville called a meeting of the asbestos manufacturers on November 11, 1948, to discuss changes that needed to be made to the Saranac Laboratory report before it was published.
The result of the November 11, 1948 meeting was a unanimous decision to get Dr. Vorwald to strike his discussion of cancer. All six copies of the draft report were collected, because the industry thought it would be embarrassing if anyone could compare the draft to the unpublished final version. The revised report was finally published in January 1951.
The published report falsely stated that it “presents for the first time a complete survey of the entire experimental investigation.” On the contrary, the published report only presented the evidence that Johns-Manville and the asbestos industry had approved for publication. The published report contained no reference to cancer, nor did it inform the public that the supposedly “safe” level of asbestos of four or five MPPCF was “probably unreliable.”
Johns-Manville gave this falsified report “a wide and adequate circulation,” thereby depriving workers and the public of vital information about the true hazards of asbestos.
