- Scientists have voted to boycott an international journal
after its owners blocked publication of a paper claiming large numbers
of IBM workers have died prematurely of cancers and other diseases.
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- The development is unprecedented and has triggered a
battle between the computer company and researchers. IBM says the paper
is flawed but denies putting pressure on the publishing group Elsevier
to stop the paper's publication.
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- Dr Joe LaDou, of the University of California at San
Francisco, who tried to publish the paper, said the study was an important
work that reveals the serious health risks facing workers in the computing
industry. He has bitterly attacked the decision to block the paper and
has been backed by all other contributors to Clinics in Occupational and
Environmental Medicine. They have demanded that all their papers for that
issue be withdrawn until the publisher relents.
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- 'By standing together we can bring attention to the heavy-handed
tactics that industry employs to prevent the publication of important scientific
discovery,' he said.
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- The health problems of workers in the semiconductor industry,
whose labours spawned the computer revolution and the industrial rebirth
of the United States in the Seventies and Eighties, have become a major
headache for computer hardware companies in recent years. Hundreds of former
employees are suing silicon-chip makers and computer manufacturers over
the diseases they have suffered after working with acids and solvents in
fabrication plants. IBM is now facing litigation from more than 250 former
employees.
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- Cases include Nancy LaCroix, who worked at IBM's Essex
Junction plant in Vermont, where, she claims, she was surrounded by chemical
fumes. She gave birth five years ago to a daughter who has severe bone
defects, including encephalocele, a condition in which a portion of the
brain sticks out through her skull.
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- Another worker, Heather Curtis, worked with chemicals
at IBM while she was pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Candice, with
microcephaly, a severe brain abnormality. Suzanne Rubio developed cancer
that spread through her body and died aged 36 in 1991. Her lawyers blame
her death on the 'witch's brew' of chemicals she had to work with.
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- The company strongly denies these workers contracted
their health problems through factors related to their work. In a workforce
as large as IBM's, many workers will, by simple chance, contract unusual
diseases, officials have insisted.
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- Last year, hearings for two cases - Alida Hernandez,
73, a cancer victim; and James Moore, 62, who suffers from non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma, a cancer of lymph tissue - began in Santa Clara County, California.
Their lawyers asked for access to IBM's employee mortality records. These
requests were initially refused by the company but following a court order,
the records were handed over. IBM maintains they contain no helpful data.
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- But distinguished epidemiologist Richard Clapp, of Boston
University, and his colleague Rebecca Johnson were asked to examine the
records. Their analysis showed IBM employees suffered significantly more
deaths from several kinds of cancer than would be expected from the general
population. This trend was particularly strong for workers at IBM's chip-manufacturing
plants, the current issue of Nature reveals.
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- 'We found that cases of brain and kidney cancers and
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma were more than double that found in the population
at large,' Dr Clapp said.
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- This study was requested by LaDou, who was acting as
guest editor for a special issue of Clinics concentrating on health issues
in the electronics industry. IBM claimed the data was confidential but
lawyers said the paper was a public document. LaDou sent it off for publication.
'I got an email back very quickly, telling me that the paper was not suitable
for publication,' he said.
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- Elsevier says the study is a research paper and only
review papers are accepted. LaDou described this claim as 'nonsense'. Elsevier
also denied it had been pressed by any outside company or party into pulling
the paper, and claimed it was hoping to work with the journal's contributors
to try to find an alternative journal for Clapp's paper - though not necessarily
one owned by the company.
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- In the cases of Hernandez and Moore, his study had little
effect. The judge refused permission for it to be presented and the two
plaintiffs lost their case earlier this year. However, since then IBM has
settled out of court with Candice Curtis for an undisclosed sum.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1243358,00.html
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