From ggvideo@northnet.org Wed Dec 8 18:06:34 1999 Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 00:05:09 -0500 From: Paul Connett To: wastenot@northnet.org Subject: IFIN-BULLETIN #19 The NTP Cancer Study and William Marcus International Fluoride Information Network. BULLETIN # 19 Dec. 6, 1999 THE NTP CANCER STUDY AND DR. WILLIAM MARCUS. Dear All, I am sure most of you are aware of the NTP (National Toxicology Program) study that showed an increase in osteosarcoma in male rats. US officials have gone to great lengths to downgrade these dose related increases in osteosarcoma by decribing the results as "equivocal" and negating them with the results of a study by Procter and Gamble ( hardly a disinterested party!) which found no osteosarcomas in their rat study. However, the original work from Battelle labs (contracted by the NTP to do the study) had actually found cancers at other sites in the rats but these findings were removed by a peer reveiwers. It was this removal as well as the osteosarcoma findings that a) got Dr. William Marcus (of the US EPA's Office of Drinking Water) very concerned and b) got him fired from the US EPA when he pursued the matter. Maureen Jones ( ) , via the Mountain View Citizens for Safe Drinking Water ( ) has just forwarded a fascinating interview that Dr. Marcus had with Gary Null on a NYC radio program, which provides some important details on this important piece of history. If you want more details on the Marcus scandal and the fraud surrounding the establishment of the US EPA 's maximum contaminant level for fluoride of 4 mg/liter ( 4 ppm) contact Robert Carton at . While activists like myself often attack some of the policies of the US EPA, it is important to remember that within this agency there are people with total committment to the environment, public health and integrity in government. We all owe a huge vote of thanks to whistleblowers like William Marcus, Bob Carton and William Hirzy who have done their best to maintain integrity within this agency, especially on the fluoride issue. Paul Connett. The following is a portion of a radio show interview on March 10, 1995, between William Marcus, the Senior Science Advisor of EPA's Office of Drinking Water, and host Gary Null. Call (212) 799-1246, Program #310, for complete audio tape. Gary Null: When you were at the EPA they did a study that lasted 13 years to test the toxicity of fluoride. Why did it take 13 years? Dr. Marcus: I never could figure that out. I have had chemicals tested by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) for the Office of Drinking Water, EPA, and the average time was maybe five years from the first request to the delivery of data. In addition, fluoride was actually mandated to be tested by the United States Congress and money allocated for it. I think that's the only chemical, still the only chemical to my knowledge which that happened. Gary Null: O.K., tell us about what your studies have found. Dr. Marcus: Well the studies that were done by Battelle North, I think it's Battelle Northwest, showed that there was an increased level of bone cancer and other kinds of cancer in the animals. When I got ahold of the contractor report and reviewed it very carefully and not only was it reporting cancers in the animals, osteosarcomas, which bothered me a lot because I've been trying to produce osteosarcomas in animals for almost 20 years and the only luck I ever had was with an experiment in dogs and monkeys and the osteosarcomas took nearly the lifetime of the animals and we were using radium which specifically produces that in bones and here we have a compound commonly available (fluoride) that did it in rats in two years or less. That was upsetting to begin with. Secondarily, there was a study of, in that same study, there were cancers of the liver that are very rare according to the board certified veterinary pathologist at the contractor, Battelle, and those really were very upsetting because they were hepatocholangiocarcinoma, a very rare, rare, liver cancer and when that occurs, something similar to that occurred with vinyl chloride in a far less well conducted study and it was determined that it was carcinogenic, highly carcinogenic and then there were several other kinds of cancers found in the jaw and other places and I felt at the time that the report was very, very interesting. It showed that the levels of the fluoride that caused the cancers in the animals were actually lower than those levels seen in people who are ingesting lower amounts but for longer periods of time and that was very very worrisome. It meant that the general population could be exposed to fluoride known to cause cancer in animals and have levels near the cancer being produced in the bones. Gary Null: And what did you do and what happened? Dr. Marcus: Well I went to a meeting that was held in Research Triangle Park in April 1990, the latter part of April, in which the NTP was presenting their review of the study and I went with several colleagues of mine one of whom was a board certified veterinary pathologist who had originally reported hepatocholangiocarcinoma as a separate entity in rats and mice and I asked him if he would have an opportunity to look at the slides to see if that really was a tumor or the pathologist at Battelle had made an error and he told me after looking at the slide that in fact it was correct and at the meeting every one of the cancers that was reported by the contractor had been down-graded by the NTP. Now I've been in the toxicology business looking at studies of this nature for nearly 25 years and I've never seen that, never ever seen where every single endpoint that was a cancer endpoint had been down-graded. I'd seen one or two endpoints argued over, usually on a definition what is a cancer in that particular tissue but I've never seen every one of them down-graded. I found that very suspicious and I went to see an investigator in the Congress at the suggestion of my friend Bob Carton and this gentleman and his staff investigated very throughly and found out that the scientists at the NTP down at Research Triangle Park had been coerced to change their findings. Gary Null: Coerced by whom? Dr. Marcus: Ah, I never really got that. But the only people that can coerce them were their supervisors. Gary Null: Why would they want to coerce them? What were they trying, who or what were they trying to protect? Dr. Marcus: Well as you well know fluoride is still recommended at a treatment for presention of dental caries, tooth decay, and has been touted as such by the Public Health Service since 1953-54 and they had a reputation to protect. It wouldn't do for them to have been making this strong recommendation over the years and now to find out that they have been exposing the general public to a material known, now known, to be potentially carcinogenic in humans and there have been other studies..." Note: The National Toxicology Program (NTP) is part of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Public Health Service, in the Department of Health & Human Services. The radio show interview goes on to tell how Dr. Marcus was fired from the EPA, endurred a two year lawsuit and then was reinstated with his EPA job after winning his lawsuit through the whistleblower act.