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One of the most well-documented episodes of scientific manipulation and overt fraud was the scandal involving Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) in the 1970s and the chronic toxicity tests it conducted on behalf of Monsanto that ultimately led to the indictment and conviction of employees of IBT and the Monsanto Corporation. IBT, at the time the nation’s largest private laboratory, served a range of industries and government agencies. IBT conducted about 22 000 toxicology studies for scores of corporations, representing between 35% and 40% of all tests conducted in private labs in the country. IBT has been justly condemned for its fraudulent activities in the 1970s, but no one has looked at the relationship between the corporate funders of IBT’s research and its fraudulent practices. We use previously secret corporate documents that detail the role of IBT’s largest customer, Monsanto, which used fraudulent data to influence government. This material, revealed through legal discovery proceedings now under way regarding polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and Roundup, show the long-lasting impact of Monsanto’s behavior on efforts to regulate large corporations as well as on the long-term effects on human health. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(6):661–666. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307247 )
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National Public Health Surveillance of Corporations in Key Unhealthy Commodity Industries–a scoping review and framework synthesis
Corporations in unhealthy commodity industries (UCI) have growing influence on the health of national populations through practices that lead to increased consumption of unhealthy products. The use of government-led public health surveillance is best practice to better understand any emerging public health threat. However, there is minimal systematic evidence, generated and monitored by national governments, regarding the scope of UCI corporate practices and their impacts. This study aims to synthesise current frameworks that exist to identify and monitor UCI influence on health to highlight the range of practices deployed by corporations and inform future surveillance efforts in key unhealthy commodity industries.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2147334
- PAR ID:
- 10397712
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International journal of health policy and management
- ISSN:
- 2322-5939
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.34172/ijhpm.2023.6876
