RightOnCanada.ca

Kathleen Ruff, RightOnCanada.ca

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is a scientific agency of the World Health Organization (WHO). It is extremely disturbing that IARC has appointed, as a collaborating IARC scientist for asbestos research, a person, Dr. Sergey Kashansky, who helps efforts by the asbestos industry to promote the use of asbestos.

Dr. Sergey Kashansky is an employee of the Russian government. He works for the Yekaterinburg Medical Research Center, an institution which is part of the Russian government’s Department of Healthcare. Russia is the biggest exporter of asbestos in the world and its biggest customer is India. The Russian government is determined to do everything in its power to ensure that asbestos use in India and other Asian countries continues and increases. No employee of a government institution would be allowed to hold a position that differs from the position of the Russian government.

Dr. Kashansky has  for years supported the Russian government’s policy of mining and exporting asbestos and has for years supported the Russian government’s deadly deception that chrysotile asbestos can be “safely used”.

The International Chrysotile Association, the lobby group which is financed by the asbestos industry in Russia and elsewhere, is holding a sham scientific conference in India on December 3 & 4 to promote use of asbestos in India. Scientists who are financed by and/or allied to the asbestos industry will put forward presentations supporting use of chrysotile asbestos. Dr. Kashansky will put forward the state policy of the Russian government that chrysotile asbestos can be “safely” used.

A letter that has been sent to Dr. Christopher Wild, Director of IARC, expressing concern at this disturbing situation and at this conflict of interest. A copy has been sent to Margaret Chan, Director General of the WHO, and to IARC’s Ethics Committee.

Other letters (UN Cancer Agency asked to sever its ties to asbestos propagandists), signed by numerous scientists, have been sent to Dr. Wild expressing grave concerns over IARC’s asbestos research project in Russia and IARC’s appointment of another Russian scientist, Dr. Evgeny Kovalevskiy, as a collaborating scientist for the project, when Dr. Kovalevskiy works with the asbestos lobby to defeat proposed bans on asbestos and works with the Russian government to defeat the listing of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance under the UN Rotterdam Convention. See article, UN Scientific Agency collaborating with scientists working to sabotage UN Rotterdam Convention.

These concerns have, to date, been ignored by Dr. Wild.