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The Boeing Story
(No, not a retraction. A vindication.)

Several months ago, the Free Press published an article detailing the problems of chemically-sensitive workers at the Boeing Company. The response has been tremendous, with sick workers from all over the country contacting us and telling us their stories.

Part of the story examined the controversy over medical studies on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), some of which have been partially financed by industry, including the Boeing/IAM Health and Safety Institute.
The story criticized the "Simon Study," led by Dr. Gregory Simon, a psychiatrist now at Group Health. The study concluded that there is no immunological explanation for chemical sensitivity and emphasized psychological explanations for chemical sensitivities. However, sick workers and a few local physicians cast doubts on the study's methodology and an ethical breach wherein the study's results were released to defense attorneys before its publication.
Now more criticisms of the study are being levelled by researchers from around the country. While presenting his results at a Baltimore symposium this spring, Dr. Simon revealed that the laboratory which evaluated the study's blood samples provided him with inconsistent results.
In other words, two sets of the same blood samples, evaluated using identical techniques, came back with different results. If the lab was producing irregular results, how could Dr. Simon be so sure of his conclusions? Why didn't he mention this in his paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine?
These are some of the questions that Albert Donnay, executive director of MCS Referal and Resources in Baltimore, poses in an April 30 complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity.
Donnay writes, "Specifically, I allege that the authors knowingly withheld from their original paper critical information in the reliability and reproducibility of their immunological laboratory's procedures (which they had obtained and analyzed as part of their study) that they knew (or should have known) would invalidate the immunological laboratory data presented in their paper and from which they drew significant conclusions."
These revelations came out after Dr. Simon was questioned by a researcher at The Johns Hopkins University. But don't expect a thorough investigation when crafty foxes guard the hen house.
One of the study's co-authors, Dr. Linda Stockbridge, formerly of the University of Washington, is now director of the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety in Washington D.C. Her boss is Joe Dear, director of federal OSHA. Before his appointment, he ran Washington state's Department of Labor and Industries, the fine agency that looks the other way when this state's workers get sick on the job.

-Eric Nelson



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Contents on this page were published in the June/July, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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