I have no idea about whether the various claims about the effects of 9/11 are true or not and I hope that they are all proven to be false or exaggerated. I do know that the first instinct is to overstate a problem (recall how we all were supposed to have died from AIDS 20 years ago). Unfortunately due to our litigious society, it was inevitable that people (including people who were no where near Ground Zero) were going to look to cash in on our grief and guilt and make a quick buck on an alleged victim hood.
by Jeff Stier
On Friday, the judge in the Ground Zero health-claims case tossed out the recent settlement agreement, citing concerns that the deal wasn’t fair to plaintiffs.
Yet the fact remains that there is no credible evidence in the medical literature that exposure to Ground Zero dust can cause any chronic disease or condition. That is, the central claim in the suits has no real scientific basis.
Some claim that only a few days of exposure at the World Trade Center site caused chronic lung disease and even cancer — but this is contrary to everything we know about epidemiology.
The settlement was negotiated between lawyers for some 10,000 plaintiffs claiming injury or potential injury from their time at Ground Zero and attorneys for the city, its contractors and The WTC Captive Insurance Co., the federally-created insurer for the cleanup. The agreement would have paid out about $650 million (with lawyers getting perhaps a third of the cash). But the judge suggested this isn’t enough. Meanwhile, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan/Queens) and others want the feds to pay out another $10 billion.
There is no good evidence that this huge payout is warranted — only shoddy science and politicians eager to sign on to a popular cause.
James E. Tyrrell Jr., chief counsel for The WTC Captive Insurance Co., notes, “The plaintiffs allege 387 different diseases or conditions, all attributable to 9/11 exposure.” These include multiple forms of cancer, skin ailments, hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, asbestosis and asthma. Yes, exposure to the dust could have aggravated an existing case of asthma, but not caused it in the first place.
The plaintiffs just don’t have science on their side. Columbia University pulmonologist Dr. Kenneth Prager observes that this type of exposure has never even been shown to cause many of the ailments alleged in the suits. For example, “There is no scientific validity to the claim that asbestosis is a result of 9/11 exposure.”
But a handful of scientists with an activist agenda keep trying to make the minimal evidence for the dust causing diseases sound more powerful than it is.
For example, a recent study from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine claimed that 9/11 police officers might be at higher risk of heart disease. It was a classic case of data-dredging by those trying to find a disease on behalf of plaintiffs.
The study relied on subjects who were self-selected — that is, the people who came in were the very class of people who may be suing. The researchers then compared the results from these “volunteers” to the general population — without, the lead researcher herself admitted, allowing for the possibility that NYPD cops may already have a higher risk of heart disease. Even then, they found no increase in illness — just an elevated rate in a single measure (of many that they examined) that’s predictive of future disease.
Yet the media was still all too eager to play up this unscientific junk. Reporter Steven Reinberg claimed on BusinessWeek.com that the “results add to growing evidence that exposure to the collapse of the World Trade Center was the cause of health problems.” He added, “Other studies have linked lung damage, asthma and post-traumatic stress disorder to the event, the researchers noted.”
Tags: Junk Science
