Exposed Science. Sara Shostak

field’s identity, including its relationship to public health and its unique contributions to regulatory decision making and public policy. For example, when I asked a toxicologist about his perspective on the potential of molecular genetic techniques to improve toxicology testing and risk assessment, he responded by highlighting the successes of the NTP in preventing environmentally associated diseases:

      I think the NTP does probably more than any other program on issues related to disease prevention. . . . How many lives were saved by reducing human exposure? That’s hard to determine with accuracy. But we know that there are carcinogenic agents in our environment and workplace, risks are elevated, and it is our goal to provide scientific information that can be used to reduce human risk from environmental agents. . . . That is, as far as I’m concerned, the major mission of NTP . . . Our role is to provide the science so that decisions are made that are protective of public health (Interview S96).

      Similarly, a scientist contended that the rodent cancer bioassay program—despite its limitations—has succeeded in providing “EPA with the ammunition that they may need.” (Field notes, NIEHS June 2002). Even scientists who, on the whole, supported the adoption of molecular genetic and genomic techniques pointed to the historic successes of current methods of toxicology testing. For example, a molecular epidemiologist acknowledged that “The other side . . . is that this way has served the public well. If you screen out the things that kill rats, you will protect a lot of people” (Interview S26). A toxicologist pointed out that repeated efforts to replace animal bioassays have come to naught: “ . . . other thoughtful people have attempted to replace the bioassay with something, as we say—faster, more accurate, cheaper and less animals—and that’s our goal. But in the 25 years I’ve been in this [field] there’s been a thousand substitutes, none of which have worked” (Interview S97).

      More rarely, scientists would suggest that by absorbing scarce resources and introducing new forms of uncertainty into toxicology testing, new molecular techniques would impede and delay the regulatory process. In part, this concern is about the distribution of resources within the environmental health sciences and the possibility that investing in new techniques will divert support from current toxicity testing programs:

      . . . people who want the environment protected are concerned that, by siphoning resources away from the chronic studies that are already readily accepted by the agencies, into something that may not be as accepted by them, is to make either a longer time to regulatory intervention, or preclude it, actually preclude it (Interview S41).

      Even more to the point, a university-based environmental health researcher commented: “when NIEHS spends so much of their money on the genetic revolution, I wonder how much of that they can really devote to . . . more environmental issues” (Interview S50).

      A related set of issues centers on the possibility that the chemical industry could use the uncertainties attendant to new molecular approaches as a rationale for delaying regulatory review of their products. In fact, some scientists suggested that the chemical industry’s interest in genomic approaches to risk assessment was motivated precisely by the potential of new and complex techniques to complicate and delay regulatory processes:

      [They] see it as a tool, a delaying action . . . [They say] “I’m going to do this study first to guide me and it will take me two years.” And the regulatory agency says, “okay go ahead.” So, that means two more years that industry can use the product without any regulatory [oversight] . . . it’s a great delaying tactic. Any new technology, it’s always a good delaying tactic for environmental health risk assessments (Interview S41).

      Officially, the chemical industry favors the development of new “-omics” technologies that can be used in risk assessment (Henry et al. 2002). However, scientists disagree as to whether, to what extent, and for what reasons, the chemical industry supports the development of genomic techniques. Although some scientists claimed that industry supports these technologies for their ability to delay regulatory reviews, others suggested that “Officially, they’re very supportive, but really they’re not interested at all . . . in the development of better ways of finding out that their products are toxic” (Field Notes, NIEHS 2002). Others noted that establishing a consensus about the applications of new technologies was likely to require significant effort,¹² because even having “more . . . confidence in the models that you use . . . doesn’t mean they won’t still be controversial and there won’t be the arguments from industry and public interest groups, what’s safe and what isn’t” (Interview S81). Such comments were the only overt acknowledgement that the various parties interested in the development of molecular genetic research and technologies in the environmental health sciences hold very different substantive goals vis-à-vis risk assessment.

      In fact, the broader politics of environmental health and especially environmental justice remain almost completely absent from the consensus critique and appear only rarely in the counternarratives of dissenting scientists. Neither diagnostic nor prognostic framing of research on gene-environment interaction tends to draw on the issues of racism and environmental justice raised by environmental justice activists.¹³ In their talks to meetings of activists and, more rarely in publications, environmental health scientists claim that research on gene-environment interaction will help us to understand and ameliorate health disparities in the U.S. (e.g., Olden and White 2005). However, many of the solutions proposed in such articles center not on remediating environmental injustices, but rather on identifying genetically susceptible populations¹⁴ and using genomics to better target pharmaceuticals according to “race specific drug response” (Olden and White 2005).

      On the rare occasion that scientists raised issues of inequity, it was most often as a counternarrative vis-à-vis the consensus critique. For example, a scientist renowned for his research on lead poisoning in children—a condition marked by dramatic disparities by socioeconomic status (SES) and racial background—commented:

      It’s just that to the extent that we think we can understand the genetic contributions to different diseases and solve the world’s problems without addressing environmental pollutants or inequity in our systems, I think we’re really fooling ourselves . . . I think scientists have to confront poverty just as much as they confront genetics (Interview S50, emphasis added).

      As we will see in Chapter 6, the omission from the consensus critique of broader social factors, such as poverty and racism, associated with environmental exposure and its focus rather on technical aspects of research and risk assessment have shaped the responses of environmental health and justice activists to research on gene-environment interaction.

      FROM PROGNOSTICS TO PRACTICE

      The dynamics of contention in the arena of environmental health shape the practices and meanings of environmental health science in the United States. In particular, the dynamics of contention surrounding risk assessment provide readily available scripts for scientists advocating for research focused on gene-environment interaction. These scientists frame the limitations and uncertainties inherent to toxicology testing, in general, and the two-year rodent cancer bioassay, in particular, as the “intractable problems” that undermine their science, jeopardize the standing of their research and institutions, and impede their ability to contribute fully to public health efforts. The consensus critique, then, points to the possibility that, by addressing the technical challenges of toxicology testing, risk assessment, and regulation, molecular genetics and genomics will solve the ongoing dilemmas of environmental health research and governance. As I detail in Chapter 5, the consensus critique has been taken up by myriad stakeholders in the environmental health arena, including, importantly, the regulatory agencies.