The Guardian

By Sarah Boseley

8 December 2006

In 1985, while Sir Richard was a paid consultant for Monsanto, he stepped into the debate over the herbicides Agent Orange and dioxin, which had been sprayed from the air in the Vietnam war. An Australian royal commission was investigating whether the herbicides, made by Monsanto, had caused cancers in Australian personnel involved in the war. Sir Richard offered his unsolicited views in a letter to Justice Phillip Evatt, who headed the inquiry, and gave Agent Orange a clean bill of health.

Lennart Hardell, the professor in the department of oncology at University Hospital who has now become the leading critic of Sir Richard's industry funding, had also offered evidence to the inquiry. Professor Hardell considered Agent Orange a cancer hazard, but Sir Richard warned the commission not to place much value on his work. Many of his published statements, wrote Sir Richard, "were exaggerated or not supportable and ... there were many opportunities for bias to have been introduced in the collection of his data. His conclusions cannot be sustained and in my opinion, his work should no longer be cited as scientific evidence."

Prof Hardell says of Sir Richard: "My colleagues and I could never understand his standpoint. He was at the same time negotiating a new contract with Monsanto." The commission concluded that Agent Orange was not a health hazard.

Prof Hardell says that the passage reviewing the scientific evidence in its report was taken word for word from Monsanto's evidence.