THE SLICK DODGER

One of the few differences between the EPA under Bush and Carter is that Jimmy never managed to recruit an anti-scientific de-industrializer as slick as William Reilly, who has now found an original way to counter criticism. In the outrageous Alar case, where the EPA conspired with the NRDC and other sham- environmentalists to overrule its own tests and manipulate doses in a way that amounted to falsifying data (see Bidinotto's report below), Reilly wrote a letter to Science (10/5/90), waving a report by the Department of Justice and swearing high and low that his panel of scientific advisers in the Alar case had no conflicts of in- terest and was quite uninfluenced by¾industry! Oh no, William the Green is William the clean! He cannot be bought by industry any more than Rev. Sharpton is a crony of the vicious racists, or Jessica Hahn of the Salvation Army.

In the asbestos fraud, he consciously covered up the two types of asbestos, with the one mined in the US never shown to be car-cinogenic in non-smokers, just as he covered up its harmlessness in brake linings or sewer pipes [AtE Nov 89]. He had defended not only his total ban of all asbestos, but also his fudging and cover-up in another slick and deceitful letter to Science [AtE Jul 90], but last month he gave in¾not to the scientific evidence, of course, which was there from the beginning, but to the protests of school districts who would foot the $200 billion bill of complete asbestos removal. Of course, he had been against it all along. "Too often," said the great opponent of media-fanned hysteria, "our priorities are set not by our best judgment about relative levels of risk . . . [but by] public perceptions that are driven by the dramatic, the sensationaL and the well-publicized."