Emerging scandals concerning academics in the UK and Canada have exposed the lengths to which the asbestos industry will go to manipulate science and boost its deadly product. An October 2013 conference at McGill University in Canada revealed that one of its most high profile academics, Professor J Corbett McDonald, had received over Can$1 million from the asbestos industry, but had routinely hidden this association when publishing industry-friendly papers; and Edinburgh University’s Professor Ken Donaldson either failed to mention or flatly denied links to firms defending asbestos compensation cases, while receiving payments and writing papers the New York Supreme court found were “intended to cast doubt on the capability of chrysotile [white] asbestos to cause cancer.”

RightOnCanada blog. David Egilman’s full presentation: The Past is Prologue, Universities in Service to Corporations: The McGill-QAMA Asbestos Example. Montreal Gazette. A very particular crime, Hazards magazine special report, September 2013. Nature. The Scotsman. Risks 626.