Dioxin in agent orange herbicide impacts the human reproductive system and is associated with development of prostate and other cancers and also with birth defects in children.

Now a scandal is breaking over payments made for years by the Monsanto chemical company to a leading UK researcher into the effects of dioxin on humans. Sir Richard Doll, an Oxford scientist who did heroic work exposing the fact that smoking causes lung cancer, periodically received $1,500 a day as a consultant to Monsanto while researching effects of Agent Orange on humans.

Yesterday, Guardian, UK health editor Sarah Boseley alleged that Doll hid his paid consultancies with Monsanto, Dow Chemicals and other companies while issuing reassuring reports about Agent Orange and vinyl chloride. Boseley writes:

A world-famous British scientist failed to disclose that he held a paid consultancy with a chemical company for more than 20 years while investigating cancer risks in the industry, the Guardian can reveal.

Sir Richard Doll, the celebrated epidemiologist who established that smoking causes lung cancer, was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from Monsanto, then a major chemical company and now better known for its GM crops business.

While he was being paid by Monsanto, Sir Richard wrote to a royal Australian commission investigating the potential cancer-causing properties of Agent Orange, made by Monsanto and used by the US in the Vietnam war. Sir Richard said there was no evidence that the chemical caused cancer. . . . He was also paid £15,000 by the Chemical Manufacturer’s Association, Dow Chemicals and ICI, for a study that cleared vinyl chloride, an ingredient used in some plastics, from links with cancers other than that of the liver.
Renowned cancer scientist was paid by chemical firm for 20 years

According to injurywatch.com, “Under his mentor Austin (Tony) Bradford Hill, who discovered the link between smoking and lung cancer, Richard Doll justifiably built a reputation as one of the world’s great epidemiologists.” But, Injury Watch campaigner Murdo Maguire writes, “in later life the beknighted professor secretly took payments from the leading UK asbestos polluter Turner and Newall for more than thirty years.” Doll donated the money to his Oxford college. Now it appears he did the same with Monsanto payments.

But according to the London, UK Times, heads of five of Britain’s most respected scientific institutions are defending Doll against charges that his work was compromised by links with industry.

Overview of Sir Richard Doll’s career — BBC, Sir Richard Doll: A life’s research, June 2004.