research/publications on the subject?
CAA and Professor Boobis named in shaming document. “Dozens of the Government's most influential advisers on critical health and environmental issues, including cabin air, have close links to biotech and drug corporations, according to a dossier of Whitehall documents obtained by The Observer.
“Internal papers from the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) reveal for the first time the extent of the close connections between big business and scientists hired to give independent advice to Ministers. Many work as consultants for the firms, own shares in the companies or enjoy lucrative research grants from them.
Confidential documents disclose that former Environment Minister Michael Meacher and Food and Farming Minister Lord Whitty, were deeply concerned that scientists with industry links were dominating committees on everything from food safety and air quality to the imminent arrival of GM crops. Both Meacher and Whitty were alarmed that the scientists' commercial links jeopardised the independence of the advice they gave.” Antony Barnett and Mark Townsend Sunday July 13, 2003 The Observer
Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said: 'It is now crystal clear how big business is setting the agenda right at the heart of government. The whole process needs to be opened up and made transparent. How can the public trust what Ministers say if their advice is coming from those with vested interest in the biotech or pharmaceutical industry.'
A Defra spokesman said the committees publish their members' interests.
He went on: 'Defra has full confidence in the capability of independent advisory committees across the range of issues the department deals with to provide high-quality, well-informed advice and support.'
The Observer contacted many of the Government's scientific advisers, who denied that their links to industry compromised the impartiality of their advice.
Professor Boobis, who took legal advice on which interests he should declare, summed up their view: 'It is almost inevitable that any scientists of international repute will have some current or past links with industry.
'To say we would risk our professional integrity because we own a few shares in a company is ridiculous.'
However, The Countess of Mar in a speech to the House of Lords highlighted how “filters could be put on aircraft to filter the air supply and protect the travelling public from exposure to known neurotoxins at the cost of ‘peanuts’ in aviation terms but the CAA and airlines had done nothing.”
The Countess of Mar highlighted how “the government in its attempt to bury this issue have passed the vast volume of data supplied to them by the pilot union BALPA ,to a team under the leadership of Professor Alan Boobis. Professor Alan Boobis is a well known advocate that chemical exposures are all safe, despite this be a differing view to that held by the Royal Commission.”
Discredited or what?