3 ms·

No doubt I'll be downloaded into oblivion, but it's a massive money making venture for lawyers, similar to "silicone breast implants cause cancer" back in the 9

by refurb 3y ago

No doubt I'll be downloaded into oblivion, but it's a massive money making venture for lawyers, similar to "silicone breast implants cause cancer" back in the 90's (which turned out to be false). The FDA did test randomly test a bunch of talc products and the "FDA found “sub-trace” levels, or no greater than 0.00002%, of chrysotile asbestos contamination in a bottle purchased from an online retailer." That's 0.2 parts per million, or 200 nanograms in a gram, or 200 micrograms in a kilogram of powder in one sample. Add on top: - the FDA tested a number of products and most had zero asbestos (it's a trace contaminant not usually found in talc used for humans) - the amount of talc that might be suspended in the air when using the products is measured in milligrams (so now we're getting into picograms of asbestos) - J&J was sued for causing ovarian cancer, there isn't even a scientific link to ovarian cancer for asbestos. The link to cancer is tenuous as best, but the lawyers smelled blood and could piece together enough of a story to get jury to find J&J guilty based on a "more likely than not" threshold. In the end the winners in all this are the lawyers. Look at the studies that were used as evidence, here is a link to the full paper. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9847157/pdf/12995_2023_Article_367.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9847157/pdf/129... "Exposure data was obtained by sworn testimony of the mesothelioma patients in all cases, and/or from family members who had direct knowledge of the individual’s use of cosmetic talc and, if present, other sources of asbestos exposure." That's it. The patient's and family member's word. No testing of samples for asbestos contamination, no review of their home to see if there was asbestos. Just a sworn statement.

wmeredith 3y ago
That’s bananas. Self reported data is garbage.
DebtDeflation 3y ago
>That's it. The patient's and family member's word. No testing of samples for asbestos contamination, no review of their home to see if there was asbestos. Just a sworn statement. I just looked at the two studies referenced in the article - Moline 2019 and Emory, Kradin, and Maddox 2020. One might assume that they looked at large samples of people with and without talc exposure and with and without a mesothelioma diagnosis to find a correlation. That assumption would be incorrect. Sample sizes were small, n=33 and n=75, respectively. In both studies, all subjects had a mesothelioma diagnosis. As you said, they relied on patient and family member statements that they had no asbestos exposure other than from cosmetic talc (something we now know to be false). They asked subjects when they started using talc, how long they used it, and to what degree they used it, and then calculated average latency to onset from that. They also looked at tissue biopsies in a subset of the subjects (e.g., 11 of the 75 in the later study) and confirmed the presence of asbestos fibers and made an attempt at calculating the fiber concentration in 9 of the 11. It is unclear exactly what these studies purport to demonstrate. There's really no conclusion to draw other than "these people all have mesothelioma, some of them have asbestos fibers in their lungs, they all claim to never have had any exposure to asbestos, and oh by the way they all also used cosmetic talc to varying degrees over the years".

by refurb 3y ago

wmeredith 3y ago

That’s bananas. Self reported data is garbage.

DebtDeflation 3y ago

>That's it. The patient's and family member's word. No testing of samples for asbestos contamination, no review of their home to see if there was asbestos. Just a sworn statement. I just looked at the two studies referenced in the article - Moline 2019 and Emory, Kradin, and Maddox 2020. One might assume that they looked at large samples of people with and without talc exposure and with and without a mesothelioma diagnosis to find a correlation. That assumption would be incorrect. Sample sizes were small, n=33 and n=75, respectively. In both studies, all subjects had a mesothelioma diagnosis. As you said, they relied on patient and family member statements that they had no asbestos exposure other than from cosmetic talc (something we now know to be false). They asked subjects when they started using talc, how long they used it, and to what degree they used it, and then calculated average latency to onset from that. They also looked at tissue biopsies in a subset of the subjects (e.g., 11 of the 75 in the later study) and confirmed the presence of asbestos fibers and made an attempt at calculating the fiber concentration in 9 of the 11. It is unclear exactly what these studies purport to demonstrate. There's really no conclusion to draw other than "these people all have mesothelioma, some of them have asbestos fibers in their lungs, they all claim to never have had any exposure to asbestos, and oh by the way they all also used cosmetic talc to varying degrees over the years".