Vandiver Brown to the Saranac Sponsors Calling a Meeting on the Asbestos Dust Report (1948)

A two-page letter of October 27, 1948, from Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's secretary and general attorney, to the companies that paid for the Saranac asbestos experiments: American BrakeBlok, Gatke, Keasbey & Mattison, Raybestos-Manhattan, Russell Manufacturing, Thermoid (Southern Asbestos), Union Asbestos & Rubber and United States Gypsum. He sends "Part I" of the Saranac Laboratory report "Asbestos Pneumoconiosis" with his own memorandum, asking that it be treated "with the utmost confidence." Saranac would want to publish, he writes, and it would "appear desirable from the point of view of the industry that the report be published provided some of the speculative comments are omitted."

What it shows

Brown invited the sponsors to a luncheon in the Johns-Manville board room on November 11 to review the report and make "decisions that will have to be made," and asked that every draft be returned to him by that date. It was "obviously undesirable," he wrote, that the report "in its present form" receive any distribution outside a few people in each company. The memorandum he enclosed is filed with his October 22 letter to Keasbey & Mattison and Raybestos-Manhattan; what the meeting decided is in his letter of November 12.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

Brown memorandum dated 10/27/48 to other sponsors of Gardner study, re: funding agreement, and summarizing conclusions based on animal studies: short fibers do not produce fibrosis; air containing "extremely small proportion" of long fibers can produce fibrosis; asbestos dust does not significantly alter the course of tuberculosis. Brown frames argument to maximize sponsors' control over content of report. V. Brown invites the companies to meet at J-M to discuss Saranac's probable interest in publishing the report. Brown reflects that it would "appear desirable from the point of view of the industry that the report be published, providing some of the speculative comments are omitted." He makes it clear that the report is highly confidential.

Editor's note: J-M's account of the funding agreement and of the animal findings comes from Brown's memorandum on the Saranac report, which is not in this file. A copy of that memorandum is attached to Brown's letter to Keasbey & Mattison and Raybestos-Manhattan.

Related documents

• Vandiver Brown to Keasbey & Mattison and Raybestos-Manhattan with His Memorandum on the Saranac Report (1948)