Testimonies of Francis H. May and G. Earl Parker of Johns-Manville Before the House Subcommittee on Compensation, Health and Safety (1978)

A thirteen-page booklet printed by Johns-Manville of the testimony that Francis H. May, its executive vice president, and G. Earl Parker, its general counsel, gave on November 14, 1978, to the Subcommittee on Compensation, Health and Safety of the House Committee on Education and Labor. May answered what he called "the San Francisco accusations" from the subcommittee's earlier hearings, that J-M knew early of the hazard to insulation workers, failed to respond responsibly, and conspired "to manipulate and suppress information": "These theses are categorically false." Parker urged a federal compensation scheme for asbestos disease, such as the Fenwick bill (H.R. 8689).

What it shows

May's defense rested on the dates of knowledge: he argued that there was no basis before the 1960s to think insulation products harmed the men who applied them, pointing to the Public Health Service's 1938 Dreessen study and the Navy's 1946 Fleischer-Drinker study. He said J-M had spent $25 to $30 million on dust control between 1931 and 1970 and "led the industry in caution labeling" from 1964. Most of his answer on conspiracy concerns the 1934 and 1935 letters between Vandiver Brown and Dr. Anthony Lanza of Metropolitan Life over the galley proofs of Lanza's report, then newly public from the Sumner Simpson Papers. May walked through them point by point, including George Hobart's suggested changes (George S. Hobart to Vandiver Brown on the Metropolitan Life Galley Proof (1934)), and concluded: "These are hardly the words of a manipulator of medical science." He also quoted Brown's request that "all of the favorable aspects of the survey be included and that none of the unfavorable be unintentionally pictured in darker tones than the circumstances justify." Parker told the subcommittee that J-M and the insulators' union had helped draft the Fenwick bill, and that employers, suppliers of asbestos products and "suppliers of agents contributing to disease in the workplace, such as tobacco" should share the cost.