Prevention delayed is prevention denied

Our plain-English summary of Prevention delayed is prevention denied, by S.M. Levin (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1992).

The study

• Author: S.M. Levin
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 1992;22(3):435-6
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This article was a short commentary, not a research study, and it reported no new data. It responded to a 1991 review by Enterline on changing attitudes and opinions about asbestos and cancer. The author asked why workers went unprotected for decades against exposures that, the author wrote, were known at least since 1924 to cause fatal disease. The author described about thirty years from Montague Murray's 1907 remarks to Kenneth Lynch's 1935 studies of asbestosis. Another thirty years followed in which exposures stayed uncontrolled despite dozens of scientific warnings about asbestos-related cancers, including a 1947 U.K. factory inspectorate report and Richard Doll's 1955 report. The author wrote that the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association commissioned a 1958 article by Braun and Truan casting doubt. According to the author, silence continued until Irving Selikoff's studies in 1964, leaving millions of workers unaware of the risks. Their families were also exposed to dust brought home on work clothes. The author attributed the delay to economic incentives and argued that the same forces still use scientific uncertainty to delay regulation.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: commentary (opinion piece responding to a published review); not a study
• Who was studied: No population was studied; the commentary discussed asbestos-exposed workers and their families in historical terms
• Exposure: Uncontrolled workplace exposure to asbestos dust, discussed historically; no fiber types or doses specified
• Main results:
  • The author stated that asbestos exposures were known at least since 1924 to cause fatal disease, yet workers went unprotected for decades
  • The author described thirty years of delay from Montague Murray's 1907 remarks to Kenneth Lynch's 1935 studies of asbestosis
  • The author wrote that, despite accumulating evidence, the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association commissioned a 1958 article by Braun and Truan that, in the author's characterization, cast doubt on the evidence
  • The author stated that silence continued until Selikoff's studies in 1964, and that workers' families were also exposed through dust brought home on work clothes
  • The author attributed the delay to economic incentives and argued that the same forces continue to exploit scientific uncertainty today
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded by asking whether scientific information can be used more quickly to prevent disease, or whether for each hazard enough data must accumulate to overcome delay, concealment, and deceit

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis.

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