Re: Doll's 1955 study on cancer from asbestos

Our plain-English summary of Re: Doll's 1955 study on cancer from asbestos, by B.I. Castleman (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2001).

The study

• Author: B.I. Castleman
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 2001;39(2):237-40
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 4 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Summary of the article

This commentary examined the history of Richard Doll's 1955 report on lung cancer among workers at a Turner & Newall (T&N) asbestos plant in Rochdale, England. It drew on company documents obtained in legal discovery, correspondence, court records, and the author's 2000 interview and letters with Doll. The 1955 study had shown a 10-fold excess of lung cancer among men who worked 20 years or more in the plant's 'scheduled' areas. The author described T&N's efforts in 1954 to block publication. These included disapproving of company medical officer John Knox being listed as co-author, drafting a letter threatening legal action, approaching the journal editor, and an executive pressing Doll to withdraw the paper. The originally submitted manuscript concluded that insufficient data were available to determine whether the excess risk had been eliminated. The published version instead concluded that the risk had diminished after the 1932 regulations. The author also described Doll's later co-authored follow-up studies, his 1980s affidavits for Johns-Manville and T&N, and his 1982 talk to Rochdale workers about cancer risk at 1 f/cc. In correspondence, Doll stated that the changes resulted from reviewers' comments and his further analyses. The author concluded that it was not clear the changes arose exclusively from referees' recommendations. He wondered how high the price of rapprochement between T&N and Doll had been.

PubMed has no abstract for this study, and the article doesn't print one. We wrote this summary from the full article with the help of AI. It is not the authors' wording.

In plain English

This was a commentary, not a new research study. The author looked back at the history of Richard Doll's 1955 report on lung cancer among workers at a Turner & Newall (T&N) asbestos plant in Rochdale. The sources were company records disclosed in litigation, letters, and a 2000 interview with Doll. The author reported that T&N tried to block publication, and that at a November 1954 meeting a company executive pressed Doll to withdraw the paper. The manuscript as first submitted ended by saying there were not enough data to tell whether the excess cancer risk had been eliminated by improved conditions. That ending was replaced with sentences suggesting the risk had lessened after the 1932 regulations. Doll told the author that the changes followed the journal reviewers' comments and his own further analyses, not the company's requests. The author wrote that this was not at all clear. The author also cited a later study (Peto and colleagues, 1977). In it, lung cancer among workers hired in 1933 or later who had spent 20 or more years in the regulated ("scheduled") areas of the plant was twice the number expected. The author closed by wondering how high the price had been of the rapprochement between T&N and Doll.

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: a historical account based on company documents, correspondence and an interview with Doll
• Who was studied: The record of Doll's 1955 study of the workforce of a Turner & Newall asbestos plant in Rochdale, U.K., as shown in T&N records obtained in legal discovery, letters, and the author's 2000 interview with Doll
• Exposure: Work in the 'scheduled' areas of the plant covered by the U.K. Asbestos Industry Regulations of 1932 (the subject of Doll's 1955 study)
• Main results:
  • The author reported that T&N pressed Doll to withdraw the paper at a meeting in Rochdale on November 26, 1954
  • The originally submitted manuscript concluded that there were insufficient data to determine whether the excess cancer risk had been eliminated by improved conditions
  • That conclusion was replaced by two closing sentences, and Doll crossed out the last of these in the manuscript sent for printing
  • In a December 1954 letter to the journal editor, Doll wrote that he doubted the lung cancer risk of workers hired in the previous 25 years had returned to normal
  • Doll told the author that the changes followed the reviewers' suggestions. The author wrote that it was not clear the changes came only from the referees
  • The author cited a later follow-up (Peto et al., 1977): among men and women hired in 1933 or later with 20 or more years in scheduled areas, lung cancer was twice the number expected through 1974
  • In a 1982 talk to Rochdale workers, Doll put their increased cancer risk at 1 f/cc for 50 years at 2.5%
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the effect of one study or author cannot be known. Given later asbestos cancer deaths, the author wondered how high the price had been of the rapprochement between T&N and Doll
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author stated that it is not possible to know what difference one study or one author made in the history of asbestos

Topics

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

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Lung Cancer, Turner & Newall, Discovery, Johns-Manville.

Related studies

• A study of lung cancer mortality in asbestos workers: Doll, 1955 — M. Greenberg (1999)
• Too little, too late? The home office and the asbestos industry regulations, 1931 — P. Bartrip (1998)
• Asbestos and cancer: an early warning to the British TUC — N.J. Wikeley (1992)
• Revising the British Occupational Hygiene Society asbestos standard: 1968-1982 — M. Greenberg (2006)
• A camel through the eye of a needle: expertise and the late recognition of asbestos-related diseases — A. Menéndez-Navarro (2011)
• Too little, too late? The home office and the asbestos industry regulations, 1931: a reply — M. Greenberg, N. Wikeley (1999)

Browse more research in American Journal of Industrial Medicine, or return to medical research.