AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE 50:701 (2007)

Letter to the Editor

RE: A Rebuttal: Secret Ties to Industry andConflicting Interests in Cancer Research

To the Editor:

Hardell et al. [2007a] assert that I [Wakeford, 2007]

did not discuss the main message of their article—‘‘secret

ties to industry’’—but merely defended my own position.

This is obfuscation. I defended the reputation of the late

Sir Richard Doll, whose integrity had been unjustifiably

impugned by Dr. Hardell and his co-workers [Hardell et al.,

2007b], and pointed to other kinds of ‘‘secret ties’’ that

seemed to be particularly relevant to the undeclared

interests of these authors. History will indeed be the judge

of whether the work of Doll or that of Hardell has

contributed more to our understanding of the causes of

disease.

Richard Wakeford, PhD*

The Dalton Nuclear Institute

The University of Manchester

Manchester, UK

REFERENCES

Hardell L, Walker MJ, Walhjalt B, Friedman LS, Richter ED. 2007a.RE: A rebuttal: Secret ties to industry and conflicting interests in cancerresearch. Am J Ind Med 50:697–698.

Hardell L, Walker MJ, Walhjalt B, Friedman LS, Richter ED. 2007b.Secret ties to industry and conflicting interests in cancer research. Am JInd Med 50:227–233.

Wakeford R. 2007. Letter to the Editor. RE: Secret ties to industry andconflicting interests in cancer research. Am J Ind Med 50:239–240.

� 2007Wiley-Liss, Inc.

*Correspondence to: Richard Wakeford, The Dalton Nuclear Institute, The University ofManchester, Manchester, UK. E-mail: Richard.Wakeford@manchester.ac.uk

Accepted16 July 2007DOI10.1002/ajim.20515. Published online inWiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com)