Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Professor and Chair Melissa Perry was one of 100 scientists who reviewed the history of the cancer evaluations made by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Programme for the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans. She and her colleagues published their review in an article in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The review was prompted by recent criticism of several of IARC’s evaluations, as well as the approach used to perform these evaluations. Some critics claim that IARC Working Groups' failures to recognize study weaknesses and biases of Working Group members have led to inappropriate classification of a number of agents as carcinogenic to humans.
“We conclude that these recent criticisms are unconvincing,” Perry and her coauthors wrote. They opined that the procedures employed by IARC to assemble Working Groups of scientists from the various disciplines and the techniques followed to review the literature and perform hazard assessment of various agents “provide a balanced evaluation and an appropriate indication of the weight of the evidence.” They also noted that “some disagreement by individual scientists to some evaluations is not evidence of process failure.”
“The IARC Monographs have made, and continue to make, major contributions to the scientific underpinning for societal actions to improve the public's health,” the group concluded.