Viewpoint: With new IARC director Elisabete Weiderpass, ‘the status quo has won’

IARC x
Image source: IARC

With the term of controversial International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Director Christopher Wild thankfully at an end, speculation about the new head of the embattled UN agency was rampant, probably for the first time in its history.

The reason there was so much concern is simple: They have lost their way. They no longer do science, they do activism and call it epidemiology.

We now have the answer. The status quo has won, which means we may be facing 10 more years of ideological winter masquerading as evidence.

[In April] I handicapped the top 8 choices and I concluded there two ways this could go: Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass, an IARC insider so inside she is even married to a member of the Old Guard, Harri Vainio; or Dr. Shuji Ogino, an Asian pathologist in the U.S. I noted that Weiderpass had an advantage in that she is a reliable choice for a group that does not want to shake things up too much.

It’s not like Dr. Weiderpass is unqualified, I instead noted she had excellent credentials with an MD and a PhD, but IARC faces an existential crisis. The only people pretending to care what IARC says are trial lawyers in California. Only an outsider can fix that.

Read full, original post: Environmentalists Win With New IARC Director Elisabete Weiderpass

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