As the chairman (1990-1995), of the Department of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee that oversees the Ranch Hand study, I have a few comments.
1. The U.S.Air Force was very slow to publish its findings in the open literature. The Air Force did publish huge, thick reports, but it wasn't until about 1990 that the Advisory Committee began urging the AIr Force to publish in the open literature. Since then, it's been pretty quick.
2. Richard Albanese was pushed aside because his analysis of the Rand Hand data violated every kind of logic and statistical sense.
3. The early, 1984, report about birth defects was incomplete. The Air Force went back and did it correctly, and there is nothing there, as is clear from the published report (Wolfe et al. Epidemiology 6:17-22, 1995).
4. The table that reported that Ranch Handers (i.e, study subjects or "RHs") were less well than the Comparisons by a ratio of 5:1 was based on self-reports of how the men felt. Because there was no clinical indication that the Comparisons were sicker than the RHs, the advisory committee recommended deleting the comment that the finding was "of concern." I don't remember the term "reassuring." In any case, that's a poor choice of words. The reports of "less well" in RHs probably means that they've heard all the horror stories about dioxin and believe them. That's not reassuring.
5. Everyone separates skin cancers from other cancers. Albanese's insistence to the contrary is an example of why he was pushed aside. Importantly, none of the cancers that have been "associated" with dioxin in all the epi studies that have been done is elevated in the RHs.
6. Anyone who wants the RH data tapes can get them from the Federal Government. Unlike the environmentalist scientists at Harvard and elsewhere who have denied public access to their data because of "confidentiality" concerns, the DHHS Advisory Committee arranged with the National Center for Health Statistics to scrub the Air Force tapes of personal identifiers so that anyone could get the tapes. The Advisory Committee deserves some credit for that. Neither the Air Force nor the Advisory Committee has anything to hide. I led the fight to release the tapes on the grounds that taxpayers paid for them.
Michael Gough
Director, Science and Risk Studies
Cato Institute
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