Naysayers (Deniers)

Some of the NAYSAYER (DENIER) organizations who have participated in spreading these inaccurate claims are listed here:

• AAAAI (American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology)
• ACOEM (American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine)
• The ACOEM naysayer report from 2011 does not reference any paper after 2002. In the world of medicine, this paper was seriously outdated on the day it was published, and it makes the paper’s stand on mold-related illness completely irrelevant. (The ACOEM removed this paper from their website in early 2015.)
• AACT (American Academy of Clinical Toxicology)
• ACMT (American College of Medical Toxicology)
• AIHA (American Industrial Hygiene Association)
• AOEC (Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics)
• ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry)
• CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)
• Exponent (defense experts for big business)* see below
• FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)
• HHS (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)
• IOM (Institute of Medicine)
• Insurance Companies 
• NIEHS (National Institute of Environmental Health Science)
• NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health)
• OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration)
• PEHSU (Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units)
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• Veritox (defense experts for big business, includes Bruce Kelman, Bryan Hardin, Coreen Robbins, Lonie Swenson). Veritox was previously named GlobalTox.

The NAYSAYERS also include the following defense experts and defense attorneys:

Ahearn, Donald B.

Arora, Ajit S.

Assouline-Dayan, Yehudith

Bardana, Emil J.

Barrett, Stephan J.

Bender, Bruce

Borchers, Andrea T.

Burge, Harriet A.

Bush, Robert K.

Chang, Christopher M.

Chapman, Jean A.

Charlesworth, Ernest N.

Cheung, Hung K.

Clark, Geneva L.

Cohen, Alan H.

Crow, Sidney A.

Fisher, Daniel

Franklin, Donald E.

Frazer, Jennifer Tucker

Gershwin, M. Eric

Ghannoum, M.A.

Golden, David

Gots, Barbara

Gots, Ronald E.

Guidotti, Tee L.

Hagan, Philip

Harbison, Raymond D.

Hardin, Bryan D.

Hays, Larry

Hays, Steve M.

Hedge, Alan

Hein, Robert P.

Hutchinson, Cliff 

Jacobs, Robert L.

Jarvis, BruceB.

Jones, David V. is a defense attorney used by State Farm Insurance Company and others. He is nicknamed "wiretapper" because he was caught with illegal wiretapped communications . He plead no contest to the charges. Here are a few of the details from the article and several documents published on Slabbed.org:

“On or about March 7, 1995, in the Southern District of Texas and within the jurisdiction of this court, Defendant, David Jones  did intentionally disclose to Theresa Gutierrez, the contents of a wire communication, that is, a non-consensually intercepted and recorded telephone conversation between Mark Rains and Paul Kornfuerer, having reason to know that the information was obtained through the interception of a wire communication in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2511(1) (a), all in violation of Title 18, United States Code, section 2511(1) (c) , 4 (b) (ii).”

Ed Rust (previously the CEO of State Farm) must have heard about Jones because State Farm began using him with regularity. In fact, David Jones ’ name surfaced in the Watkins case in Oklahoma (a particularly egregious example of how State Farm treated it’s Oklahoma City claimants after the town was struck by an F-5 tornado). Two things stick out about Watkins--the first being that all the same players for State Farm that hosed people here on the coast after Katrina were present in Watkins such as Haag and Renfroe. The second thing is the judge in Watkins, Richard Van Dyck held State Farm’s lawyers accountable for their misconduct. Here is was he had to say in his order finding State Farm in contempt of court:

"Defendant State Farm appeared by and through its counsel of record, Tom Cordell, Anton Rupert, Rustin Strubhar, David Jones and LeAnne Burnett……Upon review of the written legal briefs filed by the parties, after hearing oral arguments, viewing excerpts from videotaped depositions and being otherwise fully advised in the premises this court sustains Plaintiff’s Motion for Contempt and for Sanctions Against Defendant, State Farm Fire and Casualty. In making its ruling, this Court finds the conduct displayed by State Farm and its counsel to be obstructive, contemptuous and in bad faith."

In Manokoune v State Farm in 2006 , David Jones’ professional conduct is again called into question this time with the court using the term “constructive fraud."

2023-2024 Update about David V. Jones: On August 28, 2023, Jones published an article for the Akerman law firm on the topic of Restorative Justice. The article was not picked up by any of the major news outlets. Interesting!! Then, Jones left the Akerman law firm and is now at the Parsons McEntire McCleary (PMM) law firm. Jones is 73 years old and at the end of his career, so why did he leave Akerman? What happened?

• Restorative Justice is an approach to justice that aims to repair the harm done to victims. In doing so, practitioners work to ensure that offenders take responsibility for their actions, to understand the harm they have caused, to give them an opportunity to redeem themselves, and to discourage them from causing further harm. (Based on this definition of Restorative Justice, it makes no sense that Jones would write an article about it because it's unlikely that he would be willing to take responsibility for all of the innocent people he has harmed during his career. However, it is good to know that some courts have held him accountable for his behavior and punished him with sanctions. Read the information on Insurance Bad Faith for more details.)

The list of Naysayers/Deniers continues...

Kelman, Bruce J.

Kent, Michael B.

Khalili, Barzin

Khan, Farah

King, Blair

King, Norman

Kirkland, Kimberly H.

Kuhn, D.M.

Kung'u, Jackson

Kurt, Thomas L.

LaBar, Gregg

Larson, Jeremy R.

Layton, Nancy J.

Lee, Dwight R.

Lees-Haley, Paul

Leong, Albin

Light, Ed N.

McClusky, Edwin O.

Millar, J. Donald

Miller J.David

Nealley, Mark L.

Noble-Wang, Judith

O'Reilly, James T.

Page, Elena H.

Payne, James D.

Pettigrew, H. David

Phillips, Michael

Phillips, Scott

Portnoy, Jay M.

Powell, Robert

Price, Daniel L.

Rand, Thomas G.

Richardson, Kelly G.

Rizzo, Matthew

Robbins, Coreen A.

Rudert, Amanda

Saxon, Andrew

Schaeffer, Fran

Schoenberg, Patrick S.

Selmi, Carlo F.

Sepkkowitz, Kent

Shoenfeld, Yehuda

Sowinski, Edward

Sudakin, Daniel L.

Swenson, Lonie J.

Sylvera, Darryl

Terr, Abba I.

Terry, Pam

Teuber, Suzanne S.

Tranel, Daniel L.

Trevino, Ernest

Trout, Douglas B.

Truex, Bruce A.

Vance, Paula H.

Verhoeff, Arnoud P.

Wedner, H. James

Weiner, Howard M.

Weissfield, Alice S.

Williams, C.W.

Wood, Robert A.

Zalma, Barry

And many other defense experts and defense attorneys.

The naysayers claim that mold and mycotoxins aren't harmful when inhaled.  That is NOT true.

They have known about the inhalation health effects of mycotoxins since at least 1985 and probably much earlier.

It’s amazing how our government officials, judges, medical organizations and allopathic physicians have turned their backs on the people who are ill and suffering just because of this handful of naysayer papers written by these bought-and-paid-for defense experts. Yet, they ignore the hundreds of research papers that discuss the health effects of exposure to mold and mycotoxins.

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David Michaels said it best in his book "Doubt is Their Product."

"The practices perfected (by the tobacco industry) are alive and well and ubiquitous today. We see this growing trend that disingenuously demands proof over precaution in the realm of public health. In field after field, year after year, conclusions that might support regulation are always disputed. Animal data are deemed not relevant, human data not representative, and exposure data not reliable. Whatever the story—global warming, sugar and obesity, secondhand smoke—scientists in what I call the ‘‘product defense industry’’ prepare for the release of unfavorable studies even before the studies are published. Public relations experts feed these for-hire scientists contrarian sound bites that play well with reporters, who are mired in the trap of believing there must be two sides to every story. Maybe there are two sides—and maybe one has been bought and paid for."

*Here are excerpts about Exponent from the book "Doubt is Their Product:"

From page 46 of the book:

As the product defense work has gotten more and more specialized, the makeup of the business has changed; generic public relations operations like Hill and Knowlton have been eclipsed by product defense firms, specialty boutiques run by scientists. Having cut their teeth manufacturing uncertainty for Big Tobacco, scientists at ChemRisk, the Weinberg Group, Exponent, Inc., and other consulting firms now battle the regulatory agencies on behalf of the manufacturers of benzene, beryllium, chromium, MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether), perchlorates, phthalates, and virtually every other toxic chemical in the news today. Their business model is straightforward. They profit by helping corporations minimize public health and environmental protection and fight claims of injury and illness. In field after field, year after year, this same handful of individuals and companies comes up again and again.

The range of their work is impressive. They have on their payrolls (or can bring in on a moment’s notice) toxicologists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, risk assessors, and any other professionally trained, media-savvy experts deemed necessary. They and the larger, wealthier industries for which they work go through the motions we expect of the scientific enterprise, salting the literature with their questionable reports and studies. Nevertheless, it is all a charade. The work has one overriding motivation: advocacy

for the sponsor’s position in civil court, the court of public opinion, and the regulatory arena. Often tailored to address issues that arise in litigation, they are more like legal pleadings than scientific papers. In the regulatory arena, the studies are useful not because they are good work that the regulatory agencies have to take seriously but because they clog the machinery and slow down the process.

From page 47 of the book:

Should the public lose all interest in its health, these product defense firms would be out of luck. Exponent, Inc., one of the premier firms in the product defense business, acknowledges as much in this filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Public concern over health, safety and preservation of the environment has resulted in the enactment of a broad range of environmental and/or other laws and regulations by local, state and federal lawmakers and agencies. These laws and the implementing regulations affect nearly every industry, as well as the agencies of federal, state and local governments charged with their enforcement. To the extent changes in such laws, regulations and enforcement or other factors significantly reduce the exposures of manufacturers, owners, service providers and others to liability, the demand for our services may be significantly reduced.

Exponent, Inc., began its existence as an engineering firm, calling itself Failure Analysis Associates and specializing in assisting the auto industry in defending itself in lawsuits involving crashes.7 ‘‘Failure analysis’’ is a standard methodology for investigating the breakdown of a system or machine, but the firm must have realized that ‘‘Failure’’ in its name might not work well outside the engineering world and switched to the more palatable Exponent, Inc., when it went public in 1998. 

Exponent’s scientists are prolific writers of scientific reports and papers. While some may exist, I have yet to see an Exponent study that does not support the conclusion needed by the corporation or trade association that is paying the bill.

From page 49 of the book:

When a study by consulting epidemiologists discovered a high rate of prostate cancer cases at a Syngenta plant that produced the pesticide atrazine,21 Exponent’s scientists produced a study that found no relationship between the chemical and the disease.

After numerous studies that linked pesticide exposure and Parkinson’s disease appeared in prestigious scientific journals, Exponent’s scientists produced a literature review for CropLife America, the trade association of pesticide producers, whose conclusion maintained that ‘‘the animal and epidemiologic data reviewed do not provide sufficient evidence to support a causal association between pesticide exposure and Parkinson’s disease.’’

Exponent specializes in literature reviews that draw negative conclusions. The company’s scientists have produced several reviews of the asbestos literature for use in litigation, all of which conclude that certain types of asbestos and certain types of asbestos exposure are far less dangerous than previously believed.

From page 137 of the book:

Brush needed a more convincing argument, and so it hired the product defense firm Exponent, Inc., which proceeded to do what it does best: manufacture uncertainty. Maybe different forms of beryllium do not pose the same health hazard. Maybe particle size is what is important. Maybe skin exposure is more significant than we thought. Whatever is going on with beryllium is very complicated, according to this line of reasoning, so we need defending the taxicab standard to do more research, more research, more research.

From page 181 of the book:

In regard to asbestos harming auto mechanics because of the asbestos in automobile brake pads....

Scientists at Exponent, Inc. and ChemRisk have flooded the scientific literature with analyses that conclude that auto mechanics who repair asbestos brake shoes are not exposed to much asbestos and when they are, the asbestos has been transformed into non-toxic material. These studies do not come cheaply; between 2001 and April 2006 these two firms alone billed approximately $23 million to General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler for their work.