|
cClard's domain is chemistry. On the Reed faculty since 1984, he holds a Ph.D in biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, has a respected research record, and a substantial body of published work to his credit, and was most recently awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute for his project Mechanistic Probes of Phosphoribosyltransferases.
In his report to the court, McClard qualified his response by acknowledging that the subject matter he was asked to address contained materials that spanned several disciplines and that his expertise, biochemistry, did not cross all of them. He structured his response under these headings:
- Does silicone depolymerize and change chemically in vitro and in vivo?
- Does silicone bleed out of implants and move throughout the body (and are the methods used to detect silicone and silicone products adequate)?
- Do chemical and physical methods demonstrate that the surface area of silicone microdroplets increase significantly with time?
- Does silicone degrade to silica in vivo?
| Hall v. Baxter Healthcare Corporation was McClard's introcution to the clearly questionable role of expert witnesses (who in some cases are paid as much as $8,000 a day) and to the rarely dignified practice of courtroom histrionics. |
McClard applauds the attempt of courts to be more accountable. In his examination of the chemistry component used in evidence, McClard cites one case in point. "This expert witness was making the claim that the silicone casing was, itself, unstable. His claim was consistent with the known chemistry of silicon, but the data analysis was entirely wrong. They used equations that were totally incorrect, and some of their methodology was highly questionable. I found that hard to believe because a lot of it was classical, physical chemistry. This particular individual had a post doc in physical chemistry. He had botched the kinetic analysis, which is really fundamental--something we're doing in Chem. 110 right now. I would be surprised if my Chem. 110 students, at least my 'A' students, would have made that error. They would have recognized it."
McClard goes on to explain another related instance. "The connection that the plaintiffs were trying to make was this: it isn't a huge leap of faith to see that as these methyl groups get knocked off and you put more oxygens on, you start to make silicates. You end up with what is called an amorphous silica, which doesn't have any distinct composition or form. They claimed that the materials were acting like silica and causing 'silicosis-like' symptoms in these women." **
But McClard insists that it is a leap of faith--the evidence is just not there to support this claim. "They've cited papers that were trying to determine a biochemical mechanism for why silica would cause immunological response, but there is no evidence that silicone oil leads directly to the materials that are causing these effects. There's a big gap in trying to make this connection." McClard does suggest this gap could indeed be filled at some point in time. "If someone could do research, maybe it could be proved. Maybe it does cause these symptoms. But this is a claim with no evidence, at least not now."
is introduction to the clearly questionable role of expert witnesses (who in some cases are paid as much as $8,000 a day) and to the rarely dignified practice of courtroom histrionics was Hall v. Baxter Healthcare Corporation. He refers to a closing argument tactic where, attempting to prove that silicone is a safe and stable substance, a defense attorney took a beaker filled with silicone and turned it upside down to show that nothing would leak out. "I was supposed to be swayed by an argument like that? It just makes the job of being objective that much harder when you've been insulted." What's more, he adds, "anyone in my profession who would give a seminar with the same sense of production used by lawyers would be laughed at. What they consider to be proof, or a good argument, would never be carried in science."
|
