But many of the businesses responsible were small, defunct, or locally owned, and most questions of who dumped what had been hopelessly obscured by the passage of time. As recent press coverage has pointed out, big scares over purported residential clusters of cancers and other noncontagious ailments generally do not pan out when subjected to scientific analysis. Since she exposed the flimsy scientific basis of the breast implant litigation in the Times , a P.R. firm for trial lawyers has been sending out press kits attacking her, and several hatchet jobs have resulted in publications such as the Columbia Journalism Review , The Nation , and Brill's Content . To judge from Harr's book, it was so close to the border line that a recalculation of the town's population figures was enough to make it statistically significant. On the broader point, we've had decades in which to look for a pattern of higher childhood leukemia rates in places where chemicals are manufactured.
Childhood leukemia occurs broadly and evenly across many populations.
One reason is the way the book is set up. Harr trailed Schlichtmann around like Johnson's Boswell, recording his every gripe and speculation. He interviewed the defense lawyers after the fact, and the judge not at all. The result, though full of illuminating detail about what it's like to live through a lawsuit, is also comically one-sided, making little effort to develop defense arguments at any greater length than is needed for Schlichtmann to come up with his response. Part of the book's charm is that he's too disorganized, or too honest, or too something, to stack the deck with any efficiency.