Attacking the Whistleblower

Many of the visitors to this subject of the sustained attacks on Prof John Bridle of Asbestos Watchdog may be curious as to why he should be targeted with such aggressive harassment.

Thanks to a great deal of evidence sent to us including some no less from the Tory front bench it would seem that what Prof Bridle had stumbled upon is an even bigger wrongdoing by the Labour Government than the allegations in the cash for honours scam.

A very wealthy group of businesses who profit from asbestos matters, led by some well known asbestos claims lawyers, seem to have made large donations to the Labour Party and as soon as the Labour party took power in 1997 their influence was used to promote a health scare over white asbestos. This is the same mineral as talcum powder and a totally different mineral to the already banned Blue and Brown asbestos types. White asbestos products make up 90% of all asbestos materials.

The effect of the Regulations which were then enacted has been to make vast fortunes for companies involved in removing white asbestos products and for lawyers bringing compensation claims on behalf of people that have worked with them, even though the actual health risk is in the Professor's view and the view of many other independent scientists, minimal to zero. In reality there are very few scientists that disagree with this, but backed by the ban asbestos lobbyists and with serious professional marketing the junk science receives much wider coverage.

The opinions of Prof Bridle and supporting scientists over the true risks to health from white asbestos, if accepted, would save the UK taxpayer many £billions per year but at the same time ruin the nationwide fraud and deception that the Labour Party appear to be supporting and promoting.

It is no surprise then that every attempt has been made to discredit him with two BBC Radio You & Yours programmes of ruthless character assassination being produced, one might suspect with the encouragement and connivance of the Labour Party. Ofcom’s astonishing support of the programme has left little recourse than to instigate a challenge via judicial review which amongst other things will give Ofcom the opportunity to explain why ex-colleagues of the BBC programme makers were used in the ruling committee.

If the Professor is shown to be correct and the forthcoming legal challenge to the HSE over its assessment of white asbestos is successful a lot of people (including political parties) will lose a huge amount of future income.

On the plus side these sustained attacks have made it very easy to spot the culprits and whilst much of the harassment is amusing, even sometimes so outrageous it achieves the opposite by promoting the Professor’s campaign, it has been taken very seriously by other supporters of the same opinion. As a result some of the ban asbestos campaigners are currently being sued for libel and related misstatements which is due in court in the autumn.

Professor Bridle and Asbestos Watchdog have continually called for an open, public debate into the science and associated health risks from white asbestos to put an end to the confusion once and for all. Instead the whistleblower is subjected to personal attacks avoiding the argument that they literally cannot afford to lose.