What if Erin Brockovich was wrong

First was the news that Hinkley, CA did not have an abnormal cancer rate. Now this article in the London Daily Mail:

She was the single mother who claimed her town was poisoned by its water supply... but was Erin Brockovich wrong?
The Stars and Stripes is being flown upside down outside Bobby Morris's ramshackle bungalow deep in the Californian wilderness. Could there be a more chilling sight gently blowing in the breeze than an 'inverted' flag - a universally recognised symbol of distress and danger?

'This community is blighted,' declared Mr Morris, 52, a volunteer firefighter and mechanic. The community is Hinkley (population: less than 2,000), an isolated speck on the map, somewhere off the beaten track between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Everyone you speak to here, it seems, has been struck down with an illness or disease or knows someone who had a miscarriage, strange rash, stroke or cancer; especially cancer.

A bit more:

Today, however, more than a decade on from one of the most celebrated David and Goliath legal battles of recent times, a less flattering assessment is emerging.

Fresh scientific evidence has come to light that casts doubt on Brockovich's claims that PG&E was responsible for the continuing legacy of ill-health in Hinkley.

That evidence is contained in a new survey by the California Cancer Registry and its key, controversial finding that the number of people diagnosed with cancer in the Hinkley area between 1996 and 2008 was not only not excessive, but was lower than would normally be expected for a town of its size - 196 cancer cases over the 12-year period of the study, when the statistical expectation for the region was 224.

This raises a haunting question: Could Erin Brockovich have been wrong all along? The stylish, Chanel-wearing Brockovich of today, who lives in a mansion near Malibu and runs her own environmental consultancy, is unrecognisable from the Erin of old.

Back then, her job title with a provincial law firm in California's San Fernando Valley was legal researcher, little more than the office dogsbody. Legend has it that Brockovich - now 50, with three grown-up children - stumbled on Hinkley's guilty secret (her words) while rummaging through long-forgotten files.

Pretty damning... Michael Fumento has a good backgrounder.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on January 3, 2011 12:35 PM.

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