Industry doctors blamed workers’ drinking, not chemical exposure, for occupation-caused cancers

Evidence

By 1973, the MCA’s own epidemiological and animal studies confirmed that exposure to vinyl chloride could cause liver cancer (Markowitz & Rosner, 2002). … Nonetheless, in 1975 a physician at Pittsburgh Plate Glass wrote, “It is my feeling that the vast majority of abnormal liver function tests are caused by regular and rather heavy drinking of alcohol and I expect that the people who have abnormal liver tests as a result of this may be inclined to resume their previous habits as soon as they think they are okay” (Lovejoy, 1975). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1783

Categorization

• XREF: Exemplifies the victim-blaming and displaced-responsibility mechanism; connects to how ordinary people route blame to out-groups’ choices rather than structural causes.
• ADDENDUM: The alcohol-redirection pattern parallels complaints about lower-class ‘immodesty’ or ‘indulgence’ being moralized as the real cause rather than material conditions.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1783