Industry reframed silicosis deaths as tuberculosis to avoid liability.

Evidence

Silicosis is associated with and sometimes misdiagnosed as tuberculosis. Industry officials preferred to attribute a worker’s illness to tuberculosis rather than to silicosis. Two consultants to the industry claimed at a National Silicosis Conference, “In all the reports, and writings on silicosis the one thing that stands out is the extraordinary incidence of tuberculosis among silicotics. It is tuberculosis which disables and kills the silicotic” (U.S. Department of Labor, 1937). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1800

Categorization

• XREF: Blaming an ‘external’ disease (TB) rather than the employer’s dust exposes displacement-of-responsibility — attributing causation elsewhere to escape moral agency.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1800