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Research targeting business profits: impacts on health and environment
Summary
This commentary argues that research driven by business profit motives systematically neglects the long-term negative and side effects of widely deployed technologies and products. Several case studies are cited where insufficient hazard assessment of new technologies led to serious health and environmental harms including from plastic-derived pollutants.
In contemporary research, funding is generally targeted toward assured and high business returns. In this business approach, studies for possible negative or side effects, especially the long-term use effects of the technologies and products are neglected or overlooked. Ample evidence related to the development of serious detrimental outcomes of many such improperly studied technologies before their widespread use is available in different aspects of the life of animals and plants, and on the overall environment of our planet. A few such examples of serious impacts on human health and the environment are cited in the article along with a brief discussion of the potentially risky application of such one-eyed research-derived technologies.
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