Officials from the U.S. government's health research agency are to be questioned by a congressional committee about why taxpayers are funding a World Health Organization cancer agency facing criticism over how it classifies carcinogens, Reuters reported. An aide to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform told Reuters that National Institutes of Health officials have agreed to give an in-person briefing to the committee after questions were raised by lawmakers over its grants to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a semi-autonomous part of the WHO based in Lyon, France. The hearing will be in private, with NIH officials answering questions from committee investigators, the aide said. The committee is working with the NIH to schedule the briefing soon, the aide said, but no date has yet been set. The briefing comes after the committee's chairman added his voice to growing concerns among some senior U.S. lawmakers about the way IARC reviews and classifies substances. In recent years IARC has caused controversy over whether such things as coffee, mobile phones, processed meat and the weed killer glyphosate cause cancer. Its critics, including in industry, say it is sometimes too quick to conclude that substances might cause cancer, causing unnecessary health scares. It defends its methods as scientifically sound. In a Sept. 26 letter to NIH director Francis Collins, Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz describes IARC as having "a record of controversy, retractions, and inconsistencies" and asks why the NIH, which has a $33 billion annual budget, continues to fund it.
