"WASHINGTON – John DeSesso was on a mission when he entered the halls of the Environmental Protection Agency in late September. Inside the ornate limestone building not far from the White House, he met with a dozen EPA scientists and officials.
He had an extraordinary opportunity: to persuade the agency to reject the science linking one of the nation’s most widely used chemical toxins, a solvent known as trichloroethylene, or TCE, to fetal heart defects. Chemical companies and their allies inside the government had been working toward this goal for more than two decades.
For the past 40 years, DeSesso, a biochemist, has held a series of temporary posts, serving as an adjunct professor at half a dozen academic institutions, most recently at Georgetown University in Washington. But he’s primarily earned his living another way: as a contract scientist for chemical companies and their trade associations, promoting their positions on toxic chemicals from arsenic to Roundup."
