McGill University says it is reviewing the findings of a major research project into the asbestos industry and cancer caused after a CBC News investigation raised questions about links between the research and industry interests.

David Eidelman, the university's dean of medicine, says allegations in the CBC report that several decades of research led by J. Corbett McDonald could have been influenced by the asbestos industry must be taken seriously.

But he also says holding scientific views different from those of the majority does not constitute research misconduct.

Chrysotile Institute

The Quebec Asbestos Mining Association, which later changed its name to The Asbestos Institute and then to the Chrysotile Institute, received approximately $20M in direct funding from the Canadian government since the 1980s.

McDonald, who is now retired, began studying mortality rates associated with asbestos in 1966, looking at about 11,000 Quebec miners and millers of chrysotile, an asbestos fibre.

He and his research team published a series of studies between 1971 to 1998 which were funded in part by the Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health of the Quebec Mining Association, something which McDonald acknowledged.

While Eidelman says McDonald drew different conclusions about the safe use of asbestos from some current-day authorities, he did demonstrate that asbestos is a carcinogen associated with lung cancer and mesothelioma.