Pro Regents Request to Ban Acceptance of Tobacco Funding Comments

Posted 3/26/07 by Bruce Leistikow: I was asked offline by a PMERP recipient for info on Judge Kessler's verdict and trial evidence on the Philip Morris External Research Pgm. So I am also posting that trial info below.

Judge Kessler's ~1700 page judgement is addressed in these words 

                " Tobacco Companies Racketeers

Created an illegal "enterprise"to defraud the public

Funding of universities first element of the enterprise

.. PM External Research Program specifically identified as part of
the continuing illegal enterprise"
    on page 3 of
  http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/assembly/feb2007/Regents.tobacco.presentation.pdf .

Here are two source of her full opinion -
This loads fast but may not include amendments
Judge Kessler Final Judgement  http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/reports/doj/FinalOpinion.pdf

This loads quite slowly Judge Kessler Final Judgement and Remedial Order, August 17, 2006
http://tobacco.neu.edu/litigation/cases/DOJ/20060817KESSLEROPINIONAMENDED.pdf  

This small exerpt starts on pdf page 1432 of that judgement and is better formatted and much longer at the links above.
"The Philip Morris External Research Program (PMERP)
3847. Philip Morris has created a new organization called the Philip Morris External Research Program, or PMERP, to continue the scientific research carried out by CIAR.

3848. The MSA, signed by representatives of certain Defendants on November 23, 1998, required that Defendants shut down and disband CIAR. (no bates at 32-33) (JD 045158). CIAR's executive director Eisenberg formally dissolved the organization on December 6, 1999. 86205205-5206 (US 21091).

3849. Prior to CIAR's dissolution, Defendants were already forming a plan to establish a replacement. On November 25, 1998, Lorillard general counsel Arthur Stevens wrote a letter to Philip Morris general counsel Denise Keane with copies to Charles Blixt at Reynolds and Ernie Pepples at B&W. Stevens wrote: "Please call me later in the morning on Monday, November 30,

-1403- 1998, so that we can discuss the status of the plan to reinstate [the then legally banned] CIAR. The matter seems to be 'dragging' without direction toward a positive resolution." 86205404 (US 22164)." ....

Posted 3/23/07 by Bruce Leistikow: No amount of denial or dissembling should obscure the true uniqueness of tobacco in general, and cigarettes, the Philip Morris External Research Program, and their related racketeering and corruption of the search for truth in particular.
 
No other product, none, never, has had a treaty ban on all industry sponsorships recommended by the World Health Assembly. That ~5/04 recommendation was unanimous, affirmed by the US government representative's vote, and already ratified by 148+ nations including our neighbors Mexico and Canada.
 
No other product and industry prospers in the face of the 35-70+% combined excise and sales taxes, licensing fees, … levied on cigarettes in much of the world. Such uniquely rich profits provide a unique motive and means for cigarette companies to use or even corrupt researchers, universities, and science to uniquely indirectly support sales.
 
I know of no other industry, and likely also no other UC research ever and certainly not in recent years, judged at trial (many industry trials and jury judgements though fewer addressed UC research) to foster so much illness, death, and disease.

No other product the Con side mentions or implicates, not war, not other drugs, not medical devices, is used on a near daily basis by 1.3 billion humans, resulting in contamination of most of the rest of humanity and 5 million (10% of all) deaths/year already. Per www.who.int/tobacco “Why is tobacco a public health priority?

Tobacco is the second major cause of death in the world. It is currently responsible for the death of one in ten adults worldwide (about 5 million deaths each year). If current smoking patterns continue, it will cause some 10 million deaths each year by 2020. Half the people that smoke today -that is about 650 million people- will eventually be killed by tobacco."

No other product I know of is so profitable that it was long monopolized by the governments of many nations like Japan (Japan Tobacco), China, Italy, France, Turkey, ….
 
No other research funding that I know of has been banned by so many leading US research institutions and journals.
 
Few other products are as addictive and engineered to be addictive as cigarettes.

Despite some UCD and UCD researcher tobacco industry funded profits and some independent researchers’ concerns, society’s needs for health, truth, academic freedom, civility, justice, decency, service and community (UCD’s Principles of Community) support banning cigarette industry sponsored research here.

UCD has some principles. To live up to them we must fully disclose and act on the breadth and depth of the uniqueness of tobacco.

Posted 3/16/07 by Elisa Tong: As a tobacco control researcher and physician, I am in support of a UC ban on tobacco funding. Much has been uncovered in the tobacco industry documents released from litigation (legacy.library.ucsf.edu) and published in the past 5-10 years. For academic faculty, this is an opportunity to learn from an unprecedented body of evidence and understand why other schools have decided to ban tobacco industry funding. The issue can be understood in a similar framework to how smokers are counseled:

1) Has evidence of harm been demonstrated?
The peer-reviewed literature and federal court RICO ruling demonstrate that the tobacco industry has systematically conducted activities to perpetuate scientific fraud. Diverse examples include developing “special-reviewed” projects by lawyers for supporting the industry’s agenda (Barnes, J Health Polit Policy Law 1996), conducting “sound science” public relation campaigns (Ong, AJPH 2001), and invalidating ICD-9 data code entries (Cook, Health Affairs 2005). A key strategy to gain scientific legitimacy is to fund researchers and topics that are not directly related to the industry’s corporate agenda.
Individual recipients of tobacco industry funds may report correctly they do not perceive being affected by industry influence and derive benefits, but the harm to the UC institution is in the facilitation of these actions to continue. As with smokers, it doesn’t help to point to an individual cigarette saying it will lead to a disease or discredit why they smoke, but we take action because smoking is harmful to health with its cumulative effects.

2) Can others be harmed indirectly?
Individual freedom and the “slippery slope” of prohibition have been arguments similarly made against smoke-free regulations. The sky has not fallen in our mostly smoke-free society, nor at other schools that have adopted a policy. We should consider how to help young students and investigators have guidelines about the responsible conduct and social context of research. You don’t even need to take industry funding to be a victim of the industry’s larger agenda. The industry spent a multi- million dollar campaign to subvert a 1998 World Health Organization lung cancer study years before it was published, while simultaneously approaching the investigators to apply for funding (Ong, Lancet 2000).

3) Are there alternatives?
For those concerned about eliminating a potential funding source, there are many alternatives to the tobacco industry. A few funding sources include the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, and California’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP). Some sources may decline your application if you receive tobacco industry funding.

Tobacco industry funds are NOT the same as sources like TRDRP. The current Philip Morris External Research Program was not mandated by the 1998 national master settlement, but is similar to other industry funding mechanisms (eg. Center for Indoor Air Research) that were dismantled in the settlement (Hirschhorn, Tobacco Control 2006 and 2001).

Posted 3/16/07 by Bruce Leistikow: Tobacco, especially as cigarettes, represents a uniquely dangerous product and industry that kills 5 million+ humans per year and sickens many others. Many of the dead are defenseless infants and youths.
 
Accepting industry-sponsored research at the UC contravenes the UCD Principles of Community. Those principles state that we are “committed to serving the needs of society.
….
we strive to maintain a climate of justice
…
affirm our commitment to the highest standards of civility and decency towards all."
 
There are excellent reasons for UCD and others to avoid collaborations with the tobacco industry and the societal disservice, injustice, incivility, and premature deaths that result from tobacco industry success.
 
Many nations, many US universities, a unanimous World Health Assembly at the World Health Organization (WHO), and WHO and many nations’ Framework Convention On Tobacco Control (FCTC) decry tobacco industry sponsored activities per http://www.who.int/tobacco/framework/en/. The UC Assembly of the Academic Senate's (Systemwide) has declared
 
"The Assembly declares its deep disapproval of funding arrangements in which an appearance of academic freedom belies an actual suppression of academic freedom."
and
"The Assembly asserts its conviction that past funding arrangements involving the tobacco industry have been shown to suppress academic freedom."
 
Specifically, the FCTC has been ratified by Canada, Mexico, and most of the civilized world (148 nations), but never submitted for Senate approval by President Bush. The FCTC http://www.who.int/tobacco/framework/en/ says:
 
‘“tobacco sponsorship” means any form of contribution to any event, activity or
individual with the aim, effect or likely effect of promoting a tobacco product or tobacco use either directly or indirectly;
….
 Parties recognize that a comprehensive ban on advertising, promotion and sponsorship would reduce the consumption of tobacco products.
….
2. Each Party shall, in accordance with its constitution or constitutional principles,
undertake a comprehensive ban of all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. This shall include, subject to the legal environment and technical means available to that Party, a comprehensive ban on cross-border advertising, promotion and sponsorship originating from its territory.”
http://www.who.int/tobacco/framework/WHO_FCTC_english.pdf
 
Judge Kessler has already ruled that some Philip Morris External Research Program funding at the UC served the fraud and sales by the tobacco industry.

Posted 3/14/07 by Moon S. Chen, Jr., Ph.D., M.P.H.: As a cancer control scientist, I support the proposal to ban tobacco industry funding of research at UC. Tobacco use is the single most important cause of avoidable mortality and that fact alone should deter the
University from accepting the profits of addicting deadly substances. Tobacco industry funding inevitably restricts the freedom of investigators who accept their dollars.

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