[C-U Smokefree] University Research Funding and Tobacco

[Theotskl at aol.com]

Hi there, and greetings from the Bay Area:

The material below is FYI.

Keep up the great work!

Cheers,

Dr. Tsoukalas


SECRET TOBACCO INDUSTRY DOCUMENTS SHOW PHILIP MORRIS WORKED TO
PRESERVE FINANCIAL TIES WITH ACADEMIC MEDICINE


UC SAN FRANCISCO

Corinna Kaarlela, News Director
(415) 476-2557
E-mail: ckaarlela at pubaff.ucsf.edu
Web:    www.ucsf.edu

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE
11:59 PM (ET), Sunday, October 24, 2004
TO COINCIDE WITH PUBLICATION IN ACADEMIC MEDICINE

SECRET TOBACCO INDUSTRY DOCUMENTS SHOW PHILIP MORRIS
WORKED TO PRESERVE FINANCIAL  TIES WITH ACADEMIC MEDICINE

As part of its strategy to avert tobacco stock divestment by the
country's top medical schools, Philip Morris exploited institutional
fears of losing research funding, according to a new report by UCSF
School of Nursing researchers.

In an article in the November issue of Academic Medicine, the journal of
the Association of American Medical Colleges, the researchers document
the tobacco company response to two cases of threatened university
divestment as part of an overall analysis of how the company worked to
preserve its financial ties with academic medicine.

"Tobacco stock divestment and tobacco industry research funding are two
sides of the same coin," said Ruth Malone, RN, PhD, principal
investigator and senior author of the report, who is an associate
professor in the School of Nursing.

"Funding research is a way the industry tries to buy legitimacy. There
are contradictions in selling off tobacco stocks while continuing to
take money derived from tobacco profits," she added.

Malone and Nathaniel Wander, PhD, research associate and first author,
used previously secret internal tobacco industry documents as resources.
Most of the papers have become available through litigation and now are
available at the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library of UCSF.

In their analysis, the researchers show how Philip Morris used similar
arguments to oppose divestment at both Johns Hopkins University and Yale
University. While the company emphasized its financial contributions to
the universities -- ranging from personal philanthropic donations to
endowed chairs and research monies -- it also made suggestions for
investing the universities' tobacco stock profits. Both universities
were "invited" to direct profits into research coordinated with the
industry's discredited and now-abolished Center for Tobacco Research,
they found.

According to Wander, "PM wanted to be seen to contribute to medical
research to counter the image of harm caused by its cigarettes. It used
a combination of carrots and sticks -- alternately offering or
threatening the loss of research funding -- to avoid a public rejection
by the medical schools. Johns Hopkins divested; Yale did not."

However, in both cases, Philip Morris succeeded in minimizing the impact

of divestment activities: in the first, by muting the consequences of a
divestment, and in the second, by convincing university decision-makers
to recommend against tobacco stock divestment.

Tobacco products contribute to 440,000 premature deaths in the U.S.
annually, and if academic medical centers genuinely regard protection of
the public's health as a primary mission, divestment from tobacco
holdings is essential, the researchers write.

Divestment by health and social welfare organizations from the tobacco
industry began in the early 1980s. The American Medical Association
divested its tobacco holdings in 1986 and in 1987 resolved to urge
medical schools and their parent universities to do the same. Some
schools divested, and others did not, for reasons rarely made public,
the researchers note.

The researchers found that as of August 2004, at least five of the 12
top-ranked medical schools in the country are based at universities that
apparently have not divested from tobacco stock.

The University of California divested its holdings in 2001, and
recently, faculty at several UC campuses have voted in favor of policies
against acceptance of tobacco industry funding for research, according
to Malone.

The research was funded by the California Tobacco-Related Disease
Research Program and the National Cancer Institute. The full report,
titled "Selling Off or Selling Out? Medical Schools and Ethical
Leadership in Tobacco Stock Divestment," will be will be available
online beginning October 25 after October 25 at
http://www.academicmedicine.org/.
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