The mother of junk science
>From the South China Morning Post - a Hong Kong Newspaper
Monday January 18 1999
The Cigarette Papers
Smoking guns
HEDLEY THOMAS and JASON GAGLIARDI
Millions of pages of once-confidential
tobacco company documents have been
posted on a range of web sites in recent
months. Mostly from cigarette giants
Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, British
American Tobacco and Lorillard, they
range from lengthy scientific studies and
sensitive correspondence to marketing
plans and memos dating back to the
1950s.
When written, the tobacco industry could
not have imagined they would ever be
publicly inspected. They are the result of
a ground-breaking legal settlement
between the tobacco industry and United
States attorneys-general.
"We are here to do something radical. To
look at a problem. To achieve a solution.
Nothing should be withheld."
Thus begins a sprawling account of a
high-powered brainstorming session
organised by cigarette colossus Philip
Morris and dubbed Project Down Under,
for the June, 1987, think-tank's antipodean
provenance.
Details of the meeting are revealed in a
once-confidential Philip Morris document,
a minuted note of a top-level strategy, and
among more than 30 million pages - some
of which reveal the tobacco industry's
darkest secrets - prised from the
companies' own files and posted on the
Internet as a result of litigation in the
United States during the past 12 months.
The memo points to the genesis of an
international scheme that has now blown
up in the face of the tobacco industry like
an exploding cigar. A scheme that involved
the channelling of millions of dollars from
the industry's war chest through a range of
innocuous-sounding organisations in an
attempt to procure helpful science, then
merchandise the findings to ease fears over
the effects of second-hand smoke and win
major concessions from the public and
private sector over bans.
The stakes were huge: this was the 1980s,
when objections by non-smokers to other
people's smoke were becoming
increasingly strident. By drawing pie-charts
showing when and where the average
smoker lit up, the tobacco industry
calculated bans in work places, aircraft,
restaurants and other venues would result
in a dramatic plunge in the number of
cigarettes smoked. People would have less
time to puff. And that would lead to
billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Several key documents tell the story of
how a coterie of tobacco big-wigs and
American lawyers drew up a pan-industry
plan to target scientists throughout Asia,
the US and Europe in an effort to wrest
back control of an issue on which they had
decided to make a last-ditch stand. That
issue was passive smoking, or, to use the
industry-preferred euphemism,
Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS).
According to the US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), ETS is a
mixture of the smoke given off by the
burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar
and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of
smokers. It cites the possible health effects
as eye, nose and throat irritation,
headaches, lung cancer, and heart disease.
It says children exposed to ETS face
increased risk of lower respiratory tract
infections, such as bronchitis and
pneumonia, ear infections, build-up of fluid
in the middle ear, increased severity and
frequency of asthma episodes, and
decreased lung function.
In January 1993, the EPA published a
controversial report designating ETS as a
human carcinogen more dangerous than
asbestos, benzene or radon, and estimated
passive smoking was responsible for about
3,000 American lung cancer deaths each
year. The tobacco industry hit back hard,
accusing the EPA of putting its own spin
on statistics to justify a political vendetta
against tobacco.
However, the battle lines in this
international slugging match were drawn
much earlier. In the early 80s, the big
tobacco companies could see which way
the winds of scientific and public opinion
on ETS were blowing. By the mid-80s,
they believed their position was becoming
critical. By 1987's Project Down Under
meeting, they had girded their loins for a
multi-million dollar battle.
Asia was, and remains, crucial to the
industry. While increased government
regulation, litigation and public awareness
of the implications of smoking were
harming the traditional US and European
markets, Asia was wide open and primed
for exponential growth.
The upshot was a scheme hatched by the
world's biggest tobacco company, Philip
Morris, and supported by fellow giants RJ
Reynolds, British American
Tobacco/Brown & Williamson and Japan
Tobacco Inc.
The once-secret memos reveal it was
called the Asia ETS Consultants
Programme or Project. It revolved around
a drive to identify and recruit scientists to
push the industry's line on ETS - namely,
that its contribution to disease was virtually
non-existent and that it was not a major
indoor air pollutant. The programme
thrived under the close supervision of
industry stalwarts like the
Harvard-educated lawyer John Rupp, of
huge Washington DC firm Covington and
Burling.
The contents of the documents - available
on the Internet - hardly make edifying
reading for the Asian scientists named as
tobacco industry consultants. Indeed, the
lawyers and tobacco executives' references
to the scientists verge on the
condescending; they were dubbed
"whitecoats", to be "recruited", "oriented",
"educated" and "deployed".
In conjunction with the programme,
various loftily titled institutes and
publications were set up - purporting to be
independent though substantially or wholly
backed by tobacco money, the documents
reveal. They were packed with tobacco
consultants and overseen by the industry's
lawyers, who encouraged the scientists to
attend international symposiums that were
quietly sponsored by cigarette companies,
then to provide studies used by the
companies to further their cause.
In Hong Kong, the two scientists named in
the memos as part of the Asia ETS
Consultants Programme are well-known
figures. Dr John Bacon-Shone inhabits the
top echelons of government policy-making
as a full-time member of the Central Policy
Unit. He was seconded there last year
from his job as director of the Social
Sciences Research Centre at the University
of Hong Kong. He is brilliant, articulate, a
kind of academic renaissance man, with
his finger in a mind-boggling array of
research pies.
Dr Sarah Liao Sau-tung, a chemist, is the
managing director of EHS Consultants.
She has worked for many private and
public organisations, including British
American Tobacco (BAT), the Consumer
Council, and the University of Hong Kong.
She recently completed a $10 million
indoor air study for the Environmental
Protection Department.
Both vehemently reject the tobacco
industry's assertions that they knowingly
took tobacco money to work for cigarette
company interests, and say descriptions of
them as paid tobacco consultants are gross
and shocking misrepresentations. (see page
19)
Their comments are at odds with those of
Mr Rupp and the tobacco industry. Mr
Rupp, now based in Paris, Donald Harris,
Hong Kong-based Philip Morris Asia
vice-president, and Clive Turner, former
Asian Tobacco Council head, all asserted
to the Post that Dr Bacon-Shone and Dr
Liao knew at the time that they were being
paid to be tobacco industry consultants.
The documents also show the tobacco
industry had a particular affection for the
work of Dr Linda Koo Chih-ling, a former
University of Hong Kong Department of
Community Medicine researcher. Her
research showing diet and other factors
were more to blame for lung cancer in
Chinese non-smokers than ETS was
manna from heaven for the industry. She
also collaborated closely in her research,
the memos show, with the University of
Gothenburg in Sweden's Professor Ragnar
Rylander - revealed by the tobacco
documents to be one of the brightest stars
in the industry's galaxy of consultants,
pulling in US$150,000 (about HK$1.16
million) a year in fees and research grants
in the early 90s as one of the top
consulting "whitecoats". Dr Koo was not
regarded by the tobacco industry as a paid
consultant.
Professor Rylander periodically reported to
Philip Morris on the progress of his work
with Dr Koo and his visits to Hong Kong
to meet her. In one letter, dated August 14,
1986, he recounts meeting her in Hong
Kong a month earlier, "to review the
present status of the [lung cancer] project
and to suggest new approaches for analysis
or additional research projects aimed at
defining risk factors for lung cancers
among non-smokers". He says further
analysis of the material is important, to
learn about "confounding factors", some of
which "may prove to be more highly
associated with lung cancer among
non-smokers than the ETS exposure
itself."
He goes on to say: "I gave as much
encouragement as possible as to the
finalisation into a manuscript . . . If a new
international workshop on the effects of
ETS is to be held, it is strongly suggested
that Dr Koo participates and presents a
review of her data."
Dr Koo's star was well and truly on the
ascent with the tobacco interests by 1987.
In a letter from Shook, Hardy Bacon,
another law firm used by Philip Morris, to
their client, she was lauded for her
"outstanding presentation" to an
International Conference on Indoor Air
Quality in Tokyo. Even internal University
of Hong Kong correspondence between Dr
Koo and her boss at the time, Professor
Anthony Hedley, somehow ended up in
the Philip Morris files, and then on to the
Internet.
As the now-retired Clive Turner, former
head of the now-disbanded Asian Tobacco
Council, recalled last week from London,
ETS in the 80s became "an issue the
industry had to think about because it was
a stick that critics used to beat us with".
RJ Reynolds scientist Dr Guy Oldaker III
put it another way in an internal memo:
"For our industry, the present and future
effects of the ETS issue are clear.
Smoking restrictions limit the time
available for consumers to enjoy our
products. Put simply, a cigarette not
smoked is a cigarette not sold."
Dr Oldaker was a visitor to Hong Kong
during the early stages of the Asia ETS
Consultants Programme, which began in
1989, and in a memo he describes his role
in helping to devise the protocol for a $1
million indoor air study by Dr Koo and Dr
Bacon-Shone. The study was sponsored
by the Centre for Indoor Air Research
(CIAR) - a tobacco-funded-and-directed
group set up by cigarette companies in
1988 - which has also paid for university
studies by eminent scientists. The CIAR
says its funding source has not affected its
independence, but critics like Boston law
professor Richard Daynard charge: "Their
true purpose was to generate
disinformation."
The tobacco industry's serious concerns
over ETS are also reflected in the memo
summarising Project Down Under. As
recorded in the minutes of its 10am session
on June 24, 1987, John Rupp summed up
the situation succinctly: "Where we are - in
deep shit."
He went on to say the industry had a
serious credibility problem on ETS, that it
had been "fixed on by the do-gooders". Mr
Rupp says the industry's position must be
to show ETS is not a health hazard to the
non-smoker. Outside the US, he notes,
"scientists on our side pretty good, we
need more.
"Studies now funded: None a silver bullet.
Somebody has to say ETS is no risk . . .
bullets against us are lousy, but we don't
have better bullets."
Another participant chimed in: "ETS not
solvable with deductive reasoning, sum up
with something company can get behind
with $ . . . ETS is focus because it's
driving public policy. It is the LINK
between smokers and non-smokers."
Mr Rupp, in a 1988 memo, also noted the
industry "has not yet adequately dealt with
Hirayama's study". (In a finding damaging
to the industry, Takeshi Hirayama, chief of
epidemiology at Tokyo's National Cancer
Centre Research Institute, tracked almost
100,000 non-smoking women for 14
years, and reported in the early 80s that
the incidence of lung cancer was
significantly higher in those married to
smokers.)
A BAT internal document, titled "notes on
a special meeting of the UK industry on
ETS", dated February 17, 1988, shows
that moves towards loading the tobacco
industry guns with scientific silver bullets
had progressed apace since Project Down
Under.
Penned by BAT scientist Dr Sharon
Boyse, it begins: "Philip Morris presented
to the UK industry their global strategy on
environmental tobacco smoke. In every
major international area . . . they are
proposing, in key countries, to set up a
team of scientists organised by one
national co-ordinating scientist and
American lawyers, to review scientific
literature or carry out work on ETS to
keep the controversy alive. They are
spending vast sums of money to do so . .
." She notes although action on ETS is
becoming increasingly vital to the industry,
the plan "is perhaps questionable in some
respects, eg involvement of lawyers at
such a fundamental scientific level".
The function of the US lawyers, she
writes, is "to act as intermediaries between
the consultants and the industry and also to
indicate 'areas of sensitivity' on ETS
research". Potential consultants would be
contacted by the lawyers and asked if they
were interested in problems of indoor air
quality.
"Tobacco is not mentioned at this stage.
CVs are scrutinised and obvious
anti-smokers or those with 'unsuitable
backgrounds' are filtered out. The
remaining scientists are sent a literature
pack containing approximately 10 hours
reading matter and including 'anti-ETS'
articles. They are asked for a genuine
opinion as independent consultants, and if
they indicate an interest in proceeding
further a Philip Morris scientist makes
contact.
"Philip Morris then expect the group of
scientists to operate within the confines of
decisions taken by PM scientists to
determine the general direction of research,
which apparently would then be 'filtered'
by lawyers to eliminate areas of sensitivity.
Their idea is that the group of scientists
should be able to produce research or
stimulate controversy . . . The scientists
would not necessarily be expected to act as
spokesmen for the industry, but could be if
they were prepared to do so."
Another memo lauds how the "Asian group
has proved to be a successful offspring" of
the European programme. It says: "Just as
we must continually eliminate
unproductive consultants, so too we must
continue to seek new consultants to satisfy
new needs."
A Philip Morris memo dated July 11,
1989, summarises the progress of the
consultant programmes. "With the
assistance of [law firm] Covington and
Burling, approximately 70 scientists in the
major international markets of concern to
PMI have been recruited into the
programme."
In the same memo, an assessment of
Asia-Pacific operations, Philip Morris
executive Andrew Whist writes to his boss
Geoffrey Bible (now chairman and chief
executive of the company): "One of our
consultants recently made a presentation to
the Hong Kong Consumer Council that
resulted in the council's disapproving
proposed restrictions on tobacco
advertising in Hong Kong and taking the
position that the smoking restriction
proposals advanced by the Hong Kong
Council on Smoking and Health (COSH)
could not be justified on health grounds."
Mr Whist reports eight scientists have been
recruited in Asia. He says while no
retainers were allocated, compensation was
paid on the basis of time spent, at an
average of US$15,000 to US$20,000 a
year. Internationally, the "total project
cost" for two years is recorded as US$2.5
million. Total legal cost over two years is
recorded as US$1 million.
In a "privileged and confidential attorney's
work product, February 14, 1990", Mr
Rupp wrote: "This report summarises the
current status of the Asia ETS Consultant
Project, which is now entering its second
year. Much of the project's first year was
consumed with the recruitment and
orientation of consultants. While those
activities will continue, the groundwork has
now been laid for more of our attention
and resources during 1990 to be focused
on deployment of the consultants within
the Asian markets of interest to supporting
companies.
". . . During the past year, consultant
activities have been reviewed and
approved on an ad hoc basis - primarily
through occasional meetings of supporting
company representatives . . . By the time
of our October meeting, we had recruited a
total of seven consultants in three markets
- Drs Reverente and Somera in the
Philippines, Drs Liao and Bacon-Shone in
Hong Kong, Drs Kim and Roh in Korea
and Dr Wongphanich in Thailand.
". . . The key objective of the project has
been to recruit and educate scientists who
then would be available to testify on ETS
in legislative, regulatory or litigation
proceedings in Asia or elsewhere. This
objective was based on recognition of the
fact that there were essentially no local
scientists with a background in ETS issues
and that experience elsewhere has shown
that it is essential to have credible, local
scientists prepared to speak out when ETS
becomes an issue, which often occurs on
short notice. We have made considerable
progress towards this goal, and now have a
group of scientists who could provide
testimony."
Mr Rupp writes that about 80 consultants
around the world attended a
tobacco-funded symposium at McGill
University in Montreal in late 1989,
including Drs Liao and Bacon-Shone. "At
the consultant meeting held in Hong Kong
on January 19 and 20, we spent a
substantial amount of time exploring
appropriate avenues for distributing the
published proceedings of the McGill
symposium within Asia."
His memo says nearly all of the industry's
current Asian consultants are working on
papers for the tobacco-funded "Indoor Air
Quality and Ventilation in Warm Climates"
conference to be held in Lisbon from April
23 to 26, 1990.
Mr Rupp's memo continues: "Among other
things, Dr Bacon-Shone's Lisbon paper
criticises the unsophisticated statistical
analysis appearing in Dr Hirayama's paper
on ETS and non-smoker lung cancer in
Japan, the cornerstone of the scientific
literature relied upon by industry critics."
In the memo Mr Rupp then discusses the
tobacco-funded Indoor Air International,
"a scientific society devoted to the study
and discussion of issues relating to indoor
air quality", and founded by tobacco
companies.
"Beginning in January 1991, IAI will begin
publishing on a monthly basis an indoor air
quality journal, based in part on the McGill
symposium proceedings. In addition, Drs
Bacon-Shone, Ferrer, He, Kim, Liao, Liu
and Reverente are serving on the IAI
journal editorial board."
Mr Rupp moves on to describe what was a
"highly preliminary presentation"
concerning the so-called "Asia Cities
Monitoring Project" at a tobacco industry
meeting in Hong Kong in October 1989.
This project, he writes, is aimed at
collecting data on indoor air pollution in
offices, shops and public transport facilities
and comparing it with outdoor pollution in
the same areas.
If approved, it was to begin in Hong Kong
and then move to Manila, Seoul and
possibly Tokyo. "We expect the project to
show that ambient air pollution . . . is a
serious problem in the target Asian cities
and that the much less serious indoor air
pollution problems that exist in those same
cities are, in turn, caused largely by
pollutants that are generated outdoors.
Such data would be of substantial value in
discussing with Asian officials sensible
priorities on air pollution and
environmental issues.
"Our current plan is to begin the project in
Hong Kong, under the direction of Drs
Liao, Bacon-Shone and Linda Koo, who
has agreed to consult on the project. A
complete protocol, with proposed budget,
for the Hong Kong phase of the project
should be available within the next few
weeks. If ultimately approved by the
supporting companies, we would hope to
begin field work in Hong Kong in May
1990 and to have the results ready for
publication by early August. We expect the
project to yield over its course several
different scientific publications."
Under the heading "Country Specific
Activities: Hong Kong", Mr Rupp writes:
"Drs Liao and [Roger] Perry [of Imperial
College in Britain] currently are preparing a
list of government officials in Hong Kong
who might be given a copy of the McGill
publication. We must emphasise again,
however, that the decision to circulate the
McGill book in Hong Kong and the
manner of its circulation lie with our
supporting companies and the Hong Kong
Tobacco Institute. We took the
opportunity provided by the January
consultant meeting in Hong Kong to meet
with JP Lee [Lee Jark-pui] of the HKTI
[Hong Kong Tobacco Institute] to explain
the objectives of the Asia ETS Consultant
Project. We invited Mr Lee at that time to
alert us to any opportunities or threats in
Hong Kong involving ETS to which our
consultants might respond.
". . . As we move into the second year of
the Asia ETS Consultants Project we
believe we can provide a much higher level
of public consultant activity than occurred
last year. Having now achieved a
reasonable command of the relevant
literature, and with a substantial level of
enthusiasm for the project, our consultants
are prepared to do the kinds of things they
were recruited to do, which, in the final
analysis, is the project's real test."
In another memo by Mr Rupp dated
February 13, 1990, he sets out estimated
costs for the Asia part of the programme
for 12 months at US$800,000. This
included US$420,000 for recruitment,
orientation, training and administration,
US$225,000 for the Hong Kong and
Manila components of the Asia Cities
Monitoring Programme, US$35,000 for
"review articles in Asian scientific
journals", US$28,000 for "publishable
papers" and US$50,000 for "review of
papers, attending conference, travel and
related expenses".
Philip Morris Asia executive Donald
Harris, in a memo on January 24, 1990,
implores regional offices to make every
use of the findings from the McGill
symposium. "We must use the material
wisely and effectively to block attempts by
governments to establish public policies
against smoking based upon ETS," he
writes.
"The material and information can be of
greatest value...when it is given to the
'right people', probably in a private
situation and probably by non-tobacco
person."
A 1990 memo from Covington and Burling
on the "Whitecoat Project", the European
arm of the consultant programme, records
how one of its consultants managed to
infiltrate the respected medical journal The
Lancet and the World Health
Organisation's International Agency for
Research on Cancer, and come up with
"factors other than passive smoking which
cause lung cancer - for example, keeping
pet birds".
It details the exhaustive measures
employed to distance tobacco companies
from the research they were sponsoring, in
codes worthy of a James Bond film: "B
functions as the executive arm of A to
which it is directly accountable . . . B is the
interface with the operating units
(whitecoats, labs) except for those aspects
A elects to manage directly. D has
responsibility for the range of ETS
activities in its given markets . . . D may
be considered as being accountable to C."
It continues in this vein for several
confusing pages.
Extensive searches by the Post of the
tobacco company documents turned up
little of note about the consultants'
programme during 1993, apart from a
letter Mr Rupp wrote on March 12 in
which he refers to how the industry had
used the work of Dr Liao and Dr
Bacon-Shone to present to authorities
when the "Hong Kong Government was
actively considering smoking restrictions in
public places and in the workplace".
By 1994, however, things are beginning to
go awry. Donald Harris notes: "For a
variety of reasons, the Asia ETS
Consultants Programme is in a state of
significant transition - and, quite possibly,
reeling towards an inelegant collapse.
Some effort has gone into fixing both the
problems and the programme, but at this
point it is more damage control than
anything substantive."
His concluding remark proved more
prescient than even he probably realised:
"There is some time, but not much."
