Tobacco Company Tried To Meddle With Science Standards

by Wallace Ravven
University of California - San Francisco

The tobacco industry strategy involved calling for "sound science," while rejecting so-called "junk science" on secondhand smoke that actually threatened the industry's business interests.

Essentially, Philip Morris appropriated the "sound science" concept to shape the standards of epidemiology and to prevent increased smoking restrictions, the authors state.

"Phillip Morris has gone beyond 'creating doubt' and 'controversy' about the scientific evidenceÉto attempting to change the scientific standards of proof," they write.

The standards they promoted through a variety of industry groups would have made proving the hazards of secondhand smoke virtually impossible, according to the study.

Working through lawyers and public relations firms, Philip Morris sought to organize other industries to participate in the "sound science" movement, masking its own involvement. It also hired public relations and marketing firms to help form The Advancement for Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), developed to look like a grassroots organization of scientists and policymakers. Phillip Morris hoped TASSC would seem like an independent body rejecting evidence that secondhand smoke caused significant lung cancer and heart disease risk, according to the analysis of the documents.

In Europe, where secondhand smoke restrictions had not yet been put in place, Philip Morris promoted a set of standards originally proposed by the Chemical Manufacturers Association called "Good Epidemiology Practices." By modifying the proposal and developing new opportunities to introduce it, Philip Morris sought to establish an arbitrary threshold for identifying health risk from secondhand smoke -- a threshold higher than what scientists had found for secondhand smoke.

The proposal would have revoked conclusions that an environmental toxin such as secondhand smoke was a public health problem. This effort was particularly focused on undermining a large European epidemiologic study of passive smoking and lung cancer being conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer at the time, the researchers found.

Between 1994 and 2000, seemingly independent seminars involving other industries and issues on the so-called "Good Epidemiology Practices" (GEP) were conducted in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and China. Philip Morris was connected to all of these events, the documents show.

The analysis appears in the November issue of The American Journal of Public Health.