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May 29, 2008

A new location for Big Tobacco: universities

Once upon a time, universities were places of great academics and integrity. After all, they often serve the historic role of moral and intellectual guidance for students.

That has changed quite a bit over the last few decades. This recent New York Times article provides an excellent example of this very concerning situation -- Virginia Commonwealth University, a public higher education institution in Richmond, VA, has a contract with Philip Morris USA (yep, that would be the largest tobacco company in the nation) guiding their research and studies.

According to the article:

“The contract bars professors from publishing the results of their studies, or even talking about them, without Philip Morris’s permission. If “a third party,” including news organizations, asks about the agreement, university officials have to decline to comment and tell the company. Nearly all patent and other intellectual property rights go to the company, not the university or its professors.”

We all know this is not the first time the tobacco industry has gotten involved in research. They have been doing it for decades, delaying the common sense decision to call tobacco dangerous for human health. Since the warning was issued, the tobacco industry has moved its activities towards funding “scientific research” that would continue to challenge the notion that tobacco is bad for you.

One of the programs started by Philip Morris is Philip Morris' External Research Program. According to the Source Watch:

“Philip Morris' External Research Program (PMERP) was started in 2000, two years after the cigarette maker was required by the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement to disband two previous industry-wide external research programs, the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR) and the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR). These two entities were largely considered to be public relations research front groups for the tobacco industry which allowed tobacco companies to claim they were researching the causes of diseases linked to smoking, while they were in fact actually funding research to help confuse the public about the scientific consensus about the health hazards of cigarette smoke.”

It’s a known fact that tobacco is the single greatest cause of preventable disease, disability and death worldwide. Each year, cigarette smoking kills over 440,000 Americans and in 2000 alone, over 4 million people worldwide died from tobacco use. Even though almost everybody knows that tobacco is bad, the number of tobacco users is not decreasing.

It is concerning that universities are involved in this way with the tobacco industry. Many of them have missions that emphasize integrity and ethics and most of their public health and medical schools advocate for the protection of health. When the research that we all read about comes from the university, people pay attention to it and take it seriously.

I am trying to be open-minded about this and understand the poor financial situation that many of the universities face after huge cuts in government funding. I have gone to public schools all my life and I know all about class cancellation and wait lists. But, this is a serious public health issue and should be permanently prohibited.

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