PHA-Exchange> How the tobacco industry duped both academic journals and the media.

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Blowing Smoke Rings

By George Monbiot, AlterNet. Posted February 13, 2006.

How the tobacco industry duped both academic journals and the media.

http://www.alternet.org/story/32074/

Three weeks ago, while looking for something else, I came across one of the
most extraordinary
documents I have ever read. It relates to an organization called Arise,
which stands for Associates
for Research into the Science of Enjoyment. Though largely forgotten today,
in the 1990s it was one
of the world's most influential public health groups. First, I should
explain what it claimed to
stand for.

Arise was founded in 1988 and seems to have been active until 2004. It
described itself as "a
worldwide association of eminent scientists who act as independent
commentators." Its purpose, these
eminent scientists claimed, was to show how "everyday pleasures, such as
eating chocolate, smoking,
drinking tea, coffee and alcohol, contribute to the quality of life."

It maintained that there were good reasons for dropping our inhibitions and
indulging ourselves.
"Scientific studies show that enjoying the simple pleasures in life, without
feeling guilty, can
reduce stress and increase resistance to disease. … Conversely, guilt can
increase stress and
undermine the immune system … This can lead to, for instance, forgetfulness,
eating disorders, heart
problems or brain damage."

The "health police," as Arise sometimes called them, could be causing more
harm than good.

Arise received an astonishing amount of coverage. Between September 1993 and
March 1994, for
example, it generated 195 newspaper articles and radio and television
interviews, in places like the
Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, the Independent, the
Evening Standard, El
Pais, La Repubblica, RAI and the BBC. Much of this coverage resulted from a
Mori poll, called
"Naughty but Nice," that Arise claimed to have commissioned, into the guilty
pleasures people
enjoyed most.

Here is a typical example (this one was written by Reuters):

     "Puritanical health workers who dictate whether people should smoke or
drink alcohol and coffee
are trying to ruin the quality of life, a group of academics said. 'Many of
us hold the view that it
is a person's right to enjoy these pleasures,' said David Warburton, a
professor of pharmacology at
Reading University in England. 'Much of health promotion is based on
misinformation. It is
politically driven.'"

The Today program gave David Warburton an uncontested interview in the prime
spot -- at 8:20 a.m. He
extolled the calming properties of cigarettes and poured scorn on public
health messages. Arise was
also featured three times in the Guardian. Coverage like this continued
until October 2004, when the
Times repeated Arise's claim that we should stop "worrying about often
ill-founded health scares"
and "listen to our bodies, which naturally seek to protect themselves from
disease by doing the
things we enjoy." In hundreds of articles and transcripts covering its
assertions, I have found just
one instance of a journalist -- Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian --
questioning either Arise's
science or the motivation of the scientists.

The man who claimed to run the group, Warburton, was head of
psychopharmacology at the University of
Reading. During the period in which Arise was active, he published at least
a dozen articles on
nicotine in the academic press. In 1989, in The Psychologist, he mocked the
finding by the U.S.
surgeon-general that nicotine is addictive. Most of his articles were
published in the journal
Psychopharmacology, of which he was a senior editor. They maintained that
nicotine improved both
attention and memory. I have read seven of these papers. On none of them
could I find a declaration
of financial interests, except for two grants from the Wellcome Trust.

In 1998, as part of a settlement of a class action against the tobacco
companies in the United
States, the firms were obliged to place their internal documents in a public
archive. Among them is
the one I came across last month. It is a memo from an executive in the
corporate services
department of Philip Morris -- the world's largest tobacco company -- to one
of her colleagues. The
title is "Arise 1994-95 Activities and Funding."

"I had a meeting," she began, "with Charles Hay and Jacqui Smithson
(Rothmans) to agree on the
1994-1995 activity plan for Arise and to discuss the funding needed.
Enclosed is a copy of our
presentation." This showed that in the previous financial year, Arise had
received $373,400. Of
this, $2,000 had come from Coca-Cola, $900 from other firms and the
remainder from Philip Morris,
British American Tobacco, RJ Reynolds and Rothmans. Over 99 percent of its
funding, in other words,
had been provided by the tobacco companies.

For 1994-'95, Arise's budget would be $773,750. Rothmans and RJ Reynolds had
each committed to
provide $200,000 of this, and BAT "has also shown interest." She suggested
that Philip Morris put up
$300,000.

Then the memo becomes even more interesting.

"The previous 'Naughty but Nice' Mori poll proved to be very effective in
getting wide media
coverage. The exercise will be repeated this year on the theme of 'Stress in
the Workplace' … A
draft questionnaire was already submitted to T. Andrade and M. Winokur for
comments." (Tony Andrade
was Philip Morris' senior lawyer and Matt Winokur its director of regulatory
affairs.) "We decided
to hold," it continued, Arise's next conference in Europe, because of the
"positive European media
coverage."

Philip Morris had appointed a London PR agency to run the media operation,
set up Arise's
secretariat and help to recruit new members. Arise's "major spending
authorization and approval
would be handled by an 'informal' budget committee involving PM, Rothmans
and possibly RJR and BAT."

The memo suggests, in other words, that Arise was run and managed not by
eminent scientists but by
eminent tobacco companies. This impression is reinforced by another document
in the tobacco archive
that explains how the group began. "In 1988 the U.S. Surgeon General said:
'Nicotine was as
addictive as heroin or cocaine.' The industry responded. A group of
academics was identified and
called together to: review the science of substance abuse … separate
nicotine from these substances."

I sent a list of questions to professor Warburton, but he told me that he
did not have time to
answer them. Reading University replied that it knew professor Warburton's
work had been sponsored
by the tobacco companies. Indeed, the university itself had received over
300,000 pounds from Arise,
though, "from the university's standpoint, the source of funding for Arise
has always been vague."

It revealed that "Professor Warburton and the University of Reading were in
receipt of BAT research
funding between 1995 and 2003." But at no time had it questioned this
funding or sought to oblige
Warburton to declare his interests in academic papers. Astonishingly, it
suggested that this would
amount to "censorship" and "restricting academic freedom."

The journal Psychopharmacology told me that it was unaware that professor
Warburton had been taking
money from the tobacco companies. "It is an author's responsibilty to
disclose sources of funding
and widely understood that journals themselves do not expect to police this
declaration."

After a long career untroubled by questions about his interests or his
professional ethics, David
Warburton retired in 2003. He still lectures at Reading as emeritus
professor.

How much more science is being published in academic journals with
undeclared interests like these?
How many more media campaigns against "over-regulation," the "compensation
culture" or "unfounded
public fears" have been secretly funded and steered by corporations? How
many more undeclared
recipients of corporate money have been appearing on the Today program,
providing free public
relations for their sponsors? This case suggests to me that both academia
and the media have failed
dismally to exercise sufficient skepticism.

Surely there is one obvious question with which every journal and every
journalist should begin.
"Who's funding you?"

George Monbiot is the author of "Poisoned Arrows" and "No Man's Land" (Green
Books). Read more of
his writings at Monbiot.com. This article originally appeared in the
Guardian.