TOBACCO FIRM PAID SCIENTISTS AS STOOGES

The United States tobacco giant, Philip Morris, infiltrated the British
scientific establishment with consultants paid to promote the tobacco
industry's line on passive smoking, according to a confidential memo from
the company's lawyers.

The 1990 memo from the London office of Covington and Burling, released on
the Internet, claims one consultant, recruited by Philip Morris, was an
editor of The Lancet, one of Britain's most prestigious medical journals,
and another was an adviser to a Commons select committee.

The Lancet, which takes a strong anti-smoking stance, said it took the
allegations extremely seriously and asked its independent ombudsman to look
into them. The editor, Richard Horton, who was not on the staff at the
time, said: "The claim made in the memorandum is hard to understand as a
review of The Lancet's coverage of smoking in 1989 and 1990 emphasised the
adverse effects of smoking."

Mr Horton said he had spoken to senior editors responsible for the
journal's content at the time, and they had no knowledge of Philip Morris's
consultancy programme.

In an editorial for its May 16 issue, the New Scientist, a stablemate of
The Lancet, calls on Philip Morris to name the alleged mole: "The probity
of a world famous medical journal is at stake."

Clive Bates, director of the anti-smoking pressure group Action on Smoking
and Health, said: "Philip Morris's attempt to infiltrate science is a
scandal, but it is matched by the willingness of some scientists to act as
soldiers of fortune for the tobacco industry. The documents show the
industry... orchestrating controversies, buying up scientists and creating
influential outlets for tainted science."

The document is part of a cache of 39,000 which the industry disclosed in a
massive lawsuit brought by the state of Minnesota and settled last week.
The companies argued that the documents were privileged and so protected
from disclosure. But the court held there was prima facie evidence of
fraud, which overrides the privilege.

Philip Morris, the world's biggest tobacco company, is shown to have
masterminded a global campaign to influence opinion on passive smoking,
through the secret recruitment of paid scientists.

The US law firm, Covington and Burling, set up its London office in 1988 to
co-ordinate the European consultancy programme, code-named Project
Whitecoat. Because the project was handled by lawyers, the company could
claim legal privilege for any documentary evidence and, under normal
circumstances, would not have needed to disclose it in litigation.

The project strategy was outlined to British tobacco firms at a meeting in
London, in February 1988, attended by representatives of BAT, Imperial and
Gallaher.

In a report, Sharon Boyse of BAT, noted: "Philip Morris are putting vast
amounts of funding into these projects, not only in... large numbers of
research projects but in attempting to co-ordinate and pay so many
scientists on an international basis to keep the ETS [environmental tobacco
smoke] controversy alive." Dr Boyse's note includes a list of 18
scientists, most at British universities, who were suggested as possible
consultants.

Under the heading, Lancet, the Internet memo says: "One of our consultants
is an editor of this very influential British medical journal." Another
consultant is described as an adviser to a Commons committee. The New
Scientist identifies him as the lateRoger Perry, an adviser to the Commons
environment committee and an environmental scientist at Imperial College,
London.Other documents among the cache show he was paid by Philip Morris.

Checked-by: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)