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SCMP: Documents show industry Asia plan on ETS
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 i
We must use
the material
wisely and
effectively to
block attempts
by
governments to
establish public
policies against
smoking based
upon [passive
smoking]
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