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SCMP Series Part II (fwd)
Monday January 18 1999
Air study linked to
tobacco firms
HEDLEY THOMAS and JASON GAGLIARDI
A landmark study into indoor air quality is being
investigated after the scientists who carried it out were
linked to the tobacco industry.
The Environmental Protection Department, which
commissioned the recently released $10 million study,
is seeking legal advice and conducting checks on the
report.
The inquiry was ordered after managing director of
EHS Consultants Sarah Liao Sau-tung and Central
Policy Unit member John Bacon-Shone were named in
Philip Morris cigarette company documents as having
been paid consultants to the industry.
However, Dr Liao and Dr Bacon-Shone said many
references in the documents - recently made public as
part of a legal settlement between the industry and US
attorneys-general - were gross misrepresentations
concerning honest scientific work.
They believed the work was being funded by
independent and reputable sources. And they accused
tobacco companies of hiding the extent of their
involvement in setting up and funding institutes and
scientific groups.
Dr Liao's company received about $1 million in 1990
from the Centre for Indoor Air Research, a group
founded and funded by cigarette companies, to
conduct an earlier indoor air study with Dr
Bacon-Shone.
The documents claim Drs Liao and Bacon-Shone
were part of a global multimillion-dollar project run by
the tobacco industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The industry's aim was to play down the harmful
effects of environmental tobacco smoke to prevent or
stall indoor smoking bans. Department director Robert
Law said he was concerned about possible
perceptions of bias in Dr Liao's study, which Dr
Bacon-Shone played a key role in developing.
"Obviously, this is a serious issue," said Mr Law, who
has been studying the documents.
"We would be very concerned if the study itself had
been affected by perhaps inadequate attention being
given to the [environmental tobacco smoke] side, or if
the study is okay but its credibility is called into
question by the information concerning the tobacco
industry."
The department commissioned the study in 1995,
intending it to be a cornerstone of future policy and
legislation on indoor air.
Mr Law said indoor air had become crucially
important. If his department had known a bidding
consultant "had been doing extensive work on behalf
of the tobacco industry, we would obviously need to
take that into account".
"I don't think we would have given them the job
because it's too directly a conflict of interest," he said.
Mr Law said Dr Liao told him she "has never
knowingly worked for the tobacco industry in the way
the papers have indicated . . . and therefore had no
conflict of interest to declare when she undertook the
study".
He said he would ask the Department of Justice
whether there had been any apparent breach of
contract and whether there were grounds for legal
action.
Mr Law said Dr Liao's report was being examined by
department officers and outside experts. He said
nobody had alerted him to any indications of
systematic bias.
"I have not ruled out appointing an independent
reviewer to see if there is any bias in the report, but I
will decide after receiving more external comments," he
said.
Dr Liao said she had done nothing improper and that
her study would stand up to scientific scrutiny. Its
methodology was adopted from the United States
Environmental Protection Agency's base model, under
the guidance of a team from Harvard School of Public
Health.
"This team also carried out the auditing function
throughout the study to ensure standard and quality is
maintained," she said.
Obvious
ly, this
is a serious
issue. We would
be very
concerned if the
study itself had
been affected
Copyright ©1998 South China Morning Post Publishers
Monday January 18 1999
The Cigarette Papers
John Rupp
No attempt to hide: John Rupp
Lawyer John Rupp helped to set up and run the
Asia ETS Consultants Programme for cigarette
giant Philip Morris and several other leading
tobacco companies. He has been openly acting for
the US Tobacco Institute and the industry since the
early 1980s, years before his contact with Hong
Kong scientists.
Many of the once-confidential memos relating to
work by Dr John Bacon-Shone and Dr Sarah Liao
Sau-tung were written by Mr Rupp. He told the
Post from Paris that Dr Bacon-Shone and Dr Liao
were paid consultants to the tobacco industry and
they knew this from the outset. He said Dr Koo
was not a paid consultant.
"We have consulted at various times with John
Bacon-Shone and Sarah Liao, but not for several
years. Certainly they did receive some financial
support for research, or else it never gets done."
Asked about the tobacco-funded Centre for Indoor
Air Research (CIAR), Indoor Air International and
the journal Indoor Air, which Dr Liao and Dr
Bacon-Shone were involved in through research or
membership, Mr Rupp said there was no attempt to
hide from the scientists the source of funding.
"Everyone with whom we dealt knew from the very
beginning our clients were tobacco companies and
so the source of any funding they would receive
would be coming from tobacco companies. You
cannot deceive people or withhold information
potentially significant to them.
"Yes, [Drs Bacon-Shone and Liao] would have
known they were consulting to the tobacco
industry. Because I told them. There is no way a
scientist would fail to ask 'who is your client?' I
would have told them before they asked. The
clients in all cases were tobacco companies. I
would be terribly, terribly surprised if anyone with
whom I dealt took the view they didn't know it was
tobacco [money]. Who would they think my client
would be?
"In Sarah Liao's case [the money paid] was quite
modest; in John Bacon-Shone's case it was even
more modest."
Mr Rupp said the work of Drs Liao and
Bacon-Shone was in two parts - general consulting
and the indoor air study. "At one point they said
'look, there is little research on indoor air quality,
we need research', " he recalled.
"They developed a proposal, submitted it to CIAR
and they received funding. The funding in that case
was from CIAR which had a great deal of tobacco
support. I'm quite certain they knew CIAR was
largely funded by tobacco companies.
"All the people who consulted with us expressed
reservations about consulting to tobacco and the
question they had was, 'if they did it, would they be
subjected to unwarranted personal attacks? Would
they be maligned or criticised by universities and
interest groups?' We could not assure them that
would not occur."
Asked about his memo describing the "recruitment,
education, orientation and deployment" of scientist
consultants in Asia, Mr Rupp said: "The fair reading
is this - if you are going to seek advice from people
you want them to have reviewed the literature and
to make a significant time commitment to do that."
Asked if he wanted Drs Liao and Bacon-Shone to
lobby on behalf of the tobacco industry, Mr Rupp
said: "I certainly encouraged them to share the
results of their research with people who would be
interested. Is that lobbying? I don't think so."
Hong Kong-based Philip Morris Asia
vice-president Donald Harris, who was also closely
involved between 1989 and early 1995, told the
Post it was a costly venture in which "consultants
worked on a part-time, project basis on and off
throughout the programme's duration".
"To the best of my knowledge, the organisations
and individual consultants associated with the
programme were aware that it was funded by the
tobacco industry, and were free to disclose this
fact. I think that at no time were we trying to hide
anything."
Mr Harris said that neither the programme's
managers nor the tobacco companies "exercised
control over the content of presentations or papers
prepared by consultants". The consultants were
"encouraged to state whatever, in their professional
judgment, they deemed appropriate about the
science of ETS".
Clive Turner, who headed the Hong Kong-based
Asian Tobacco Council (ATC) in the early 90s,
said from London: "The ATC did not run the ETS
programme, but, yes, I knew something of it and
rather suspect that some of those [Asia consultant]
scientists now wish with hindsight they had no
connection with us at all. But at the time I'm sure
they knew what they were doing.
"I don't know that scientists are that naive. For
those scientists to say now, years later, they did not
know the industry had a connection is in my mind
disingenuous, to say the least."
Copyright ©1998 South China Morning
Post Publishers Ltd.
All Rights Reserved.