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SCMP Series Part III (fwd)
Monday January 18 1999
The Cigarette Papers
John Bacon-Shone
Emphatic rejections: Dr John Bacon-Shone
Leading scientist Dr John Bacon-Shone is one of a
handful of key advisers to the highest levels of the
Hong Kong Government on policy and strategic
issues. The 42-year-old expert in statistics was
appointed a full-time member of the Central Policy
Unit in July last year, on secondment from his job
as director of the Social Sciences Research Centre
of the University of Hong Kong.
His CV lists his work with scientific journals,
conferences, consultancies and societies, including
tobacco-funded and anti-smoking groups. In two
interviews with the Post, Dr Bacon-Shone said he
had never knowingly worked for the tobacco
industry.
He said he did not know at the time that the
tobacco industry was paying for him to attend
symposiums on indoor air and passive smoking in
Portugal, Canada and Thailand in 1990. He also
emphatically rejected recent assertions by Philip
Morris and one of its long-standing lawyers, John
Rupp, that he (Dr Bacon-Shone) was always
aware he was a paid consultant to the tobacco
industry.
Dr Bacon-Shone said he had always remained true
to his ethical and scientific obligations to develop
honest science and to distribute it openly,
irrespective of funding.
"To my knowledge I have never met anyone
working for a tobacco company. To my
knowledge, John Rupp was a lawyer for the
funding source. I do not question where the funds
come from. I ask 'is it ethical, is it advancing
science and truth?' My conscience is clear. I have
never done anything unethical.
"I feel very strongly I have never done anything I
should feel ashamed about. I agree violently that
smoking is a serious health risk, that the tobacco
industry can't be trusted and has lied, but as a
scientist I think that passive smoking has been the
subject of a lot of bad science."
Dr Bacon-Shone said he had presented at a
tobacco-sponsored conference in Lisbon a paper
which questioned the findings of Japanese
Professor Hirayama, who years earlier had found a
high correlation between environmental tobacco
smoke (ETS) and lung cancer in non-smokers.
Professor Hirayama's findings were devastating for
the tobacco industry. Dr Bacon-Shone said he was
not paid for presenting his paper, which he agrees
would have been "music to the ears" of the tobacco
industry.
"It would be unfortunate if there was the implication
that it was contrived. But the key point is: does
what I wrote stand up? Yes, it does, so I have no
regrets on writing the paper. My position is clear:
the evidence that tobacco is a health hazard is
overwhelming, but the work by Professor Hirayama
and others overstated the risk of ETS and that's a
scientific issue. That's why I was happy to write the
study on Hirayama.
"ETS is a health hazard, but let's be frank - one of
the major reasons people want to get rid of it is that
it's so obnoxious. But we should not try to use
biased findings based on science that is not of the
finest quality to drive the policies we desire. If we
allow the ends to justify the means, where do we
stop?
"Any industry that thinks the risk of their product is
overstated by poor research clearly has an interest
to address that and I think there's nothing unethical
in doing that. If someone asked me to do a study
and said 'we will decide whether to publish or not',
then I would not do it. But if someone offers me
money to present my research somewhere, then I
think it's perfectly ethical for me to present it -
irrespective of the funding.
"To me it makes no difference if the money comes
from COSH (Council on Smoking and Health) or
Philip Morris. The problem would be if you were
only funded to do a certain kind of work, or if the
results were unfavourable and could not be
released.
"The separate issue is whether the funding body
should hide. Quite clearly, the tobacco industry was
paying people to do certain things and they had a
PR mechanism [to promote those things]. It's
unethical for them not to reveal who the ultimate
funding source is.
"They have clearly used the research that we did to
try to push a particular line. The main unethical
point was simply hiding. They hid lots of things. I'm
very unhappy about the implications that I'm a
stooge. Nobody was paying me to do something
that I did not already feel. I'm sure that they picked
on all of us because they felt we would take a
particular independent line."
Dr Bacon-Shone said the tobacco documents and
their allegations of his involvement were distressing.
"I think that clearly, this shows [scientists] need to
be more wary and not always believe everything
you're told."
Copyright ©1998 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd.
All Rights Reserved.
Monday January 18 1999
The Cigarette Papers
Linda Koo
'Unaware': Dr Linda Koo
By researching and publishing a number of studies
relating to dietary factors in lung cancer, Dr Linda
Koo Chih-ling was known to tobacco industry
scientists and chiefs as early as the mid-1980s.
Internal company memos and documents refer to
her work as a researcher in the University of Hong
Kong's department of community medicine and in
the Hong Kong Anti-Cancer Society, as well as her
collaboration for several years with Swedish
scientist Dr Ragnar Rylander.
Dr Koo's studies found a high rate of lung cancer
among children and women in Southern China and
Hong Kong who had never smoked, suggesting that
indoor pollution and diet were the biggest factors.
Her published papers from the 80s include, Is
Passive Smoking An Added Risk Factor For Lung
Cancer In Chinese Women? and Measurements Of
Passive Smoking And Estimates Of Lung Cancer
Risk Among Non-Smoking Chinese Females.
Dr Koo, whose work at the university was
complicated by a plagiarism case she won against
colleague Dr T H Lam, is now working at the
American Health Foundation in New York and
studying prostate and lung cancer.
She told the Post she had never been a paid
consultant to the tobacco industry. She said she
was unaware that Professor Rylander, with whom
she met several times in Hong Kong and abroad,
was one of the tobacco industry's highest-paid
consultants, receiving US$150,000 a year in the
early 90s.
"The point is if I'm doing work with Ragnar and if
I'm happy with my work for him, that's OK. Who is
he working with? That's none of my business.
"I don't go round asking people their financial
sources. I knew he did lots of work on air pollution.
We are clear on our own agenda. Let's get the
politics out of this. This is not the Middle Ages. It's
not the Inquisition. The more the politics, the less
the science. Too many people have gone
overboard about ETS. It's no different from burning
a leaf. I mean, tobacco is just a leaf.
"The point is this - there are forces on all sides. For
active smoking, it's quite clear there's a link with
lung cancer. Passive smoking is a much more fuzzy
issue, there's a lot of politics mixed up in the
science. It's not like cavorting with the devil to meet
people from the tobacco industry. We have to get
the hysterics out of this. I'm a scientist. I can't be
selective about who I will speak to. We have to
deal with lobbyists all the time. We stick to what
our research indicates. As a scientist, our integrity is
bound up in presenting the data as shown. We will
all be judged by time."
Dr Koo said she attended some indoor air
conferences. "I know that at some of the
conferences, there was some [tobacco] industry
money involved. That's nothing new. But we were
certainly not paid to say that smoking is wonderful.
I get invited to conferences all over the world. You
would be paid an honorarium for speaking. An
honorarium is a fee that's paid for a lecture. I don't
consider that as being a paid consultant. I believe a
paid consultant would be someone who has a
contract to do a research project. We did not get
huge amounts of money [for attending conferences].
I'm sorry, a few hundred dollars would not buy me
off. I certainly did not have meetings with [tobacco
industry figures] saying 'you would do this or do
that'. They knew my door was open. I do research
they are interested in and I have a line they find very
politically satisfying. As a scientist I give information
out. I was not being paid."
Dr Koo said she regretted that a confidential letter
she wrote in 1988 to Y Y Tang, then of the
Tobacco Institute, had ended up in the Philip
Morris' archives and been made public. The
two-page letter from Dr Koo pinpoints specific
weaknesses in a study and report by Dr T H Lam
on passive-smoking risks.
"I was not paid for that, it was just my opinion,"
said Dr Koo.
"In terms of ETS, [tobacco companies] would be
interested in my studies but that doesn't mean I was
funded by them. There were findings they would
have been happy with. We were working since
1980 on why there was a high rate of lung cancer in
non-smoking Chinese women, looking at all
possible sources of pollutants, and we found no
relationship to ETS.
"In any case, I think whoever is putting up money
for research, it helps expand the picture. I don't
think because something is paid for by someone, it
is scientifically unrigorous. If people are falsifying
data, then they will be shown up. Their results won't
be repeated."
Dr Rylander told the Post from Sweden that he was
a scientific adviser rather than a consultant to the
tobacco industry and that he told Dr Koo: "Don't
touch that money." He said Dr Koo probably
would not have known he regularly informed Philip
Morris about various aspects of Dr Koo's work in
Hong Kong.
I mean,
tobacco is
just a leaf