[Ip-health] Roger Bate: Merchant of ivory, tobacco and DDT
Malini Aisola
malini.aisola@keionline.org
Fri Nov 6 19:22:01 2009
Source URL: http://keionline.org/node/672
Roger Bate: Merchant of ivory, tobacco and DDT
By thiru
The Wellcome Trust convened an "Opinion Formers Conference" on
"Counterfeit Medicines: Perspectives and Action" on Monday 26 October
2009. The speakers at this meeting included Dr Hans Hogerzeil, Director
of Essential Medicines and Pharmaceutical Policies, World Health
Organization, Aline Plan=C3=A7on, INTERPOL-IMPACT Project Manager, Ron Guid=
o,
VP Global Brand Protection, Johnson & Johnson, Dr Paul Newton, Head
Wellcome Trust =E2=80=93 Mahosot Hospital =E2=80=93 Oxford Tropical Medicin=
e Research,
Brian Elliott, Executive Director of the Medicines Transparency Alliance
(MeTA) Secretariat, and Dr Hezekiah Chepkwony, Director of the National
Quality Control Laboratories, Kenya. According to the program, Sir Mark
Walport (The Wellcome Trust) will chaired the two main sessions and
Andrew Jack (Financial Times) chaired a round table lunch discussion.
Roger Bate, Legatum Fellow in Global Prosperity, American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), [1] presented an "overview
of the counterfeiting problem" including 1) difficulties in defining
counterfeit medicines; 2) the challenges for developing and developed
countries; 3) actors involved and their responsibilities; and 4)
overview of historic and recent developments.
Who is Roger Bate?
According to his official AEI bio (an institution that counts Richard
Cheney and Raymond Gilmartin on its Board of Trustees), "Roger Bate is
an economist who researches international health policy, with a
particular focus on tropical disease and substandard and counterfeit
medicines. He also writes on general development policy in Asia and
Africa". He holds a Ph.D in economics from Cambridge.
Bate's profile on Wikipedia, SourceWatch [2] and ExxonSecrets [3] yield
a veritable treasure trove of information on his work on tobacco,
climate change, ivory trade, DDT and malaria and counterfeits. According
to SourceWatch, Bate served as the Director of International Policy
Network (IPN) from 2001 to 2003, founded the European Science and
Environment Forum (ESEF), is an adjunct fellow of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute and a Board Member of Africa Fighting Malaria (he
was AFM's Chairman of the Board from 2003 to 2006).
Bate's role as a industry-funded climate change skeptic was detailed in
George Monbiot's Guardian piece on 26 September 2006 entitled "Covert
lobbying, in the UK as well as the US, has severely set back efforts to
combat the world's biggest problem [4]" and Adam Sarvana's expos=C3=A9 (28
May 2009) in Natural Resources News Service entitled "Bate and Switch:
How a free-market magician manipulated two decades of environmental
science [5]"
In the Guardian piece, Monbiot detailed how AEI received $1.6 million
from ExxonMobil and the Competitive Enterprise Institute received $2
million. The article noted,
Like Morris, Bate has often appeared on radio and television
programmes. Interviewed by the Today programme about climate
change, he argued that cutting carbon emissions has been "folly
all along". Instead, we should concentrate on adapting to
climate change. In 2000, he presented a film on BBC2 called
Organic Food: the Modern Myth, on which Morris also appeared.
Bate has not yet answered the Guardian's requests for a
response.
The Hansard, also records the UK House of Commons' discussion on Climate
Change and the Environment [6] which took place on 8 February 2005 when
Mr Norman Baker (former Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment,
Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Lewes, Liberal Democrat) noted this
about climate change skeptics, IPN and Bate:
That is not to deny that some individuals are advancing the
theory that climate change is not occurring. Indeed, I shall
consider some of those voices now.
One voice is that of Julian Morris of the International Policy
Network, who claims that climate change is a myth. Apparently,
sea levels are not rising and Britain's chief scientist is "an
embarrassment" because he believes that catastrophe is
inevitable. It is worth pointing to the close links between
International Policy Network and Exxon Mobil, which gave the
organisation $50,000. Exxon lists that donation as part of its
climate change outreach programme. There are also close links
with the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute.
We could also mention Dr. Roger Bate of Tech Central Station. He
also criticised Sir David King, who is fast becoming an object
of derision for people associated with Exxon Mobil and others.
He says that
"it is especially shameful for the British to attempt limiting
debate"=E2=80=94
apparently that is what we are doing=E2=80=94
"in a country that had science suppressed far too often in the
past."
I do not think that many hon. Members will recognise that
description of this country. The House may be interested to know
that Tech Central Station received $95,000 from Exxon Mobil last
year for climate change activities.
On the ivory front, Roger Bate wrote in his piece "Culling to be Kind
[7]" for the Institute of Economic Affairs (January 2001) that,
all the evidence suggests that regulated ivory trade is
sustainable, provides much-needed revenue directly to local
communities and is environmentally beneficial. Sound resource
management necessitates elephant culling in order to conserve
other species, whilst if local people are able to benefit from
the revenue they have stronger incentives to conserve stocks for
the future. In addition, the ivory market in Japan is very
stable. 20,000 retail outlets sell hankos, popular signature
seals given to boys to mark the beginning of manhood. Plastic
imitations will not do, so this demand will be constant,
providing certainty to African sellers. Also, ivory stockpiles
are being used up and the hankos market is hungry for supplies;
without legal trade illegal sources would probably be sought.
In a piece advocating the use of DDT to combat malaria in Prospect
magazine, DDT works [8] (24 May 2008), Bate brushed aside charges of
being a tobacco lobbyist countering:
John Quiggin and Tim Lambert purport to restore Rachel Carson=E2=80=
=99s
reputation, trashing me and an organisation I helped found,
Africa Fighting Malaria, in the process. Their article amounts
to a half-baked conspiracy theory that breaks down with a
cursory review of the facts. The authors=E2=80=99 hope is that by
branding me a tobacco lobbyist and claiming the tobacco industry
is bankrolling the campaign for DDT, they will convince others
to dismiss DDT advocates as industry stooges. They are sadly
mistaken...
Second, I was never a tobacco lobbyist. After I wrote two
articles on tobacco-related topics in 1996 and 1997, I consulted
for Philip Morris, at their request, on international health for
a total of about a month in 1998. I never lobbied for the
company or promoted cigarettes in any way. I subsequently wrote
to Philip Morris asking them to provide funding for a campaign
to rehabilitate the use of DDT. This letter, which is now on the
web, is the source of nearly all Quiggin and Lambert=E2=80=99s
suppositions. Yet I never even had the courtesy of a reply.
Philip Morris never funded the campaign, and I haven=E2=80=99t spok=
en
with the company in at least seven years.
The letter Roger Bate wrote Philip Morris [9]on 4 September 1998
requesting them for funds to work on the DDT malaria campaign. The
letter is addressed to David Greenberg of Philip Morris.
In Bate's pitch to Philip Morris, he implored Philip Morris to support
his work on malaria on the basis of its "humanitarian, scientific and
public policy interest". He noted that funding this would would enable
Bate to build a network of contacts on the African contact among
politicians and scientists. According to Bate, these African contacts
would be crucial in shaping UN/WHO policy in the malaria debates on the
use of DDT as evidenced by the "debate and policy shift on ivory
trading". Bate further buttressed his request to Philip Morris by noting
that funding would afford him and several colleagues to write a series
of opinion pieces and books on the "disparity between current and
correct roles for environmental public health" in "usual first world
targets, such as FT [Financial Times] and WSJ' [Wall Street Journal] in
addition to the African media. In his solicitation, Bate also proposed
that he work on projects for Philip Morris on an ad hoc basis including
the tobacco leviathan's work "influencing the WHO on their tobacco
protocol". In particular Bate proposed he could work on a paper on the
Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer (a protocol
to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer) and its
relevance to the "proposed tobacco protocol"; this paper would involve
three to five days work. In his conclusion, Bate cited his going rate
for previous work for Philip Morris Corporate Services (PMCS) Brussels
was 800 pounds sterling a day.
According to SourceWatch, an email written by John Roberts [10] on 21
October 1998 to Matthew Winokur and David Bushong of Philip Morris
stated:
"I think Bate is a very valuable resource and have strongly
recommended that he play some role at UN level. I recall that we
paid him up to GBP 10,0000 per month ... There is one additional
person I would recommend as deserving of consideration too and
that is John Bowls. Where Bate's principal interest Is Malaria,
Bowls's is mental health, I believe them to be complementary
resources. Best wishes, John"
Bate approached R.J Reynolds [11]in 1996 for a a grant worth =C2=A350,000 t=
o
fund a book on environmental risk including chapters on environmental
tobacco smoke, pesticides, radiation, metal, science policy and and
social science but according to SourceWatch, the grant request was
denied.
A PLoS ONE article (May 7, 2008) that Bate wrote with Philip Coticelli,
Richard Tren and , Amir Attaran entitled "Antimalarial Drug Quality in
the Most Severely Malarious Parts of Africa =E2=80=93 A Six Country Study [=
12]"
had a competing interests section which declared that
[i]n the past five years Roger Bate and Amir Attaran received
travel grants from pharmaceutical company Novartis, and Amir
Attaran received a consulting fee. No funding was received in
respect of this research. Amir Attaran also received consulting
and/or travel fees from the WHO and World Bank, and is a member
of the WHO Global Malaria Programme Technical and Research
Advisory Committee. No member of the study team received any
funds from a competing interest for the performance of this
study.
In a piece published in the Malaria Journal on 25 Feburary 2009 Bate
authored with Richard Tren, Kimberly Hess and Amir Attaran on the
"Physical and chemical stability of expired fixed dose combination
artemether-lumefantrine in uncontrolled tropical conditions", the
competing interests section stated that Roger Bate "received a travel
grant within the past four years from Novartis AG".
>From his perch at AEI, Roger Bate has taken aim at substandard
counterfeit medicines with pieces in the AEI's Outlook series (June
2007) "Bad Medicine in the Market [13]" and Foreign Policy
(September/October 2008) entitled The Deadly World of Fake Drugs [14]
among others. In his AEI Outlook piece, Bate employed the term
"pseudo-generic drugs" lamenting,
Although WHO has done much to prevent the spread of fake drugs,
it has actually encouraged the use of substandard drugs through
the promotion of products it considers to be generics--but which
have unverified quality. As documented in a recent paper, this
has been a significant problem for HIV drugs. Unfortunately, the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has
exacerbated the problem by not requiring 93 percent of the drugs
on its approved antimalarial compliance list to have
bioequivalence registration with a competent agency. Most of the
drugs purchased are of the approved variety, but sources inform
us that nearly 20 percent of total purchases--well over 450
transactions--are for non-approved drugs. European and Indian
companies have also exploited loopholes in domestic legislation
which allows them to copy drugs for export without undertaking
significant quality testing. Belgium and Italy in particular
have allowed drugs produced in their countries to compete for
Global Fund awards without having them tested.
It is uncertain how damaging substandard, pseudo-generic drugs
may be for patient safety. Their use--and hence impact--is set
to grow even faster than the market for fake drugs. This is
disquieting, since the Global Fund does not see this as a
problem. It continues to use funds from the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation and the G8 countries to purchase such drugs.
The Global Fund mistakenly assumes that because the drugs are
cheaper, more lives will be saved, which is only true if the
copies are as good as the originals. Meanwhile, the Fund
continues to show antipathy toward the research-based
pharmaceutical industry. Board members voted to increase access
to antimalarials of unproven quality to prevent Novartis, the
producer of the best drug on the market, from increasing its
dominance, even though Novartis sells the drug at lower than
cost.
With such a breath of experience in fighting for causes such as ivory
trading, tobacco and raising doubts on climate change, the audience at
Wellcome Trust's Opinion Formers Conference on Counterfeit Medicines:
Perspectives and Action no doubt waited with bated breath for Roger's
master performance.
RogerBateletter.pdf [15]
121.1 KB
Links:
[1] http://www.aei.org/scholar/76
[2] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=3DRoger_Bate
[3] http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=3D230
[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/sep/26/comment.oil
[5]
http://www.nrns.org/index.php?option=3Dcom_content&view=3Darticle&id=3D51:b=
ate-and-switch-how-a-free-market-magician-manipulated-two-decades-of-enviro=
nmental-science-&catid=3D15:nrns-stories&Itemid=3D63
[6] http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=3D2005-02-08a.1353.1#g1355.1
[7] http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp?ID=3D386&type=3Dnews
[8] http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2008/05/ddtworks/
[9] http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/zvp83c00/pdf
[10] http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/svp83c00/pdf
[11] http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/wov90d00/pdf
[12]
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002132
[13] http://www.aei.org/outlook/26368
[14] http://www.essentialdrugs.org/edrug/archive/200810/msg00057.php
[15] http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/RogerBateletter.pdf
--
Malini Aisola
Knowledge Ecology International
1621 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 500, Washington DC 20009
malini.aisola@keionline.org|Tel: +1.202.332.2670|Fax: +1.202.332.2673