There is No Scope for Tobacco Funded Research in our Society

The International Society for the Prevention of Tobacco Induced Diseases is a Multidisciplinary group of tobacco control advocates comprising laboratory scientists, clinicians, health care researchers and public health workers. Their common aim is the prevention of recruitment of any individual to nicotine addiction and tobacco dependency, the promotion of smoking cessation and elucidation of the mechanisms and outcomes of injury caused by smoking. A major objective of global tobacco control is to restrict the ability of transnational tobacco companies to promote their products, glamorize smoking in the eyes of young people, propagate misleading information about the harm of active and passive smoking and delay or dilute legislation. two of the posters gave acknowledgement to funding by the Philip Morris External Research Programme (PMERP). Although these are the only two such cases in the Society's three-year history, the Executive Committee regrets that this happened and wishes to reaffirm that there is no scope whatsoever for any tobacco sponsored or influenced activities within the Society. Although the Society's rules and intentions may not have been sufficiently clear, the Executive Committee has now resolved to never again accept tobacco funded research for presentation or publication. While authors of tobacco funded research may deny any influence of their paymasters on their outputs, this is not the point. The tobacco industry is currently seeking to reposition itself, acquire new legitimacy, ingratiate itself with lawmakers and desperately avoid the impacts of both legislation and litigation which will damage their sales and budgets. The industry's defence lawyers state in the current trial in Washington, D.C., (under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act-RICO), that the tobacco industry should be judged on its present behaviour, not its past history. The question is how much mendacity and antisocial behaviour can be swept under even large carpets? As reported in the November issue of Academic Medicine [1], journal of the American Medical Colleges , the industry has recently " exploited institutional fears of losing research funding as part of its strategy to avoid tobacco stock divestment by US medical schools. " As stated by Ruth Malone RN, PhD, senior author of the report and associate professor of nursing in University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing, " Funding research is a way the industry tries to buy legitimacy. There are contradictions in selling off tobacco stocks while continuing to take money derived from tobacco profits. " [1] There are …