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LETTER |
James Stanley is with the International Life Sciences Institute, Washington, DC.
Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to James Stanley, PhD, International Life Sciences Institute, One Thomas Circle, 9th Floor, Washington, DC 20005 (e-mail: ilsi{at}ilsi.org).
As president of the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), I would like to respond to the commentary "Junking Science to Promote Tobacco" published in the November 2001 issue of the Journal.1
ILSI supports sound, peer-reviewed science. Yet, by implying that we are or have been a tool of the tobacco industry, which is not true and has never been true, the article unfairly tarnishes our reputation and the reputation of the scientists whose painstaking, honest, and valuable work we have funded.
Clearly, tobacco use is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and a critical public health problem. There is also little question that the tobacco industry has engaged in a variety of tactics to thwart public health efforts, which were outlined at length in the July 2000 report "Tobacco Company Strategies to Undermine Tobacco Control Activities at the World Health Organization."2 As a scientific organization, ILSI deplores these tactics and is strongly against any attempts to twist and manipulate science, so we were quite surprised and disturbed to find ourselves painted with a broad brush of innuendo and guilt by association in what purported to be a scientific article.
First, Yach and Bialous are incorrect when they state, under "Buying Scientists," that the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA) "currently has . . . a restricted grant from the Risk Science Institute [RSI] of the International Life Sciences Institute." On checking the reference for this misleading misstatement, we found a page on the HCRA Web site listing 35 organizations, foundations, companies, and government agencies under the heading "Restricted Grants," with no indication of when such grants were given.
Our research shows that RSI did provide a research grant to HCRA—in 1987, which is hardly "current." The grant was given as part of a competitive research grant cycle and the award was for $28 214 over 2 years for a proposal titled "Incorporating Scientific Judgment Into Cancer Risk Assessment: A Pilot Project." Results of the work conducted under this grant were published in the journal of the Society for Risk Analysis.3 The abstract, which is available on PubMed (PMID: 3244866), describes a pilot study on formaldehyde "that was undertaken to demonstrate how expert scientific judgment can help guide a controversial risk assessment where pharmacokinetic data are considered inconclusive." RSI and its funding of this study are not connected in any way with any tobacco companies. The authors' mention of the grant implies an insidious, tobacco-related connection between RSI and HCRA when none exists.
Second, under "Distorting Risk," an accusation is made that ILSI and RSI "gave the tobacco industry an opportunity to blend secondhand smoking risks with other low-dose risks and continue to create doubt and controversy about the harms of secondhand smoke." The only reference for this allegation is an anonymous "case study" that is rife with errors and innuendo. ILSI has strenuously objected to this false and misleading document's persistence on the Web site of the World Health Organization. ILSI's response to the case study is available on the ILSI Web site (http://www.ilsi.org/ajphresponse).
Since the authors failed to provide any specifics about when, where, or how ILSI and RSI allegedly provided such aid to the tobacco industry, ILSI is forced to guess at their intent. We assume that the authors are referring to the 7 international symposia on inhalation toxicology that the ILSI Research Foundation cosponsored between 1987 and 1999 with the Fraunhofer Institute of Toxicology and Aerosol Research, the Hannover Medical School, and, for the last 3, the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory of the US Environmental Protection Agency. These symposia covered a broad range of scientific topics and provided a forum for eminent scientists in the field to present their research, voice their opinions, raise questions, and critically discuss current evidence and scientific thought on a number of classes of airborne contaminants.
These were open, public meetings that the ILSI Research Foundation cosponsored in furtherance of its mission to advance science. The implication that the symposia were intended to serve as a front for the tobacco industry to advance its agenda is simply wrong. In fact, the published results of the symposia reveal that the vast majority of scientific conclusions reached clearly document the hazards of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke. The symposia publications are available from ILSI and the papers presented that addressed tobacco are summarized at http://www.ilsi.org/ajphresponse.
Finally, the authors claim that ILSI "has a formal relationship with WHO [the World Health Organization] and IARC [the International Agency for Research on Cancer] and thus offered the tobacco industry the potential for additional access to these institutions." While ILSI does currently have nongovernmental organization status with WHO, ILSI has never had a particular formal relationship with IARC. Furthermore, there are hundreds of other organizations that have nongovernmental organization status with WHO, so we are again bewildered by the apparent insignificance of this statement in the context of the article.
Analysis of the references cited provides no additional insight, as they make no reference to any connections between ILSI and WHO or IARC. Both citations are to internal Philip Morris documents residing on the Philip Morris USA Web site. The first is a memo that discusses a variety of possible ways for Philip Morris to use ILSI—none of which were successful, if they were even attempted. The second is a 14-page monthly activity report containing a single reference to ILSI—in a list of institutes considered for conducting a proposed project, which ILSI never conducted or knew anything about. The inclusion of these irrelevant references leaves the reader with the false impression that ILSI provided the tobacco companies with access to WHO, which is an utterly baseless assertion.
As to the parenthetical note "Since the writing of this commentary, ILSI executives have agreed to review all aspects of their affiliations with commercial interests," we are mystified by its meaning. But like all the other references to ILSI, it seems to imply some type of wrongdoing on ILSI's part, which is totally false. It also implies that ILSI has direct affiliations with tobacco companies, which is also false. ILSI representatives did meet recently with Dr Yach, one of the authors of the article, in his official capacity with WHO, to clear up the apparent misunderstanding he has of ILSI and to respond to his concerns regarding transparency. Apparently, those efforts were not successful.
ILSI feels that its reputation has been unfairly tarnished and that the Journal's readers are being misled by false statements and irrelevant facts into drawing negative inferences about ILSI and RSI. ILSI is not now and has never been a tool of the tobacco industry.
References
1.
Yach D, Bialous SA. Junking science to promote tobacco. Am J Public Health.2001; 91:1745–1748.
2. Tobacco industry strategies to undermine tobacco control activities at the World Health Organization. July 2000. Available at: http://filestore.who.int/~who/home/tobacco/tobacco.pdf (PDF file). Accessed April 1, 2002.
3. Hawkins NC, Graham JD. Expert scientific judgment and cancer risk assessment: a pilot study of pharmacokinetic data. Risk Anal.1988;8:615–625.[Medline]
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