“A deep fragrance of academia”: the Australian Tobacco Research Foundation

Abstract

Objectives:(1) To review the history of the tobacco industry supported Australian Tobacco Research Foundation (ATRF)(1970–1994) for evidence of the industry’s use of the Foundation to further its objectives that “more research was needed” on smoking and health and to promulgate the view that nicotine was not addictive. (2) To review efforts by public health advocates to discredit the ATRF as a public relations tool used by the Australian industry.Methods:Systematic search of previously internal industry documents released through the US Master Settlement Agreement.Results:The ATRF was headed by prestigious Australian medical scientists, with at least one considered by the industry to be “industry positive”. An international ATRF symposium on nicotine was vetted by the industry and heavily attended by industry approved scientists. Following sustained criticism from the health and medical community about the industry’s creation of the ATRF to further its objectives, the ATRF’s scientific committee was provoked to publicly declare in 1988 that smoking was a causative agent in disease. This criticism led to growing ATRF boycotts by scientists and substandard applications, causing the industry to see the ATRF as being poor value-for-money and eventually abandoning it.Conclusions:The raison d’etre for the ATRF’s establishment was to allow the Australian industry to point to its continuing commitment to independent medical research, with the implied corollary that tobacco control measures were premature in the face of insufficient evidence about tobacco’s harms. Sustained criticism of tobacco industry funded research schemes can undermine their credibility among the scientific community.

The Political Dynamics of Tobacco Control in Australia and New Zealand: Explaining Policy Problems, Instruments, and Patterns of Adoption

“…This was done through an international network of tobacco companies and industry associations alert to the implications of restrictive tobacco-control measures anywhere in the world (McLoughlin 1990;Deeks 1992; Thomson and Wilson 2002;Tofler and Chapman 2003;Chapman 2003;Chapman, Carter and Peters 2003;Carter 2003).…”

Stopping the rot in nutrition science

“…ARISE is all that it says it is. Originally the Association for Research in Substance Enjoyment, it is also a front for Big Tobacco and its food and drink interests 34,35 .…”

“…ARISE is all that it says it is. Originally the Association for Research in Substance Enjoyment, it is also a front for Big Tobacco and its food and drink interests 34,35 . Undisclosed hiring of the facilities, knowledge and reputations of universities, research institutes, scientific departments and of individual scientists (known as the 'rent-a-prof' phenomenon) is well-known in our field; as is systematic funding of research in sensitive areas by interested parties, the dependence of congresses on support from transnational food manufacturers, and the influence of not-for-profit entities mainly funded and controlled by food, drink, agrochemical and/or pharmaceutical companies.…”

Protecting children from tobacco industry interference

“…The creation and funding of the Foundation for a Smoke Free World organization engages and supports some of these agents and entities, creating an illusion of academia as Tobacco Research Foundations did in a previous era. 20 The most recent of many examples of disinformation with image building was a proposed Continuing Medical Education course on smoking cessation funded by Philip Morris International that would have mollified clinician concerns about novel nicotine products and directed smokers to that cessation option. 21 EC are a real concern but, in the Asian Pacific region, combustible tobacco remains a major, coexistent issue.…”