POSITION
The Campaign to Defend Academic Integrity
is advocating for the UC Board of Regents to adopt a policy to neither solicit nor accept tobacco industry funding of research
either in the form of grants, contracts, or gifts.
The UC Academic Senate and
the Administration both have said that tobacco industry research funding is a Regental decision. If a tobacco research funding
policy is adopted, the policy would in no way prevent faculty and students from advocating pro-tobacco positions or speakers
appearing on campus to advocate such a position. A no-tobacco-money policy would be based on specific evidence of tobacco
industry manipulation of the scientific process which the UC seeks to protect from outside influence. This policy would not
be based on moral and/or political judgments or for financial reasons.
Campaign's Proposed Resolution
JUSTIFICATION
The tobacco industry has
been found to suppress research.
In the final opinion of the
U.S.A. et al. v. Philip Morris Inc., et al., the District of Columbia District Court Judge, Gladys Kessler, found on August
17, 2006, that: [Cigarette makers] "suppressed research, they destroyed documents, they manipulated the use of nicotine
so as to increase and perpetuate addiction, they distorted the truth about low-tar and light cigarettes so as to discourage
smokers from quitting, and they abused the legal system in order to achieve their goal -- to make money with little, if any,
regard for individual suffering, soaring health costs, or the integrity of the legal system."
[Cigarette makers profit from] "selling a highly addictive product which causes diseases that lead to
a staggering number of deaths per year, an immeasurable amount of human suffering and economic loss and a profound burden
our national health care system."
By accepting future tobacco industry
grants, gifts, or contract for research, the UC system would now be doing business with adjudicated racketeers.
UC Board of Regents have divested
from tobacco holdings.
The Regents have recognized the special
position that the tobacco industry occupies and have twice voted not to invest in the tobacco industry. The fact that the
Regents have (appropriately) decided not to profit from investments in the tobacco industry makes it inconsistent that the
Regents will accept other forms of financial largesse from the tobacco industry. In 2001, the Committee on Investments adopted
a policy to exclude securities of companies manufacturing tobacco products from index funds and to continue existing exclusion
from actively managed funds. President Richard Atkinson recommended the action to the Board of Regents in recognition of an
unusual combination of financial, legal, and health-related issues(1).
UC Academic Units have taken a stand to distance themselves from tobacco funding.
Faculty from seven academic units on four University of California campuses have adopted
policies to decline funding from the tobacco industry in order to protect the integrity of their academic mission. The policies
were motivated by concerns that the industry funds academic research to manipulate the scientific process and create controversy
about smoking and disease. Supporters of such policies argued that continued cooperation with the tobacco industry violates
the university’s fundamental mission of promoting the discovery and dissemination of the truth.
The Academic Council adopted a resolution which
allows only the UC Board of Regents to establish policies on the acceptance of research funding from a particular source.
In March 2005, after a two-year debate, the Academic Council adopted the position that it
was inappropriate that individual academic units adopt such policies and that any such policy, if it were to be adopted, should
be University-wide, as adopted by the Regents. As a result of the Academic Council’s resolution, academic units no longer
have the freedom to adopt policies that could potentially resolve any conflicts between the tobacco industry’s manipulation
of science and the mission of their academic unit. Without the ability to adopt their own policies, schools/programs and other
academic units are forced to allow activities that could conflict with their mission.
Tobacco companies are different.
A number of important differences exist between tobacco companies and other industries.
While drug companies may want to suppress negative
findings about their drugs, University policy forbids “gag clauses” in contracts or grants. In contrast, the tobacco
industry wants the work of carefully selected investigators and areas of investigation to be published to create confusion
or controversy about emerging or established science and serve their needs in public policy debates and litigation. Thus,
the same policies that protect the right to publish are of no value in preventing undisclosed tobacco industry involvement
in scientific papers.
In the long run, it is in the interest
of drug companies to get the science right. It is easier to bring a drug to market and keep it on the market if it works.
Tobacco companies, on the other hand, know of the overwhelming research on the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke. Since
tobacco can never be used safely, the industry uses science to undermine the proven dangers of their products.
Tobacco is a unique product because it is addictive, toxic, and lethal to half of its long-term
users. The number of people harmed by tobacco worldwide is of epidemic magnitude. Moreover, tobacco industry products are
not regulated like other consumer products; historically they have been exempt from food and drug legislation, consumer product
safety legislation and hazardous product legislation(2).
Tobacco
use is responsible for approximately 19% of all deaths in California(3) and tobacco use is the single greatest cause of preventable
disease, disability and death in the U.S., killing over 440,000 Americans each year(4). In 2000 over 4 million people worldwide
died from tobacco use and according to current projections, by 2030 10 million people will die annually from tobacco use,
70% of these in developing countries(5).
The tobacco industry has used its funding of academic research to damage and manipulate the research process
itself.
A large body of research, much of which was conducted
by University of California faculty, has demonstrated that the tobacco industry has developed and implemented sophisticated
strategies to use the funding of academic research in order to confuse, rather than enlighten, the academic community and
the public at large about the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke. This campaign is, at its heart, antithetical to the
very mission of the University, which is to promote understanding and enlightenment(6). The fact that the University accepts
tobacco industry money helps the industry buy credibility. This credibility is essential to the positive public image the
tobacco industry cultivates for the purposes of increasing product consumption, influencing public opinion, and soliciting
opposition to effective public health policies(7).
Past funders of UC research,
The Council for Tobacco Research and the Center for Indoor Air Quality, both funded by tobacco companies, were disbanded under
allegations of fraud by the California Attorney General and other Attorneys General. The current research funding activities
of the tobacco industry were central elements of a federal civil fraud and racketeering (RICO) trial. (Throughout the trial,
the US Department of Justice highlighted a study by James Enstrom, a researcher at the UCLA School of Public Health, and Geoffrey
Kabat to illustrate what it alleged was an ongoing fraud. In 2003, Enstrom and Kabat published a report on environmental tobacco
smoke and tobacco related mortality. The report, which was funded through a grant by Philip Morris, did not find a correlation
between secondhand smoke exposure and tobacco related mortality.)
All money
received to support activities at the University of California, whether in the form of grants or gifts, comes to the Regents,
not individual faculty or University employees. Consistent with the view of the Academic Senate, and the Regents’ decision
not to invest in the tobacco industry, we are asking the Regents to decline any further funding from the tobacco industry.
Tobacco industry funding diminishes
the credibility of any research it funds.
An institution as renowned
as the University of California cannot expect its stellar reputation to offset the taint of being linked to tobacco money.
The University’s need for funds is not a sufficient reason to accept sponsorship from an industry with a history of
funding research aimed at promoting controversies and distracting attention away from tobacco's adverse health effects. There
are many other sources of peer reviewed funding that faculty can seek (in the name of the Regents) for their work if it is
truly meritorious.
Academic
freedom protects the right of faculty and students to pursue knowledge and publish their work freely in order to advance society’s
knowledge about public matters, no matter how controversial. The tobacco industry stands foursquare against these principles.
The University of California principles of academic freedom reflect the University’s
fundamental mission – to discover knowledge and to disseminate it to its students and to society at large. The principles
of academic freedom protect freedom of inquiry and research, freedom of teaching, and freedom of expression and publication.
In recent years at the University of California:
The tobacco industry sued the University in an unsuccessful
effort to prevent the university from making tobacco industry documents available online;
The tobacco industry has sued the University and used subpoenas to harass and intimidate
faculty in an effort to induce them to abandon research that was not in its interest;
The tobacco industry is using litigation brought by the federal government against the tobacco industry as
an excuse to pursue a broad and intrusive subpoena campaign against faculty throughout the UC system who have done tobacco
related research.
