Tobacco Controversy, Industry Funding, and Integrity in Science
According to a SourceWatch entry, in the 1980s ILSI “provide special services to the cigarette companies behind the scene”. A 2001 editorial article in British Medical Journal further claimed ILSI received money from tobacco industry throughout the period 1983 to 1998. In the article, ILSI denied accusations it sought to undermine tobacco control efforts. It further noted the infrequent symposia and publications sponsored on inhalation toxicology in the 1980s only tangentially addressed cigarette smoke. In these instances, ILSI addressed the effects of second-hand smoke.
For example, in the 1989 ILSI Monograph Assessment of Inhalation Hazards, three of 33 chapters address tobacco. Two of those papers show unequivocally that second hand smoke has adverse effects on respiratory infection and lung function, especially in children and that epidemiological data show a “statistically significant increase in lung cancer risk of about 40%” for nonsmokers married to smokers. The third article did not address risk per se, but rather compares the strengths and weakness of study designs for assessing risk.
ILSI is aware its funding raises questions about the neutrality of its science. The North American branch of ILSI (ILSI North America) initiated a Conflict of Interest project which resulted in simultaneous publication of the article “Funding Food Science and Nutrition Research: Financial Conflicts and Scientific Integrity” in full or excerpted in six peer-reviewed journals. The article outlines eight ground rules to ensure the integrity of industry-supported science.
Read more about this topic: International Life Sciences Institute
Famous quotes containing the words tobacco, industry, integrity and/or science:
“when her husband came,
complaining about the tobacco spit on him,
they decided to run North
for a free evening.”
—Carole Gregory Clemmons (b. 1945)
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Much boisterous courage, before loneliness
Had driven him crazed;
For meditations upon unknown thought
Make human intercourse grow less and less....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I expect a time when, or rather an integrity by which, a man will get his coat as honestly and as perfectly fitting as a tree its bark. Now our garments are typical of our conformity to the ways of the world, i.e., of the devil, and to some extent react on us and poison us, like that shirt which Hercules put on.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“After sitting in my chamber many days, reading the poets, I have been out early on a foggy morning and heard the cry of an owl in a neighboring wood as from a nature behind the common, unexplored by science or by literature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)