Boyse, Sharon, Ph.D.
Previously posted in 2000, the links to this important document have been updated.
These remarkable meeting minutes reveal Philip Morris (PM) as the ringleader in a global conspiracy to create and maintain a controversy about the health effects of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). The project was conceived by Philip Morris, who later referred to it as "The Whitecoat Project," after the white coats that scientists wear. The project was implemented globally, and thus proved to be a tremendously expensive undertaking, albeit one that benefited the global tobacco industry rather than just PM. For this reason, PM arranged a 1988 meeting with their British counterparts to solicit financial help for their activities. The document states:
"Philip Morris presented to the UK industry their global strategy on environmental tobacco smoke. In every major international area (USA, Europe, Australia, Far East, South America, Central American and Spain) they are proposing, in key countries, to set up a team of scientists organized by one national coordinating scientist and American lawyers, to review scientific literature or carry out work on ETS to keep the controversy alive...Because of the heavy financial burden, Philip Morris are inviting other companies to join them in these activities to whatever extent individual companies deem to be appropriate." [Italicized emphasis added.]
The document lays out PM's clandestine method of recruiting scientific consultants for the project:
"...The [scientific] consultants should, ideally, according to Philip Morris, be European scientists who have had no previous connections with tobacco companies and who have no previous record on the primary [health] issue which might, according to Remes, lead to problems of attribution. The mechanism by which they identify their consultants is as follows: they ask a couple of scientists in each country...to produce a list of potential consultants. The scientists are then contacted by these coordinators or by the lawyers and asked if they are interested in problems of Indoor Air Quality: tobacco is not mentioned at this stage. CV's are obtained and obvious 'anti-smokers' or those with 'unsuitable backgrounds' are filtered out..."
The activities of the scientists were then carefully controlled and their results "filtered" by lawyers:
"Philip Morris then expect the group of scientists to operate within the confines of decisions taken by PM scientists to determine the general direction of research, which apparently would then be 'filtered' by lawyers to eliminate areas of sensitivity."
The document also implicates John Rupp of Covington & Burling as a key organizer of the project. (Rupp has been testifying this week in the U.S. Department of Justice case against the tobacco industry):
"Not only are Philip Morris active in the US (via John Rupp of Covington & Burling) and the UK and Europe (via David Remes), but other Covington & Burling lawyers have also been commissioned to coordinate PM's ETS activities in the Far East, Australia, South America, Central America, and Spain...
The minutes leave no doubt as to the purpose of PM's global ETS program:
"...It must be appreciated that Philip Morris are putting vast amounts of funding into these projects not only in directly funding large numbers of research projects all over the world, but in attempting to coordinate and pay so many scientists on an international basis to keep the ETS controversy alive. It is generally felt that this kind of activity is already giving them a marketing and public affairs advantage..." [Italicized emphasis added.]