Pages, Robert Alex, Ph.D.
(PM scientist & researcher, c. 1980s) Robert A. Pages gave a deposition that was 25 pgs with one exhibit in the Carlisle v. Philip Morris Inc., et al case on 10/30/86 and he gave another deposition that was 207 pgs on 9/23/88 for the Rothgeb v. ATC, et al case. He was a Scientist and he worked for Philip Morris, Inc. and was born on 10/10/41 and is in infirm health. (PMI's Revised Initial Disclosure, June 27, 1996) (PMI's Introduction to Privilege Log and Glossary of Names, Estate of Burl Butler v. PMI, et al, April 19, 1996) Robert Pages, who gave depositions in 1986 and 1988, is apparently in poor health. (Alexandra Wagner, Ness, Motley letter to Grant Kaiser, 1/10/97)Biographical Information:
Robert Alex Pages was born in New York on October 10, 1941, and in 1959 he received a New York State Reagents Science and Engineering Scholarship to attend the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. After earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry in 1962, Pages began graduate studies at the University of Virginia under the direction of Dr. Alfred E. Burger. He was awarded a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1966, earning a Du Pont Teaching Fellowship along the way.
Pages began a NASA traineeship in 1965 and after completing his doctorate he served for two years in the United States Army. Stationed at the Arctic Test Center in Fort Greely, Alaska, he was involved in testing how chemical weapons would be affected by arctic conditions. He rose to the level of Captain during two years as supervisor of the chemical warfare laboratory where tests were conducted.
In 1968 Pages was appointed a staff fellow at the National Institute of Health's National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. Over the next four years, he conducted research on thyroxine-protein interactions and on the properties of the proteins in human serum that transport and bind the thyroid hormones.
By this time Dr. Pages's doctoral supervisor, Alfred E. Burger, was doing consulting work for Phillip Morris. On Burger's recommendation, Pages joined Philip Morris in January of 1973 as a research scientist. He was initially assigned to the Smoke Condensate Studies project and began researching polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in whole smoke condensate. But after only six months, he was appointed to head the company's Biological Effects of Smoke project. This project was outside Pages's primary area of expertise, but his leadership of it earned him commendations from his superiors. When he was promoted to Senior Scientist in 1976 Pages was praised for his "flexibility and willingness to accept the challenge of a different assignment." Dr. Thomas Osdene added a handwritten note in which he termed Pages "one of the unsung heroes of the Research Center."
Pages worked directly under Osdene in the ensuing years and the two men were involved in the key strategic decision to outsource smoke inhalation research to INBIFO and other outside laboratories. Pages also served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR).
Because of his familiarity with some of Philip Morris's most sensitive research initiatives, Pages would have been a logical person to have testified in many of the lawsuits against his company. Instead he testified only once, in the 1988 Rothgeb case. (A second deposition was scheduled in the 1986 Carlisle case. Pages appeared and was sworn, but gave no testimony because the attorneys came to an impasse about the conditions of the deposition.) By the mid-1990s plaintiffs' attorneys were beginning to zero in on the research being done under Osdene, who responded by repeatedly pleading the Fifth Amendment. But attempts to depose Pages were unsuccessful because he was in poor health.
Pages died on July 7, 1997, at the age of fifty-six, survived by his wife Eleanor.
Sources:
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
"Deposition of ROBERT ALEX PAGES, Ph.D., September 23, 1988, ROTHGEB v. AMERICAN TOBACCO CO." http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/PAGESR092388.edit.html.
"Deposition of ROBERT A. PAGES, October 30, 1986, CARLISLE v. PHILIP MORRIS INC.". http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/PAGESR103086.html.
Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
W. F. Kuhn, "Promotion of Dr. Robert A. Pages to Senior Scientist". 02 Dec 1976. Bates: 2000512867-2000512869.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2000512867-2869.html.
"Robert Pages," Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 8, 1997.
Synonyms
Pages, Robert AlexPages, Robert A.