Uydess, Ian L., Ph.D.
(PM Senior Scientist under Farone)Biographical Information:
Ian L. Uydess (pronounced ewe-dess) was born in December of 1946 and did his undergraduate studies in pre-med at Fairleigh Dickinson University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology in 1968. By then, he had decided he was more interested in medical research than in the practice of medicine, so he next enrolled at the University of Buffalo's Roswell Park cancer research institute. There he studied cell biology, the biochemistry of cancer, microbiology, oncology, virology, and physiology.
His career took an odd twist when he met a researcher who was doing exobiology research for NASA's original Mars program at the University of Rochester. Uydess discovered that the lines of investigation needed to make the measurements that would land a satellite were very compatible with his own methodology. He ended up transferring to the University of Rochester and in 1975 he receiving a doctorate that was based upon the research he had done in Buffalo.
Uydess spent the next few years as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine and Infectious Disease at the University of Rochester Medical Center (Strong Memorial Hospital), working as a cell biologist and specializing in the mechanisms of cell division. Then in 1977 his life took another unpredictable twist when the department received a notice from Philip Morris Corporation asking for recommendations of recent graduates with backgrounds in the material sciences. After making unsuccessful inquiries, Uydess sat down to write a brief response to Philip Morris.
As he later told it, "I was making some typos. It was before computers. I was getting tired of throwing out the papers and making corrections, so I decided I would give them a call." In the course of the conversation, he described the research he was doing and the work he had done for NASA and was invited to visit Richmond to do a presentation at the at Philip Morris's Research and Development center.
During his stay in Richmond, Uydess was very impressed by the number of scientists employed by the company and by the diversity of their fields of inquiry. He also had the opportunity to meet many of the directors of the Research and Development center, including a scientist named William Farone. Farone described Philip Morris's efforts to design a safer product and offered him a chance to be a part of that initiative. Uydess thought it over and accepted, joining Philip Morris as a Research Scientist in December of 1977.
Ian Uydess spent the next eleven years at Philip Morris, with the exception of a nine-month period in 1981-1982 (when he quit and went to work for Carl Zeiss USA as a Product Manager for Electron Optics). During those years, he was involved in many research initiatives, using his background in light and electron microscopy to refine the techniques used to measure how the mechanical properties of the leaves changed during the curing process and to scrutinize the process used in Dry Ice Expanded Tobacco (DIET).
Yet from Uydess's perspective, the main point of his employment was to help design a safer cigarette and that endeavor led only to frustration. At first, he found the research stimulating and he loved working with fellow scientists who shared his intellectual excitement. But he became increasingly aware that company higher-ups were very wary of the implications of the research. "You could feel a tightening of things," he later recalled. "All of a sudden lawyers started coming down from New York to visit." The man who had ended up at Philip Morris in part because of an effort to avoid typos, now found that lawyers were going through his reports and vetting for such terms as "addictive." Other projects were moved overseas, leading Uydess to believe that there was "an inner company within Philip Morris that appeared to conduct research out of normal channels."
Matters came to a head in 1984 as a result of the experience of experimental psychologist Victor DeNoble, whose laboratory was next to that of Uydess. When DeNoble's studies on nicotine and addictiveness produced unfavorable results, his laboratory was abruptly shut down and he and his staff found themselves out of work. Farone was fired that same year, casting a chill over the entire Research and Development center.
Uydess chose to stick things out, but in the ensuing years he felt thwarted in his projects involving the development of safer cigarettes. He came to believe that his research held promise for reducing the hazards of smoking but that Philip Morris was only committed to making money and would discontinue projects without any valid scientific reason. He also became convinced that the company had a deep understanding of the role of nicotine in the smoking experience but that "few people outside of Philip Morris truly understood the extent and depth of Philip Morris's knowledge and expertise in chemistry, biology and engineering (manufacturing)." In 1989 Ian Uydess submitted his resignation from Philip Morris.
His next career move after leaving Philip Morris in September of 1989 was as unpredictable as ever. Having had a longtime fascination with automobiles, Uydess took a job with the Heyward Clark Automotive Group, a car dealership in Richmond. Two years later, with the auto industry in recession, he began to look for work again and sent his resume to several tobacco manufacturers. But he eventually accepted a position in the Analytical Laboratory Division of the Richmond office of PPD Pharmaco, a pharmaceutical and biotechnology consultant.
Uydess remained quiet about his experience at Philip Morris in the ensuing years, even after former colleagues like DeNoble and Farone became known as "whistle-blowers." Then in February of 1996 he watched a television interview with Brown-&-Williamson-scientist-turned-whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand and it convinced him that he had to come forward. Uydess's wife, watching the screen alongside him, asked if they would have to endure the lawsuit and smear campaign that Wigand had had to endure from Brown & Williamson. "No," he replied, "it's not what's going to happen to us."
Ian Uydess approached the Food and Drug Administration and provided a twenty-five-page affidavit in which he documented his experience at Philip Morris ("Sworn statement of IAN L. UYDESS, Ph.D., February 29, 1996, [no case],"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/UYDESSI022996ER.html). In some ways, his claims were less damaging than those leveled by other whistle-blowers. Yet Mike Moore, the Mississippi Attorney General who pioneered the Medicaid reimbursement lawsuit, maintained that "Ian is especially important to us." He explained that other whistle-blowers had been fired whereas "Ian has no ax to grind . . . That's why he is so credible."
Indeed Uydess provided only a few depositions, along with that one affidavit, and has never testified against the tobacco industry in open court. Yet his testimony has repeatedly been played or read to juries in health-related lawsuits such as Schwarz, Lucier, Bullock, Scott, Boeken, Whiteley, Engle, Dunn/Wiley, and Williams.
Uydess's decision to come forward cost him one of his closest friendships and led him to fear at one time that he was being shadowed by tobacco-company investigators. But it also had its rewards, and in 1997 he and three other tobacco industry whistle-blowers were invited to the White House, given red carpet treatment and the chance to meet with Vice President Al Gore, and then introduced to the media by President Bill Clinton as "American heroes."
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 IAN L. UYDESS, Ph.D., May 19, 1997 [a.m., Vol. I], In Re: MISSISSIPPI TOBACCO LITIGATION," http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/UYDESSI051997AMVOL1.html.
"Deposition of IAN L. UYDESS, Ph.D., May 19, 1997 [a.m., Vol. II], In Re: MISSISSIPPI TOBACCO LITIGATION," http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/UYDESSI051997AMVOL2.html.
"Deposition of IAN L. UYDESS, Ph.D., May 19, 1997 [p.m.], In Re: MISSISSIPPI TOBACCO LITIGATION," http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/UYDESSI051997PM.html.
"Deposition of IAN L. UYDESS, Ph.D., May 20, 1997, In Re: MISSISSIPPI TOBACCO LITIGATION," http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/UYDESSI052097.html.
"Deposition of IAN L. UYDESS, Ph.D., November 23, 1998, ENGLE v. R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO.," http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/UYDESSI112398.html.
"Deposition of IAN L. UYDESS, Ph.D., November 24, 1998 [a.m.], ENGLE v. R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO.," http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/UYDESSI112498AM.html.
"Deposition of IAN L. UYDESS, Ph.D., November 24, 1998 [p.m.], ENGLE v. R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO.," http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/UYDESSI112498PM.html.
Elizabeth Gleick, Greg Fulton and Elaine Shannon, "Smoking Guns," Time, April 1, 1996 .
Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
Sheryl Stolberg, "Cigarettes: Ian Uydess Joins 6 Whistle-Blowers Who Are Aiding in Federal Investigations. He Tells of His Epiphany," Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1996, 1.
"Sworn statement of IAN L. UYDESS, Ph.D., February 29, 1996, [no case],"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/UYDESSI022996ER.html.
Henry Weinstein, "At White House, Red Carpet for Tobacco Whistle-Blowers," Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1997, 1.
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Synonyms
Uydess, IanUydess, Ian L.
*Udyess, Ian (Use Uydess, Ian L.