UC delays tobacco funds vote

Sacramento Bee 1/19/07

By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg

University of California faculty members should be asked to state their position much more clearly on whether researchers should be banned from taking tobacco industry funds, UC regents agreed Thursday.

The regents were expected to vote Thursday on a proposed tobacco research funding ban. They postponed the vote until May to give the university system's Academic Senate time to comment on the draft proposal.

The Academic Senate has taken up the topic before, but has issued general and sometimes conflicting pronouncements, with members noting the faculty is sharply divided on the issue.

One of the key proponents of the funding ban said he fears this is an indirect way to kill it.

"Nobody wants to take the responsibility for saying it's OK to take tobacco money," so they're "passing the buck" repeatedly, said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco.

Glantz and others had argued that the tobacco industry has such a long track record of distorting research results that taking its money discredits the university.

However, several regents said Thursday that banning tobacco funding would infringe on academic freedom and send a message that UC doesn't trust the integrity of its own faculty.

The UC system had 19 active grants funded by the tobacco industry in late 2006, all from Philip Morris, totaling $16 million, the president's office said.