UC Davis wrestles with ethics of funding from Big Tobacco
Sacramento Bee 1/20/07
There is money to study how cells lining the arteries start to break down, how smoke-exposed rats descend toward cancer and emphysema, and how smoke exposure affects monkeys' sperm.
UC Davis is a leader in tobacco research partly because it's well-known for custom-made equipment to expose lab animals to tobacco smoke, said Kent Pinkerton, director of the UCD Center for Health and the Environment.
It's a distinction that Pinkerton hopes will continue -- and one that some in the UC system want to end as quickly as possible.
"Tobacco thugs" funding UC research have a track record of twisting and distorting science, UC Regent John Moores said Thursday, as he tried to persuade fellow regents to forbid scientists from taking such funds.
Instead, the regents voted to delay the issue until May to get clearer faculty comment.
While the issue goes to the heart of how a university should do science, the dollars involved are relatively small. As of late 2006, only 19 active grants worth $16 million came from the tobacco industry, all from Philip Morris USA, according to the UC Office of Research.
Nearly half the grants and a third of the dollars went to a single campus: UC Davis. It had nine active grants worth $4.8 million. UCLA had five grants worth $8.3 million, edging out Davis for the top dollar amount because it got $6 million for an adolescent smoking cessation center. UC San Diego and UC Berkeley trailed with grants of over $1 million per campus.
And Davis shows no sign of tapering off, with several researchers saying they've just gotten new Philip Morris money and are planning grant proposals or are helping colleagues seek funding.
Ten UC Davis scientists contacted by The Bee say they have used or plan to use Philip Morris money to answer basic questions about biology and disease, and have never been pressured by the company to alter their results or downplay smoking's danger.
But Dr. Elisa Tong, an assistant professor at UC Davis School of Medicine who has studied tobacco industry marketing and strategy, said people don't realize how extensively the industry uses public relations and research to manipulate opinion.
"There needs to be a lot more communication and discussion actively among the faculty, about the potential consequences of taking this money," Tong said.
The biggest peril, UC San Francisco professor Stanton Glantz told regents Thursday, is that the industry uses UC scientists to "slow down the transmission of knowledge," flying in the face of the university's reason for being.
He cited a major legal verdict against U.S. cigarette makers last August, when a federal judge concluded the companies violated racketeering laws, deceiving the public about the risks of smoking and secondhand smoke. Among the examples of deception cited by the judge was a 2003 UCLA study that found no lung cancer risk from secondhand smoke.
"The way the tobacco companies have operated is to fund a certain amount of legitimate, high quality, independent science that is essentially the front operation that provides cover for the back-room operation," Glantz said in an interview.
Philip Morris says it funds research because it wants to learn about anything that could "help reduce the harm associated with our products," said company spokesman David Sutton. The company does not discuss how much it spends on research.
Scientists who take the money say their work has the potential to help millions of nonsmokers. Some say they did serious soul searching before accepting the money.
When he came to UC Davis six years ago, Anthony Wexler, an air pollution specialist who heads the San Joaquin Valley Aerosol Health Effects Research Center, was invited to apply for research grants by Philip Morris and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Both agreed to fund him, and he had to decide whose money to take.
"I'm thinking if I take it from Philip Morris, that frees up money from the EPA for someone doing cool environmental stuff, but if I take it from EPA, Philip Morris will give it to someone doing who knows what."
He accepted the tobacco funding. Wexler used it to look at how airborne pollutants move into the lungs, from one airway to the next, breath by breath until the particles lodge deeply. Because air pollution differs from tobacco smoke, he said, he has told Philip Morris that his work cannot be directly applied to smoking.
Even researchers who don't use much tobacco money worry about the implications of a ban.
"Who's going to decide who you can take grant money from?" asked Catherine VandeVoort, a scientist at UCD's California National Primate Research Center.
Top UC officials share that "slippery slope" worry, arguing that other unpopular businesses that play a much bigger role in UC funding, such as pharmaceutical firms, could also be targeted.
According to a list supplied by the UC system, VandeVoort has the largest current Philip Morris grant at UC Davis, $914,000 to investigate the effects of smoking on primate sperm. But she gets most of her support from the National Institutes of Health.
By contrast, UC Davis biochemist Kishorchandra Gohil said a tobacco money ban "would put people like me out of business." Because he's not a tenure-track professor, Gohil essentially has to pay his own salary and that of his staff from the research funding.
He's investigating the way genes in mice are affected by a range of pollutants, including ozone and tobacco smoke. He's finding that ozone and tobacco seem to dampen the body's immune response in a potentially damaging way.
While many researchers say they understand the uneasiness about the source of money, they dislike the implication that they are either being duped or are participating outright in distortion.
"Prove it," said biochemistry professor Thomas Jue, who recently wrapped up Philip Morris-funded work measuring oxygen levels in the blood. "Prove that somehow, whatever information we have has abetted tobacco products."