apologies for cross-posting. This message appeared on both the OTRU-NET
(Ontario Tobacco Research Unit listserv) and the HEART-L (Heart Health
Resoruce Centre) listserv this morning.  **Very interesting and provocative
column!!**

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Alison Stirling, health promotion consultant
Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse (OPC)
Fax. 416-408-2122  Email: [log in to unmask]
Internet: http://www.opc.on.ca
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

-----Original Message-----
From: OTRU-NET: Tobacco Research Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Stan Shatenstein
Subject: OTRU research has big impact at CIFCOT Conference and beyond
Sincere congratulations to Joanna Cohen and her OTRU research colleagues for
their study on tobacco money and Canadian universities, ably presented by
Dr. Fernand Turcotte at the CIFCOT (International Francophone Tobacco
Control Conference) held this week in Montreal. The study was front-page
news in all three large French-language broadsheet newspapers in Quebec (La
Presse & Le Devoir in Montreal, Le Soleil in Quebec City. See links below)
and also served as a leaping-off point for a Le Devoir editorial on the
risks attached to all corporate donations to universities. And, now, today's
Gazette includes a brilliant column, based entirely on the OTRU report,
though it's credited solely to Dr. Turcotte's Université de Laval. Still,
it's fine, well-deserved recognition and an excellent real-world application
of scientific research. 
Best wishes, 
Stan
--------
Stan Shatenstein
GLOBALink News & Information
Contributing Editor, Tobacco Control
5492-B Trans Island
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3W 3A8
Tel: (1) 514-486-1243
Fax: (1) 514-486-6894
E-mail: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

=============================
Blood money - The Gazette 
Taking cash from tobacco companies should be like taking money from the
Hells Angels: no respectable organization should consider it, yet
universities accept millions every year 

JANET BAGNALL   	
The Gazette     	

Friday, September 20, 2002 
I think tobacco-company executives should be treated like mobsters. They
should be shunned by polite society. They should not be invited to sit on
the boards of other corporations, their expertise in marketing should not be
sought. Their charitable contributions should not be solicited, either. When
you sell a product that kills every second customer in Canada, what you're
offering is blood money. What would the hall that cigarette money built be
named? The Carcinogen Centre?
Let's be absolutely clear on what smoking does. Every year, according to
Health Canada, smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse,
automobile accidents, murders, suicides and fires - combined. In Quebec,
about 12,000 people die of smoking-related diseases each year. For Canada as
a whole, it's 45,000. In the United States, an estimated 450,000 Americans
die annually from smoking-related disease, the equivalent of three fully
loaded jumbo jets crashing every day, with not a single survivor. 
The situation is so bad that an anti-smoking campaign in Florida could
accurately air an ad in which a tobacco-company executive was portrayed as
accepting the Demon Prize for the greatest number of dead while around him
at the imaginary awards gala sat drug barons, Mafiosi and Hitler. (The
tobacco companies were so angry about this ad that they insisted that the 46
states involved in the $205-billion Master Settlement Agreement of 1988 sign
a non-vilification clause, even though they could not prove the ad was
defamatory.)
Yet, this week, Canadians learned, thanks to a Université de Laval study,
that a quarter of the country's medical schools have accepted money from
tobacco manufacturers. Do our institutes of higher learning care that a
number of people nearly equivalent to the entire population of
Trois-Rivières die from smoking-related diseases every year? Apparently not.
Twenty-eight universities have accepted tobacco money in the form of a gift,
receiving on average $54,000. In 1999, 26 tobacco-company executives held
governing functions in universities, six of them in university research
hospitals. Only two of the universities have ever given the issue of whether
this is appropriate any thought. No university seemed to have any
guidelines. This is all the more surprising, in Ontario in any event, since
a scandal erupted three years ago over the news that then president of the
University of Toronto, Robert Pritchard, sat on the board of directors of
Imasco, the now-dissolved holding company that included Imperial Tobacco.
Tobacco companies also have been funding university research projects. Of
the 13 tobacco-funded projects, totaling $920,000, six were in medical
schools. Fernand Turcotte, professor of medicine at Université Laval, and
one of the authors of the study presented at this week's conference on
smoking, wondered what planet these medical faculties are living on that
they would accept blood money so heedlessly.
In Canada, tobacco companies are not allowed to advertise. They are no
longer allowed to subsidize popular public events such as car races or music
festivals. Because their product is so lethal, they have been pushed to the
margins of Canadian society. 
They need the universities. They need them for the respectability they
confer. They particularly need an intellectual connection with medical
schools. If they can fund research into the effects of smoking on health,
they can continue to claim that it remains to be proven whether smoking is
really harmful.
Of course, nothing remains to be proven. Smoking will kill one in two
smokers in Canada. Taking money from tobacco companies should be like
accepting a subsidy from the Hell's Angeles. No respectable organization
would consider it. The fallout would be huge and damaging. Take money from
the bikers? What about the 160 Quebecers who have died during the battle
over the illegal drug trade? They don't matter? 
The tobacco companies argue that they, unlike the Hells Angels, are selling
a legal product. This week, Imperial Tobacco Ltd., JTI-Macdonald Corp,
Rothmans and Benson & Hedges Inc. were in Quebec Superior Court arguing
against federal government restrictions on tobacco advertising. If it's
legal, why can't they promote it and advertise it, they ask.
But to ask that question is to deliberately pass over the fact that tobacco
companies are enjoying the fruits of historical ignorance. Given what is
known about cigarette smoking now, it would not be legal if we had to decide
its status today. 
In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified environmental
tobacco smoke as a "Group A" carcinogen, the most dangerous class of
carcinogen. In recent years, more than 4,000 chemical compounds have been
identified in tobacco smoke. Of these, at least 43 are known to cause
cancer. Under the circumstances, legal does not mean legitimate. 
It is wrong for a medical school or a university to go to tobacco companies,
looking for a hand-out. Whether they ever exert pressure to doctor
scientific findings is not the point. We should never even be in a position
where they could try. They are beyond the pale. Their money's no good. It's
time to accept that.
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
{http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/columnists/story.asp?id={CF8
29034-20AF-4311-9AA4-42A3FF86499F 
Les universités ne dédaignent pas l'argent du tabac - Le Soleil 
<http://www.cyberpresse.ca/soleil/actualites/0209/act_202090136890.html> 
Les universités flirtent avec l'industrie du tabac - La Presse 
<http://www.cyberpresse.ca/reseau/actualites/0209/act_102090137211.html> 
Le lobby du tabac a ses entrées jusque dans les facultés de médecine - Le
Devoir
<http://www.ledevoir.com/2002/09/17/9284.html> 
Les cigarettiers et les autres - Le Devoir 
<http://www.ledevoir.com/2002/09/18/9313.html>

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