UK - Europe

WARNING: This site deals only with the corporate corruption of science, and makes no inference about the motives or activities of individuals involved.
    There are many reasons why individuals become embroiled in corporate corruption activities - from political zealotry to over-enthusiastic activism; from gullibility to greed.
    Please read the OVERVIEW carefully, and make up your own mind.

OPINION ONLY

Philip Morris's Science & Technology Division at Neuchatel, Switzerland (often listed under the FTR acronym) handled a mix of legitimate scientific research projects, and deliberate scientific disinformation. It was run for a few decades by one of the more active and aggressive executives in the business, Dr Helmut Gaisch.

It's counterpart in the USA was the Science & Technology division of Philip Morris USA (domestic — as distinct from PM International) which was run by Dr Tom Osdene. Slightly later than this memo, more legitimate scientific activities were shunted off into the research and development section, and the two scientific disinformation divisions were merged into what became known as Worldwide Scientific Affairs (WSA)

This ran in parallel with a legal/political division known as Worldwide Regulatory Affairs (WRA), and in cooperation with the strategy planning people at Corporate Affairs (CA). All three worked closely together, and each had individuals in various locations that were seen as part of their respective teams and reported directly to the US headquarters. In effect, this produced a legal-lobbying, PR and scientific disinformation global network which operated almost independently of the various national cigarette manufacturing and marketing companies.

At the time this Activity Report was written, the WRA (regulatory) network had been created, but the European and USA Science & Technology divisions were still reasonably distinct.

Smoking-gun document

Early in their European expansion, Philip Morris had bought the Fabriques De Tabac Reunies (FTR) cigarette company with a factory in Lausanne and office at Neuchatel in Switzerland. Helmut Gaisch who loved intrigue, had run the semi-legitimate, semi-lobbying Science & Technology operations out of Neuchatel for many years — this was quite separate from the manufacture and distribution operation. For historical reasons, the control of European science activities was transfered from PM International to PM USA.

    In January 1992 these scientific issues and lobbying aspects of the domestic company (Philip Morris USA) and Europe (often known as S&T FTR) had been put under the control of lawyer Steve Parrish, who established four Divisions.

• Dr Thomas S Osdene was the Vice President of Science & Technology at the Richmond laboratories and oversaw both the legitimate R&D/product work and some domestic scientific lobbying operations like the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR)
  
  
• Dr Robert A Pages, effectively Osdene's deputy, was Director of Science & Technology at Richmond, but more involved in many of the scientific intrigues and the scientific activities of the Tobacco Institute, etc.
  
  
• Dr Thomas J Borelli, with his assistant Mary O Pottorff ran Scientific Affairs (totally international intrigue opperations) out of the New York headquarters. Pottorff had been transfered from PMI Corporate Affairs.
  
  
• Helmut Gaisch, Director of Science & Technology at Neuchatel (with a key operational staff of six science/lobbyists) looked after Europe and the common market countries.

[PM International Corporate Affairs maintained its own operations in the rest of the world, but this was a step in the direction of the Worldwide Scientific Affairs/Worldwide Regulatory Affairs division.]

1992 Feb 9: This is Helmut Gaisch's Monthly Activities Report from Switzerland to the new head of PM USA's Corporate Affairs division in the New York office, Steve Parrish. Gaisch resigned (or was sacked) shortly after, but here he obviously wants to impress Parrish with his achievements, and he therefore spells out in detail the genuine and illegitimate activities he has been running in Europe.

    These details were generally only circulated on a 'need-to-know' basis, so Gaisch may have assumed that Parrish was fairly ignorant of many of the details. But Parrish, a lawyer/lobbyist who had lead the Document Retention/Destruction program at Philip Morris, would have probably have prefered that most of this not be set down on paper.

    Gaisch had been cautioned numerous times in the past for being indiscrete in his correspondence. So it is possible that this document was deliberately worded in this way to put pressure on the company to be kind to their ex-employee in his retirement. The tobacco industry faced the problem that they would never know whether a potential whistleblower had copies of high level correspondence outside the office.

[For this reason, tobacco companies needed to be very generous to retiring or sick executives. They also needed to be highly supportive of their dependents when executives died suddenly from heart-attacks or lung-cancer. But they never published obitiaries; there are none in corporate archives, and few mentions of death in the archives correspondence. Only a couple of those executives afflicted with smoking-related terminal diseases ever turned whistleblower — since the companies guaranteed a comfortable life to surviving relatives.]

Barclay filter:

Pat Sheehy, the Chairman of BAT, introduced Barclay with the intention to attack and eventually overtake Marlboro on the international scale. This was thwarted, and S&T was prominently involved in scoring the decisive victories that forced BAT to the negotiating table,

[The Barclay filter was the first of the so-called 'channel ventilated' filters. There were two methods, but essentially holes were drilled through the filter in ways which meant that the smoker's lips sealed them during smoking. However the highly-standardised smoke-testing machines used by the regulatory authorities left these holes uncovered.

    This ensured that the testing machines received diluted smoke, while the smoker breathed in a more concentrated mix. Ventilation enabled cigarettes with substantial tar and nicotine to be labelled under the regulations as if they were 'light'. It was sneaky and tricky, but it was patented. The main fight was in getting the testing authorities to change the standard to give true results.

• the Cologne unfair competition trial blocking the German Barclay launch,
  
  
• the Berlin BGA hearing resulting in the creation of the temporary Barclay-specific DIN "Vornorm",
  
  
• the Oslo lobbying resulting in the introduction of the DIN "Vornorm" in Norway,
  
  
• the Munich patent court trial wiping out B&W's channel ventilation patents,
  
  
• the GCC lobbying efforts (eg. Mrs. Maarafi, Kuwait) leading to the DIN "Vornorm" becoming compulsory for Barclay,
  
  
• the Geneva unfair competition trial forcing "double figures" on Barclay in Switzerland and
  
  
• the ISO lobbying efforts (Finland, Czechoslovakia, India, Egypt, Belgium, Norway, Germany, GCC) resulting in a revision of the international standard.

• DIN is the German standards authority which regulated tar/nicotine type measurments.
• ISO is the International Standards Organisation.
• GCC is the Gulf Council Countries — Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, etc.
Eventually Philip Morris found a way around the patents and forced BAT into negotiations

Creating and Cultivating Goodwill

Objective: Make S&T a team of true professionals. Develop the range of expertises, skills and language capabilities necessary for successfully dealing, either directly or through friends and allies, with journalists, lawyers, administrators, representatives of other industries (eg. British Airways) or the consumers (eg. Swiss Consumer Union), etc., so as to be able to establish contact with virtually anybody through a "common friend".

[The tobacco industry developed what were loosely called 'grass tops' programs, which involved 'third party' contacts with important legislators and authorities. For instance, they would pay the old-school golfing buddy of a Senator, or the brother-in-law of a secretary or minister, to exert subtle pressure.]

• Good relations were established with leading scientists and engineers throughout Europe, getting a good balance of disciplines, languages and countries. [See appendix below]
  
  
• Specific research was supported to obtain vital data and/or to enhance our consultant's knowledge and academic reputation: [He is being circumspect here. You normally hire consultants because they have the knowlege you need — you don't pay to 'enhance' their knowledge unless the science is being deliberately distorted.]
  
  • Improving ventilation systems in offices, at the workplace and in public transport
    [To reduce smoke irritation problems, and so block smoking bans.]
    (Perry, Neurath, the TNO team, the CERIA team, ACVA/Link, the Fresenius team, Swiss office buildings, Belgian railways, McDonnel-Douglas, Schindler, British Airways, Swissair, Balair, Martinair, SAS, etc.);
    [This list is a mix of legitimate and highly deceptive projects involving indoor air measurements.]
    
    
  • a better understanding of the nicotine metabolism in order to avoid pitfalls in the interpretation of dose estimates based on body fluid or hair measurements (Wahren, Gorrod, Nilsen, Schwartz, INBIFO, Fresenius);
    [They were trying to find alternate nicotine measuring techniques that would produce lower figures for people exposed in passive smoking trials.]
    
    
  • improved basic scientific understanding in order to counter preconceived ideas on tobacco use (Tassin/receptors, Vincze/adducts, Syman/oncology, Schneider & Schwartz/low level risks, competitive risk, Molimard/behaviour, Lee/smoking statistics, Syrianen & Hirt/viral oncogenesis,
    [These were attempts to confuse the science — Viruses, for instance, could be put forward as a possible cause of lung-cancer. PN Lee made many claims that non-smokers were lying about their smoking histories.]
    
    Weetman/inconsistencies in standardisation, Wahren & Gorrod/metabolic pathways & mechanisms, Warter & Micheletti/neuromotricity, etc.).
    [These names are all well-known tobacco scientists. You wouldn't trust anything these lackey's produced in any so-called 'scientific study'.]

Expertise: S&T's expertise is recognised within the Industry, eg. —

• S&T speaks on behalf of the ASFC,
  [The Swiss 'Tobacco Institute' or cigarette manufacturer's lobby, which tries to influence the governments of the Swiss cantons]
  
  
• S&T continued to contribute on scientific matters to TAC.
  [The UK's Tobacco Advisory Council... the UK equivalent of the Tobacco Institute (industry lobbyists)]
  
  
• Dr Reif is a leading pesticide expert, recognised throughout the Industry.
  
  
• On many occasions we took the lead in Industry relations (CORESTA, ISO, NMA's).
  [NMAs are European manufacturer's organisations ie 'Tobacco Institutes', CORESTA was the scientists society that the tobacco industry converted into a lobbying organisation about this time.]

Media Relations: Background briefings to the media were given. In many instances we succeeded in establishing very good personal relations. We simply presented facts, remained professional and provided information in a much wider field than most visitors expected us to do.
[This would be good for a laugh in the New York office. It was a sub-text designed to counter the constant criticism that he was indiscrete.]

This not only satisfied a genuine interest, but also made it easy to show that many widely held views were quite fallacious. It also allowed us to draw attention to the real issues of this world, so as to put the tobacco issues into perspective and thus to forestall unfavourable reports on tobacco use in the media.
[The main attack at this time was on the 'priorities of the World Health Organisation. The tobacco industry held that the WHO should not run anti-smoking programs while problems like malaria, etc. had not been solved. This was the tobacco industry's 'perspective'.]

Counteracting and Anticipating Regulatory Constraints.

Taxation, tariffs, smoking restrictions (ETS), advertising, promotion, sponsorship, health warnings, MCL's [Maximum Constituent Levels of tar and nicotine], ingredients, pesticides. Direct S&T action and support of Corporate Affairs [The top level strategy unit at European Union headquarters in Brussels]

• Demonstrate to lawmakers that, under the changed economic climate, the pursuit of outdated socio-economic policies [ie smoking bans] could easily become politically suicidal but that there are viable alternatives.
  [Philip Morris in the USA had a well-devloped system of threatening the re-election of politicians who offended them, known internally as the 'Big Chill' technique. Friends were rewarded with campaign contributions, honorarium for speaking engagements, and junkets to exotic locations]
  
  
• Remove the "moral" base of anti-tobacco legislative efforts by exposing the fallacious nature of most anti-tobacco allegations. To discreetly feed the media with supportive information.
  [A parnoid delusion common in the industry]
  
  
• Discretely assist Third World countries in denouncing WHO's misleading anti-tobacco campaigns and in demanding the discontinuation of these campaigns, in view of the potential damage they may otherwise cause to Third World economies and welfare.
  [They focussed on third world countries via the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN) and the World Bank. The propaganda was always that tobacco grown for export was the way to economic salvation. Coupled with discrete bribes, it was highly effective, and tobacco replaced food crops in many starving African nations.]

• Create a Network of Scientists and Institutions:
  We created, maintained and further developed a European network of friendly scientists for potential expert/witness use, including the sponsorship of specific research and the organisation of international scientific meetings.
  
  
  
  • Scientists: [Francis] Roe, [Peter] Lee, [Berthold] Schneider, [JP] Tassin, [DF 'Max'] Weetman, [R] Molimard, [Angelo] Cerioli, [Luigi] Manzo, [Georg] Neurath, [B ] Martin, [Roger] Perry, [A] Poma, [Sorrell] Schwartz, [John] Wahren, [Tage] Voss, [George] Leslie, [Karl] Battig, [Hans] Altmann, [Claude] Bieva, [Petr] Skrabanek, [J] Lenges, [?] Hirt, etc.

    [Note the etc. This was only his top-of-the-head list; he had two or three times this number. Other divisions of Philip Morris (and the divisions of the other companies) had similar lists of corruptable scientists numbering well over 100 in Europe at any one time. This list of scientists were paid thousands of dollars each year to work behind the scenes for the FTR group on various disinformation projects]

  • Research: College de France (Paris), TNO (Delft), Swiss Federal Cancer Research Institute (Lausanne), Imperial College (London), Kings College (London), Semmelweiss University (Budapest), University Hanover, Karolinska Institute (Stockholm), University of Strasbourg, University of Brussels, etc.,
    [These are institutional groups, quite distinct from the individuals listed above. The Karolinska Institute, for instance, had a group of about 6 scientists who worked for the tobacco industry. The Semmenweiss University had a group of three, Imperial College had three, etc. etc.]
    
    
  • Meetings: London 88 IAQ, Brussels 89 IAQ, Lisbon 90 IAQ, Visby 90 Nicotine, Montreux 91 IAQ, Venice 91 ARISE, Athens 92 IAQ).
    [These were all fake scientific conferences set up and controlled by the S&T division of Philip Morris in Europe, and run by IAI/ARIA and ARISE, which came under FTR control.]
  
  
  
• Creating fake scientific societies.
  The creation of IAI [ Indoor Air International — later International Society for Indoor Air Quality of ISIAQ], an independent international association on indoor air quality was discreetly solicited by S&T and put into effect by key ARIA members (ARIA is an association of our consultants. The name stands for Associates for Research on Indoor Air).
  
  
  
  • Inquiries: Some of the scientists appeared in hearings and as solicited experts, eg.
    • [Professor Roger] Perry, [was an advisor to the] Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indoor Air Quality;
      
      
    • [Prof. Berthold] Schneider, various expertises on risk assessment and population trends for the German Federal Government and European Community,
      
      
    • [George] Leslie on IAQ in a range of countries on behalf of IAI, etc.
    
    
    
  • Messages:
    We developed messages in usable formats, adapted to be used by a range of messengers
    • Packages of S&T presentations on...
      
      [1] the structure of health issues in developed and developing countries,...
      
      [2] correcting misconceptions on smoking and 'passive' smoking issues,...
      
      [3] fundamental re-thinking and re-structuration of health care (abolition of advocacy campaigns, give priory to certain specific aspects of curative medicine and surgery, take a management approach to social integration for the care of the elderly and the disabled),...
      
      [4] to take into account the decline of birthrates in Western Europe (age strata with population deficits) and their impact on work force / consumer patterns, indicate how to counteract the growing up-market migration pressures across Europe.
      
      
    • Books, reports and briefing documents written by top-class experts ([Professor of Sociology, Uni of Augsburg, Peter] Atteslander, [Prof of Sociology, Trinity College, Dublin, Petr] Skrabanek, etc.), published by respected and listened-to think-tanks (Digby Anderson [Social Affairs Unit, Martino, etc.) re-enforcing our messages. The briefing documents serve a two-fold purpose, as they are intended for direct use by our lobbyist in their personal contacts and as they are the seminal material (source) for secondary media stories (eg. the Digby Anderson, Skrabanek books).
      
          This project has now entered the phase of a novel series of documents being prepared for lobbying.
  
  
• Allies/Smokers Rights Groups;
  Scientific assistance was given to allies such as smoker's rights groups in their attack on WHO's anti-tobacco programme (HEN-RY, Roykringen, Smokepeace, and the Finnish Group, Hu-Tu), and to personalities close to the government in Zimbabwe, Malawi and South Africa (The latter efforts are presently ongoing and Messrs. Sharif and Carlson were, and still are, being kept "au courant" ).
  
  
• Customised Lobbyist Materials:
  Creation of the so-called "ad-hoc" group (CA/S&T) [Corporate Affairs in Brussels and Science & Technology in Neuchatel] to create information packages for the specfic needs of our lobbyists. The first four-language report on "priority setting in public health" (working title) is under way.
  [Directed at WHO's anti-smoking programs]

1993: This is a Summary of the Philip Morris International [S&T Europe] Corporate Affairs Activity Report from slightly later than the above.

• McGill Conference
  [Run by Philip Morris at McGill University in November 1989]

  Twenty-eight Europeans were present. At least 400 copies of the book have been or are being distributed to journalists and parliamentarians, primarily in Belgium and Scandinavia. Use has been made of the Gray Robertson [HBI fake air-testing company] chapter in a number of briefings to journalists

  This refers to the 'closed-and-controlled' ETS conference (by invitation only) Philip Morris that was run at McGill University in Canada for propaganda purposess. The proceedings, consisting entirely of distortions from the industry-funded scientists was promoted around the world as if it were a text-book on indoor air science and environmental tobacco smoke problems.

• Lisbon Conference
  ["Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation in Warm Climates" - April 1990]

  A similar number of Europeans attended the Lisbon conference on Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation, which was orgnaised by some of our consultants. A book and one issue of Environmental Technology resulted.

  [Another closed/controlled conference. This one was to train WhiteCoats from Asia, and to promote their claims about indoor air quality and sick-building syndrome in hot climates where air-conditioning was becoming widely used.]

• Montreux Conference
  

  Indoor Air International is organising a meeting on IAQ research next May at which many consultants will present papers. These will be published in Indoor Environment, the peer reviewed journal of IAQ. Karger, a well respected European company is to be the publisher of this journal.

  Indoor Air International (IAI), a subsidiary operation of the ARIA consultants group, was running this conference. It would not have been entirely closed, but the selection of speakers would have been controlled tightly. The IAI was also being funded to create a 'peer-reviewed scientific journal'.

• Athens IAQ Conference
  

  Proceedings of Athens IAQ conference (Selper Press)

  Run by the IAI group in April 1992 and organised by George Leslie and Dr V Bazas for Philip Morris. It ended up as an ARIA love-in.

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