Italy

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

Some key documents

1988 Jan 25: Memo from John Rupp of Covington & Burling who is recruiting "Whitecoats" for the tobacco industry in Norway before a Stockholm meeting.

Myron Weinberg of the Weinberg Group is scheduled to be in Europe from Monday, February 8, through Sunday, February 20, recruiting scientific consultants for a major international pharmaceutical client.

    Myron has assured me that there are sufficient gaps in his schedule to permit him to meet with Toni Musi-Falconi and Florence Castiglioni when he is in Milan; (ZHC group)

1988 Jan 29: Glen Smith, the Australian tobacco industry pollster who runs the Children's Research Unit in London, is in touch with Florence Castiglioni and Muzi-Falconi at the SCR Associati PR office.

Further to our meeting with Toni Falconi, I have prepared the following research programme to extend the international database to include Italy.

Rationale:
The arguments levied against tobacco advertising and promotion worldwide have increasingly focussed on the alleged effects of advertising on young people, CRU is in the process of building up an authoratative database which shows that the decision to start smoking is socially/culturally determined, and is completely irrelevant to the presence or absence of advertising and sponsorship.

    The database currently encompasses 11 countries, but anti-smoking activists have asserted that the international database is "selective", given that it has weak representation within EEC countries — Spain being the exception.

    It is imperative that Italy is included into the database, in order to add authority to the international picture in general and to contribute to the EEC picture in particular.

[Paul Maglione was the Philip Morris executive in Lausanne, Switzerland, who looked after their Smoking & Health scientific-distortion projects in the EEC area]

1989 May 30: He is reporting to John Boxcidge, at INFOTAB on SCR Associati letterhead. His report is on

• media distributions to journalists at the Venice Seminar [industry controlled], and the results that they achieved in newspaper stories.
• a video and documents distribution he had made at the World Health Organisation (WHO) meeting in Geneva to try to counter the organisation's No-Tobacco Day initiatives
• WHO plans for action on tobacco and health for 1988 to 1995 (via scientific consultants who were involved)
• Advice that the WHO had the total cooperation of the EEC executive.

[Keeping tabs on the anti-smoking activities of WHO was especially important to the industry because of the threat posed by the International Agency on Research into Cancer (IARC) which was treated by most of the smaller nations as authoratative]

1991 Apr 10-11: CORESTA/ACAC meeting in Italy on pesticides. The various tobacco companies (mainly importers of cigarettes) came to many agreements including:

(5) The problem was seen in the application for an increase in tolerance levels. To make their case, the companies will point out [to the Italian Minister for Health] the very pronounced differences in tolerance regulations between Italy and some other countries (especially Germany which was first in the field of a residue regulation).

    However, they feel [it is] a big problem to ask for increases [in tolerated residual levels] in these times (green movements, journalists, anti-smoking campaigns). All companies [are] asked for compilations of residue results on the finished product, to back up their demands.

1991 Mar 18: Falconi and [Manuel] Bourlas [PM EEC] were to organise a meeting with Italian chemical manufacturers on the pesticide issue; they are asking for support in a change in the regulations.

Helmut Reif in Lausanne is the administrator of this project for Philip Morris, and RJ Reynolds is also involved.

1991 May: The INFOTAB newsletter "Tobacco Network" carries the information that:

The Centro di Documentazione e Informazione sul Tabacco (CDIT) is a small but active team which represents the interests of the cigarette importers in Italy.

    The team is headed by Toni Muzi FaIconi, with the day-to-day responsibility for tobacco issues in the capable hands of Florence Castiglioni, who has been with SCR Associati, the CDIT's 'parent' company, for 12 years.

    SCR is one of Italy's leading public relations agencies and is owned by the British PR giant Shandwick. Florence is assisted by Maria Concetta Alessio, a trained journalist, and Paola Giuliani, a recent graduate of a public relations college. The nature of the work requires versatility and a wide range of skills.

    For example, the CDIT may be called upon to formulate a response to an article in the Italian press, accompany a group of journalists to an overseas tobacco manufacturing plant, or analyse the responses to a direct mail exercise.

    The CDIT recently faced a challenge following intensive media coverage of a Constitutional Court judgment about Italian public smoking legislation. The presiding judge released his decision to the media four days before it was officially handed down, giving them four days to work up a sensational - and inaccurate - story. The CD1T skillfully set the record straight by issuing a memorandum from its legal counsel to the chief editors of the main daily newspapers and all the journalists who had reported on the decision.

    The CDIT's offices are in Milan - the design capital of the world - which is a tremendous advantage in enabling it to produce a variety of top-quality publications, among them 'Calumet' - a quarterly bulletin circulated to opinion leaders.

    The CDIT's Rome office is the headquarters of scientific consultant Maria Rita Montebelli and her colleagues.

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