Philip Morris Shuts Down Grant Program for University Research

The tobacco company Philip Morris has ended a controversial program that supported research at dozens of American universities, Science magazine reported today.

The decision apparently was made last fall, amid growing public attention to the debate at universities over industry-sponsored research. In September the regents of the University of California rejected a proposal to ban university researchers from accepting tobacco money, but adopted a policy that calls for special reviews of any studies to be conducted with such funds. The reviews must verify that a proposed study “uses sound methodology and appears designed to allow the researcher to reach objective and scientifically valid conclusions.”

The company notified grantees last September that it would no longer support new research through the Philip Morris External Research Program, according to Science. But that news spread to academics at large only this month, after the University of California’s president, Robert C. Dynes, sent a letter to chancellors of the system’s campuses, reminding them to enforce the review policy. That letter mentioned that Philip Morris had shut down its external-research program.

A critic of research sponsored by the tobacco industry characterized Philip Morris’s move as a step away from negative publicity, but William Phelps, a spokesman for the company, defended the quality of the academic research it sponsors. He told the magazine that future support would focus on studies on “reducing the harm of smoking.”

How the decision will affect many academic research projects was unclear, but one antitobacco crusader, Stanton Glantz, a bioengineer at the University of California at San Francisco, pointed out that tobacco money was not going away.

He cited the $6-million Philip Morris grant won by Edythe D. London, the researcher at the university’s Los Angeles campus whose home was flooded by animal-rights extremists in October and who was the target of a firebomb attack this month. Her grant was not awarded through the external-research program, Mr. Glantz told the magazine. —Charles Huckabee