American Cancer Society to cut off funds to scientists supported by the industry
Scientists who receive financial support from the tobacco industry will soon be barred from receiving grants from the American Cancer Society, which awards about $125-million annually. For academic scientists, the society is one of the biggest sources of research money among nonprofit organizations.
The cancer society said the new policy, adopted this month, would help to ensure that its funds are used to reflect its commitment to reducing the use of tobacco.
Academics and others who follow issues of research and grant making said the decision of a major supporter of scientific research to adopt a litmus test in deciding who gets grants could have ramifications that extend far beyond the debate over the ethics of accepting research sponsorship from the tobacco industry.
“It could be very dangerous to science,” said Wendy Baldwin, executive vice president for research at the University of Kentucky, whose scientists do accept some tobacco money. “To say ‘No matter how good your research is, if it was funded by this entity we don’t want to fund you or your team’ is an unfortunate precedent.”
“Things like this have a way of catching on,” added Stephen L. Isaacs, who as president of the Center for Health & Social Policy, in San Francisco, consults for foundations and other grant makers. The policy is driven by “a strong moral imperative,” he said, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing.
“In our society you have a certain right to look for money wherever you can get it,” said Mr. Isaacs. If a gov- ernment were adopting such a policy, he said, it might be viewed as an improper restriction on researchers’ freedom to associate with whomever they choose. For a large public charity, he said, “I think it’s questionable public policy, and it could spread.”
But critics of the tobacco industry called the society’s action an important moral statement. “It recognizes just how pernicious the tobacco industry has been as a force to distort the scientific process,” said Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.
Harmon J. Eyre, the cancer society’s chief medcial officer, said the society took the action because the tobacco industry uses its research money to advance an agenda. “Their history is to influence everything they touch in a way to support their positions,” he said.
Tobacco-industry financing for research “has historically been used to confuse public debate, to delay effective tobacco-control measures, and to buy the appearance of scientific legitimacy rather than to advance scientific knowledge,” the society’s board said in a resolution adopting the new policy.
Raging Debate
Millions of documents released during litigation against the tobacco industry in the 1990s showed that the tobacco companies did indeed use their research budgets to sponsor studies that minimized the health dangers of cigarettes. In 1998, the tobacco industry signed a $246-billion settlement with 46 states and closed down industry-financed organizations that had sponsored many of the controversial studies.
Dr. Eyre said he and others at the society were concerned that the industry continues to assert improper influence over the research it supports. He cited as an example a study on secondhand smoke that was released last May by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles. The study played down the impact of secondhand smoke, but anti-smoking advocates have questioned the methodologies used by the lead author of the study, who was supported with tobacco-industry money.
Dr. Eyre said that the society’s policy was already under consideration when the UCLA study was released, but that it provided further impetus for the ban because the researcher, James E. Enstrom, used documents from a cancer-society study in his research. The cancer society and the tobacco industry were identified as supporters of the study, and Dr. Eyre said the society felt “burned” when it was linked to findings that it believed had been based on a flawed interpretation of its data.
Mr. Enstrom, an associate research professor in the School of Public Health at UCLA, has insisted that the industry support had no influence on his findings. “If they’re going to use me as an example of that,” he said, “they’re dead wrong.”
The cancer society said its new policy would not take effect until July 2005, to give adequate notice to applicants for grants.
Even before the society took its action, the question of whether to accept tobacco-industry money for research had been raging on many campuses, particularly in medical, nursing, and public-health schools.
The issue became particularly heated at Ohio State University last spring, when the institution decided it would accept a research grant of $590,000 from the Philip Morris External Research Program, even though doing so made the institution ineligible, under state policy, for a slightly smaller grant from an Ohio program. That state program is financed with proceeds from the 1998 settlement.
More recently, Ohio State announced it would accept $6-million from the Lorillard Tobacco Company to establish a research center on smoke-induced diseases. When it did so last December, the faculty member named to head the center, Jay Zweier, agreed to step down from his post at the university’s Comprehensive Cancer Center because it has a policy barring tobacco-industry research sponsorship. (The schools of nursing and public health at Ohio State also bar tobacco sponsorship for research.)
Karen A. Holbrook, the president of Ohio State, said she respected the cancer society’s decision to set its own guidelines in how it awards grants, and said she was grateful that the ban would not be as broad as Ohio’s, or that of the American Legacy Foundation, which prohibits entire schools of universities from receiving its grants if researchers in those schools accept tobacco industry money.
Those broader bans are more problematic for academic freedom, Ms. Holbrook said: “Then it’s an outside agency determining policy for a university.”
‘Baby Step’
The American Legacy Foundation, which was founded in 1999 with proceeds from the tobacco settlement and promotes programs to educate the public on the dangers of tobacco, is not as big a player in research support as the cancer society. Since its inception, it has provided about $18-million in grants.
Some medical-school professors at Ohio State say they wish the cancer society had followed the foundation’s lead.
“The cancer society should be taking a very bold stance that wakes people up,” said Rob Crane, a clinical assistant professor of family medicine. A policy that covered a whole school or department would really force a debate about tobacco, he said. This one is just “a baby step.”
Dr. Eyre, of the cancer society, said the policy was an important statement for his organization, but in practice it would affect “very few” researchers. Most scientists who are supported by the cancer society do not seek grants from the tobacco industry.
A spokeswoman for the American Lung Association said her organization did not award its grants to researchers who take tobacco-industry money but that the organization had no formal policy. The lung association awarded $11.6-million in grants last year. The spokeswoman said the organization may consider adopting a formal policy in the future.
A Narrow Ban
The cancer society’s ban would not apply to an entire institution if a single researcher or several researchers there received tobacco-industry funds. But it would apply to researchers whose work is directed by a colleague receiving tobacco-industry money.
Ms. Baldwin, who oversaw external grants at the National Institutes of Health before coming to Kentucky, said even that more-narrow policy could create problems. Research that might be financed by the tobacco industry, such as work on genetically engineered tobacco plants, could have implications for new drugs that might interest the cancer society. Under the new policy, people on the team working on the plant study could not get cancer-society money to pursue the new drug, she said. None of the Kentucky researchers who now receive tobacco-industry money are receiving grants from the cancer society.
She also worries that this strategy might spread to other research sponsors -- a concern shared by others. Some said they would be concerned if, say, an abortion-rights group imposed an analagous policy and refused grants to researchers being financed by anti-abortion groups seeking scientific answers to questions.
Mr. Glantz, the professor at the University of California at San Francisco who studies the tobacco industry, said the society’s new policy is justified because of the industry’s “unique and extreme” history of using its research grants “to promote confusion about the dangers of smoking.” He said he had research showing that even after the 1998 settlement, those practices continue.
Tobacco Response
Jennifer Golish, a spokeswoman for Philip Morris USA, would not comment directly on the cancer society’s new ban, but said the company believes that “maximizing the funds for research offers the greatest potential benefit for advancing research on the health risks associated with smoking.”
The company’s external grants program is believed to be the largest in the tobacco industry. Ms. Golish said Philip Morris did not disclose information on the total amount it awards in grants or who receives them.
She said the company has a scientific advisory board and a panel of about 200 peer reviewers -- both drawn from outside the company but compensated by Philip Morris -- to select grantees. She also said that the research it finances is “independent” and not directed by the company.
Lorillard officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Donors’ concerns were also taken into account when the society took its action. Greg Donaldson, national vice president for communications at the society, said those who give to the organization had no desire “to fund research that is affiliated with tobacco interests.” The society, based in Atlanta, receives more than three-quarters of a billion dollars a year in donations, according to its latest tax filings. As of September 1, it had 774 active grants with a total value of $350-million.
The policy applies to researchers who accept funds from companies or affiliates that manufacture tobacco for human consumption. Researchers who receive funds from organizations established by one or more companies in the tobacco industry also will be ineligible for cancer-society grants. The policy will not apply to funds from trusts or foundations that were established with assets from the tobacco industry but that no longer have ties to the industry.
Mr. Donaldson said the society was not trying to impose its philosophy on researchers. “What we’ve tried to do,” he said, “is provide free choice for investigators.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 50, Issue 24, Page A1
