Pro-tobacco writer admits heshould have declared an interest
Writer and philosopher Roger
Scruton, who was discovered last
week to be on the payroll of alarge tobacco company, has
admitted that he should have“declared an interest” when hewrote a pamphlet attacking theWorld Health Organization for its
campaign against tobacco.
He told the BMJ: “Our firm
had a consultancy [with Japan
Tobacco Industries] at that time. I
was asked independently to do
this [write the pamphlet]. I did
not want to mix it up with theconsultancy, but looking back Ishould have declared an interest.”
As a result of Mr Scruton’s fallfrom grace last week, when his
financial connections to Japan
Tobacco Industries were revealed,
the Institute of Economic
Affairs—the free-market thinktank that published the pamphletattacking the WHO—has conceded that it needs an author’s declaration policy.
Colin Robinson, the institute’s editorial director and aprofessor of economics at theUniversity of Surrey, said that thepast few days had represented
something of a steep learning
curve for those in the field ofsocial science academia.
“In the past we have relied on
our authors to come forwardwith any competing interests, butthat is going to change,” said Professor Robinson. “In scientificpublishing I suppose this sort ofthing has been a problem before,
but the news of Roger Scruton
has made us realise that this kindof thing can happen to us too,
and we are developing a policy toensure it doesn’t happen again.”In his pamphlet, WHO, Whatand Why, Mr Scruton attacked theWHO for tackling tobacco whenin his view it should have been
concentrating on vaccination
campaigns and diseases such as
malaria and HIV/AIDS. His
attack was immediately repeatedin articles in the Wall Street Journal, the Times, and the Scotsman,in what looked like a concerted
pro-tobacco campaign (BMJ2000;320:1482).
Clive Bates, director of theantismoking campaign group
Action on Smoking and Health,criticised the institute over its
poor track record and said that apolicy for authors to declare theirfinancial and other interests waslong overdue.
The news that Mr Scruton,
who used to be a professor ofaesthetics at Birkbeck College,London, had been receiving amonthly fee from Japan Tobacco
Industries was revealed in theGuardian last week when it published a leaked email from him to

the company (24 January, p 1).
In the email, Mr Scruton, who
had been receiving a monthly
retainer fee of £4500 ($6300;€7300), asked for a £1000 amonth pay rise to place more
pro-smoking articles in prestigious newspapers and international magazines. He declared
the amount to be “good value formoney in a business largely conducted by shysters and sharks.”
He said that he would aim toplace an article every two monthsin one or other of the Wall Street
Journal, the Times, the Telegraph,
the Spectator, the Financial Times,
the Economist, the Independent, andthe New Statesman.
The email, which was sent last
October in the name of Sophie,
Mr Scruton’s wife and business
partner, reveals a far-reaching
and ambitious public relations
strategy to make smoking seemless harmful than it is and criticise
government policies on advertising as an attack on civil liberties.
It says: “I personally would liketo see more explicit mention ofother products open to the same
criticisms as tobacco and which
ought to be of equal concern tothe WHO. For example, fast-foodof the McDonald’s variety, which
seems to be addictive, is aimed at
the young, is a serious risk tohealth, with a worse effect on lifeexpectancy than cigarettes, andunlike cigarettes, has a seriously
corrosive effect on social relations
and family life.”
Last week, following the revelations, the Financial Times ended
Scruton’s contract as a columnist.

Academics facecourt clash withtobacco giants

Hopkins University. One institution, North Carolina State University, has complied with thetobacco industry’s request.
The tobacco companies,
which include industry leaders
such as Philip Morris and R J
Reynolds, served subpoenas on
the universities for the documents late last year. The companies maintain they need theinformation as a defence against
a US Justice Department’s suit
filed in September 1999 andscheduled for trial in 2003.
That suit alleges that in 1954
the tobacco companies agreed towage a long term public relations
campaign based on fraud anddeception. It states that the companies consistently denied thatsmoking was a health hazard,
denied that cigarettes were addictive, and pursued marketingstrategies that encouraged minors
to smoke. One part of the originalindictment was thrown out in earlier court hearings, but the main
charge, that the industry tried tocover up the deleterious effects ofsmoking on health, still stands.
“The subpoena that wasserved on Johns Hopkins wasexceedingly objectionable, and wewill fight it. If [tobacco company]
attorneys want to enforce this subpoena, they have the burden ofgoing to court. We will be delighted to explain to the court why wefind it so objectionable,” saidEstelle Fishbein, Johns Hopkins
University’s general counsel. “It isover-broad and exceedingly burdensome to require the university to devote so much of its scarce
resources to this kind of search for
documents that go back 55 years,
that relate to 60 studies done by

Zosia Kmietowicz and Annabel Ferriman London
144, 123, 344

Charles Marwick Washington
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Nine major US universities arepreparing to go to court to contest a demand by US tobacco
manufacturers that they turn overdocuments going back over 50years relating to research on
smoking by faculty members. Theinstitutions describe the demands
as a “fishing expedition.”
The universities concerned
are Harvard, New York University School of Medicine, four universities in the California statesystem, the universities of Arizona and Kentucky, and Johns

BMJ VOLUME 324 2 FEBRUARY 2002 bmj.com

SIJMEN HENDRIKSNewsRoger Scruton told Japan
Tobacco that he was “goodvalue for money”
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Mr Scruton told the BMJ:“The pamphlet for the Instituteof Economic Affairs arose out of
my longstanding concerns about
the way in which legislative powers are being transferred fromsovereign bodies to unaccountable transnational institutions.
“The pamphlet is a review ofarguments and not concerned
to exonerate tobacco from theaccusation that it is a risky product. In retrospect, however, I
now see that I should havedeclared an interest.”
To read the email and other background see www.ask.org.uk

our faculty, and even ask us tolook and see if we can find anyothers that relate to tobacco.”
The worst part of this subpoena,
Ms Fishbein said, was the demand
for records by individuals who may
have been in touch with their elected representatives, members of theCongress, or government agencies.
“Our faculty is not required to submit their letters to anyone for prior approval,” she said.
The American Association ofUniversity Professors also backs
the move to quash the subpoenas.
A spokesman for Philip Morris maintains that the subpoenas“were very narrowly tailored todefine those documents basedontheresearchthatthese institutions have done.
We believe that access to thisinformation is important to thedefence of the case.”
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