The industry has in fact enjoyed a long and fruitful relation ship with academics. Less than 50 years ago Scientific American magazine carried adverts with researchers endorsing favourite cigarette brands, and some universities owe their very foundations to local cigarette tycoons. Bristol University's Wills Memorial Building is a lasting testament to the tobacco family whose funds helped to build the university 100 years ago. But now that the carcinogenic effects of smoking are known, the tobacco industry is singled out as the most unethical benefactor of all, as it can only operate and make money by harming people's health. Even arms manufacturers can argue, for example, that new weapons can be used as deterrents against warfare.
Smoking has no redeeming features.
The second argument against tobacco funding is that cigarette companies try to subvert and obfuscate the scientific debate over the effects of smoking. The industry's reputation has not been helped by thousands of incriminating internal documents put on websites after US court cases. They show tobacco-company scientists were fully aware of links between lung cancer and smoking years before the industry conceded them publicly. Also exposed are efforts to recruit scientists. Project Whitecoat aimed to provoke controversy in the academic debate over passive smoking.