文章基本信息

标题：Tobacco Industry Efforts to Undermine Policy-Relevant Research
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作者：Anne Landman ; Stanton A. Glantz
期刊名称：American journal of public health
印刷版ISSN：0090-0036
出版年度：2009
卷号：99
期号：1
页码：45-58
DOI：10.2105/AJPH.2007.130740
语种：English
出版社：American Public Health Association
摘要：The tobacco industry, working through third parties to prevent policy-relevant research that adversely affected it between 1988 and 1998, used coordinated, well-funded strategies in repeated attempts to silence tobacco researcher Stanton A. Glantz. Tactics included advertising, litigation, and attempts to have the US Congress cut off the researcher's National Cancer Institute funding. Efforts like these can influence the policymaking process by silencing opposing voices and discouraging other scientists from doing work that may expose them to tobacco industry attacks. The support of highly credible public health organizations and of researchers’ employers is crucial to the continued advancement of public health. Public policy intervention—e.g., aggressive public-education campaigns, mandated smoke-free environments, and high cigarette taxes—is the most effective way to reduce tobacco-caused disease.^{1 , 2} The prosperity of the tobacco industry depends on prevention of these policies and maintenance of a supportive policy environment. Among other strategies for safeguarding its interests,^{3 – 10} the tobacco industry attempts to counteract or obstruct the work of researchers whose work may be detrimental to tobacco industry interests.^{11 , 12} To that end, the industry has portrayed targeted researchers as extremist, unqualified, or politically motivated; denigrated researchers to superiors, publishers, and the public; sued researchers; and worked to cut off researchers’ funding. The industry pursues these strategies through allied elected officials, front groups, and other third parties. These efforts can influence the policymaking process by silencing voices critical of tobacco industry interests and discouraging other scientists from doing research that may expose them to industry attacks. The case of tobacco control researcher Stanton Glantz, an author of this paper, illustrates the full range of strategies used by the tobacco industry to attack scientists whose work supports tobacco control. Documentation of these events is based on searches between February and November 2006 of the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library ( http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu ), which located approximately 500 documents that described tobacco industry activities pertaining to Glantz's research and funding. Initial search terms included “Glantz [including misspellings] and funding” and “Glantz and NCI [National Cancer Institute],” followed by searches for specific individuals and groups. We also examined documents from Glantz's own files pertaining to tobacco industry lawsuits against the University of California, San Francisco (where Glantz is a faculty member), media articles concerning Glantz's tobacco-related research, relevant correspondence, and other pertinent materials.