Seven Days to Go: Tobacco, the Archetype of Corporate Attacks on Science

I just downloaded and read a small part of Judge Gladys Kessler's gargantuan 1742 page opinion in the Justice Department's tobacco industry racketeering case (PDF). The table of contents alone is 29 pages long! I must say, this looks like the best and most official documentation we will ever get of just how extensively the tobacco companies conspired to deceive the public about the health risks of their products. As far as courts unmasking attacks on science, it's right up there with Judge Jones' opinion in the Dover evolution trial.

Few if any of us will have time to read Kessler's whole opinion. But I want to quote in full--and memorialize--some of the most powerful parts, like the following:

The seven-year history of this extraordinarily complex case involved the exchange of millions of documents, the entry of more than 1,000 Orders, and a trial which lasted approximately nine months with 84 witnesses testifying in open court. Those statistics, and the mountains of paper and millions of dollars of billable lawyer hours they reflect, should not, however, obscure what this case is really about. It is about an industry, and in particular these Defendants, that survives, and profits, from selling a highly addictive product which causes diseases that lead to a staggering number of deaths per year, an immeasurable amount of human suffering and economic loss, and a profound burden on our national health care system. Defendants have known many of these facts for at least 50 years or more. Despite that knowledge, they have consistently, repeatedly, and with enormous skill and sophistication, denied these facts to the public, to the Government, and to the public health community. Moreover, in order to sustain the economic viability of their companies, Defendants have denied that they marketed and advertised their products to children under the age of eighteen and to young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one in order to ensure an adequate supply of "replacement smokers," as older ones fall by the wayside through death, illness, or cessation of smoking. In short, Defendants have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted.

Judge Kessler also has something to say to all the lawyers who helped tobacco do this, who plotted and carried out the industry's the attacks on science:

Finally, a word must be said about the role of lawyers in this fifty-year history of deceiving smokers, potential smokers, and the American public about the hazards of smoking and second hand smoke, and the addictiveness of nicotine. At every stage, lawyers played an absolutely central role in the creation and perpetuation of the Enterprise and the implementation of its fraudulent schemes. They devised and coordinated both national and international strategy; they directed scientists as to what research they should and should not undertake; they vetted scientific research papers and reports as well as public relations materials to ensure that the interests of the Enterprise would be protected; they identified "friendly" scientific witnesses, subsidized them with grants from the Center for Tobacco Research and the Center for Indoor Air Research, paid them enormous fees, and often hid the relationship between those witnesses and the industry; and they devised and carried out document destruction policies and took shelter behind baseless assertions of the attorney client privilege.

What a sad and disquieting chapter in the history of an honorable and often courageous profession.

It's often observed that those who attack science on issues like climate change or evolution behave more like lawyers towards the information than like serious inquisitive thinkers. This passage suggests just how damning that analogy really is.

Kessler also denounces the tobacco industry's attack on what it calls the "public health community"--an attack that strikes me as very much parallel to the anti-evolutionists' attacks on the "Darwinists," or the climate contrarians' attacks on government sponsored and funded climate research:

Much of the Defendants' criticisms of Government witnesses focused on the fact that these witnesses had been long-time, devoted members of "the public health community." To suggest that they were presenting inaccurate, untruthful, or unreliable testimony because they had spent their professional lives trying to improve the public health of this country is patently absurd. It is equivalent to arguing that all the Defendants' witnesses were biased, inaccurate, untruthful, and unreliable because the great majority of them had earned enormous amounts of money working and/or consulting for Defendants and other large corporations, and therefore were so devoted to the cause of corporate America that nothing they testified to, even though presented under oath in a court of law, should be believed. Such simplistic attacks on the credibility of the sophisticated and knowledgeable witnesses who testified in this case are foolish.

Ouch. And there's plenty more powerful stuff in the opinion, which you should totally check out.

We didn't have Kessler's opinion yet at the time when I was writing the The Republican War on Science, but much of the story it reveals was already known. And so in the book I discussed the tobacco industry's attacks on science as a kind of historical lead-up to more present day examples. I also noted that many of today's science-based strategies for gaming the regulatory process, like the Data Quality Act, seem to originate at least in part with the tobacco industry.

So now the interesting question becomes: Will another American industry or company (and I am specifically thinking about fossil fuels and climate change) someday be similarly condemned by a court for trying to undermine science? I certainly wouldn't be surprised, especially if the political climate is ripe (which I suspect it one day may be). In this respect, it's unfortunate that the tobacco companies didn't have to pay anything close to the massive penalties ($ 280 billion) that the Justice Department was originally asking for in this case. Indeed, Business Week says tobacco stocks are flying high after the ruling because of the lack of monetary penalties. That's appalling. We need to punish this sort of misbehavior with a lot more than a slap on the wrist.

More like this

It is about an industry, and in particular these Defendants, that survives, and profits, from selling a highly addictive product which causes diseases that lead to a staggering number of deaths per year, an immeasurable amount of human suffering and economic loss, and a profound burden on our national health care system. Defendants have known many of these facts for at least 50 years or more. Despite that knowledge, they have consistently, repeatedly, and with enormous skill and sophistication, denied these facts to the public, to the Government, and to the public health community.

Maybe someone can explain to me just how is it that the public and its government was "duped" by Big Tobacco. Did BT conduct secret epidemiological studies on tobacco smokers, or on the addictive properties of nicotine, whose results it refused to divulge?

Tobacco was not the first big money interest to use such tactics, but its practices were the most egregious that have so far been proven.

We saw similar attempts earlier from pesticide manufacturers to protect DDT by deception, as discussed on a now-forgotten thread.

What we need is an industry insider to expose the deliberate attempts of the fossil fuel industry to mislead people about global warming. The problem is, it took a lawsuit by aggrieved people to unearth the internal workings of big tobacco, and by then the damage to some people's health and to the economy were clearly measurable.

By the time the damages from global warming are apparent, everyone will be harmed, perhaps badly so. Our legal system is structured to provide compensation after harm is done. It's much more difficult for a lawsuit to stop difficult-to-quantify impending harm.

Too bad. If it were feasible, a tobacco-like class-action suit against big oil and big coal might do what the legislative and executive branch of the U.S. government is failing to do regarding climate change.

"Will another American industry or company (and I am specifically thinking about fossil fuels and climate change) someday be similarly condemned by a court for trying to undermine science?"

Perhaps they will be condemned, but I doubt they will suffer any monetary damages.

The fossil fuel industry are oft-criticized for not publishing research in the climate science journals, but I suspect that they have very good reasons for not doing their own climate research.

They have learned the tobacco lesson well. The primary error the tobacco industry made (from their standpoint) was doing their own research -- which they then had to cover up and or misrepresent because the results were so damning.

Better not to do one's own research and then have to bury it in the backyard because it shows precisely that which you were arguing against.

No, far better to put all one's money and efforts into simply questioning and casting doubt upon the work of others.

I suspect the fossil fuel industry will be largely (if not wholely) untouchable as a result of the crafty way that they are playing the game.

By Dark Tent (not verified) on 21 Aug 2006 #permalink

Maybe the debate with Wells could be framed in terms of the intellectual health of the United States. Certainly it could (and should) be argued that foisting ID on the American educational system weakens America. There are real world consequences for ignoring how the real world works. ID replaces the scientific quest for knowledge with nothing. It hopes to erase huge areas hard-won knowledge with labels saying "Here Be God's Work; Look no Further". Ask Wells how this improves the world which we share. Compare this with the real benefits that have arisen from the fruits of science based on Darwin's insights. ID makes me think of the physicist (Pauli?) who, characterizing some outlandish speculation said "That's not even wrong." Same with ID.

By You're Name's … (not verified) on 21 Aug 2006 #permalink

Tobacco is Terrorism.

Smoke is a biological weapon.

The deaths and illnesses number in the hundreds of thousands and beyond.

300 Billion Dollars spent on fighting bearded guys hiding in the middle east? Tobacco Farming money from the government. To grow plants that kill people.

Ban Smoking and Chewing Tobacco in the USA - just like pot, just like crack, just like XTC.

Save lives, save costs, prevent harm.