Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 08:37:01 -0700 (PDT)

Sound familiar?

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

This is a transcript of AM broadcast at 0800 AEST on local radio.

Tobacco companies subvert cancer and anti-smoking research

Thursday, August 3, 2000 8:24 AM

COMPERE: A report from the World Health Organisation claims that in recent decades tobacco companies ran a global campaign to distort research and subvert anti-smoking campaigns.

The study is largely based on documents released during various court cases in the United States. Washington correspondent, Michael Carey, asked Derek Yach, head of the WHO's anti-tobacco program what the expert panel found in the documents.

DEREK YACH: Well what they showed is, certainly in the words of the committee, the tobacco companies view WHO as one of their leading enemies and they saw themselves clearly in a battle with the World Health Organisation.

They showed how they’d fought to try to ensure that we didn’t focus on tobacco control; that our budget was reduced significantly for the tobacco control. They tried through a number of means to convince developing countries that tobacco was not an issue for them, and rather we should be focusing on a different agenda. They tried to discredit and in fact distort the results of scientific studies and more fundamentally they really tried to discredit WHO as an institution.

MICHAEL CAREY: That's pretty serious. Are you talking about a conspiracy here, or are you talking about individual companies taking individual action?

DEREK YACH: What we’re talking about is a concerted effort among the companies to act together over many years. And again, if we just look at the words of the expert committee, the attempted subversion according to them as been elaborate, sophisticated, and usually invisible’.

MICHAEL CAREY: Can you give us some specifics?

DEREK YACH: With regard to distorting WHO research, we have a sister agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, based in Lyons, who were planning for many years the first major study to show the link between passive smoking and lung cancer. The industry feared the study because it would be the first European demonstration of this effect and could lead to strong calls for smoking bans in public places.

With that in mind, they put up probably several millions of dollars to go about holding scientific symposia to try and deny the evidence.

MICHAEL CAREY: You mention their work with developing nations. What have they done there?

DEREK YACH: Well there have been several efforts. The first is through the World Health Assembly which is the governing body of WHO. The report highlights how in three specific events when the Ministers of Health come together in 1986, ’88 and ’92 the tobacco companies had been able to contact Ministries of Health, particularly of developing countries, to try and ensure that resolutions on tobacco control being discussed were either watered down or that they gave far greater attention to the question of tobacco growers. And almost tried to argue that tobacco growing was so important that we should hold up action on tobacco control from a public health perspective.

COMPERE: Derek Yach from the WHO.

Transcripts on this website are created by an independent transcription service. The ABC does not warrant the accuracy of the transcripts. ABC Online users are advised to listen to the audio provided on this page to verify the accuracy of the transcripts.

© 2000 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

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