Good Epidemiology Practices

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Good Epidemiology Practices (GEP) was an attempt at standardising the reporting of epidemiological studies in a way that set the standard of 'proof' so high that it was almost impossible for most research on possible harmful substances in the environment to be proved unsafe. This became a major project of the tobacco industry (led by Philip Morris)

The proposal was to develop the new fake standard along the line of the chemical industry's Good Laboratory Practices (GLP). They would then present the completed new standard at a conference dominated by industry-friendly scientists, have it ratified, then presented to Congress and Parliaments in Europe, as a now-accepted standard of the epidemiology profession. The aim was to pass legislation that would deny researchers the ability to determine whether their work had proved certain substances potentially safe or dangerous,

Chemical Manufacturer's Association

The original GEP draft was created by Dr George L Carlo for the chemical industry. However the tobacco industry science and technology executives (led at Philip Morris by Jan Goodheart, Matt Winokur, and Thomas Borelli made considerable changes. This project became blended with a parallel attempt to extend the Sound Science Operations from its base in the USA into Europe.

The sound-science/junk-science projects were always run with allies from other poisoning and polluting industries. It was important to hide behind coalitions of industries so that the tobacco-centred messages were only one of many. They therefore created joint operations with food and alcohol companies (the big tobacco companies all had food and alcohol subsidiaries) and with energy and mining companies, with Big Pharma, and with the chemical industry. Joint funding therefore amplified their ability to generate propaganda; the claim to be membership organisations with hundreds of scientists acting as adviser gave them some status with the media; and the sheer funding from a number of industries and large companies meant that they could buy whatever support services (scientists, PR, polling) they needed.

TASSC and ESEF

The original Sound Science project was The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition set up for Philip Morris by the PR company APCO and run by Governor Garry Carruthers, with professional lobbyist [[Steven J Milloy as the behind the scenes operator. Milloy eventually took over, and became well established in the media (Fox News and on-line) as the "junk-science" arbiter through a massive media program handled by Burson-Marsteller.

This proved to be so successful in providing an attack on passive smoking health-concern claims and on the emerging threat of global warming, that the tobacco industry created a similar organisation initially called Euro-TASSC. Eventually the Institute of Economic Affairs in London was contracted to create a subsidiary called the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF) which provided similar junk-science services in Europe. This operation was run by Roger Bate who had previously worked as Environmental projects manager at the IEA, and also spent some time with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in the US.