J Fielding Douglas

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Joshua Fielding Douglas was a Tobacco Institute scientific lobbyist in the late 1980s, and the weak one in the four-man Scientific Witness Team (SWT) put together by John Rupp at Covington & Burling (C&B) for the industry. Douglas generally uses the name J Fielding Douglas, but everyone in the tobacco industry referred to him as Josh Douglas.

He was keen to remain a member of the Scientific Witness Team, but like the other three (at that time), Lawrence Holcomb, David A Weeks, and Jack E Peterson, he needed extensive training to give him enough knowledge to front legislative hearings, media briefings, etc. and maintain the pretence that he was an expert in the field of Environmental Tobacco Smoke and its health consequences.

The Tobacco institute had Covington & Burling organize training sessions with the corrupt academic group at Georgtown University known as the Indoor Air Pollution Advisory Group]] (IAPAG) which operated under the wider corruption of the Center for Health and Human Toxicology (CEHHT)

Documents and Timelines

1988 Jan 14-15 The IAPAG group have held a successful training session with the four members of the new Scientific Witness Team (SWT). Conclusions:

• the sessions were successful but loaded with minutia and useless internal debate.
• John Rupp (C&B) is needed to keep Sorell Schwartz's ego in check
• one participant (Cliff Harris) was scared off by Schwartz
• Ray Witorsch had new information on ETS and children
• Mark Reasor had an ill-prepared presentation
• J Fielding Douglas|Josh Douglas was OK on risk assessment
• It is unclear from Nancy Balter what the IAPAG are planning to do to rebut three new ETS studies they know are coming. (They should have the creation of IAPAG papers underway, so they are ...) ready for publication in peer-review journalists when the studies arrive.
  This is the key reason for IAPAG existence
• suggested that the SWT team, together with John Rupp, + Philip Witorsch & Nancy Balter have an update meeting in the next month.

Re: future plans for the Scientific Witness Team'

• They need visual aids for legislative appearances (Holcomb is looking at this; Simon Turner of HBI is helping)
• One-on-one meetings are preferred (to be set up by Regional TI offices)
• Planted questions are useful in public meetings (to be decided by Regional staff)
• They should make provocative statements to elicit discussion.

The SWT members were Lawrence Holcomb, David A Weeks, Jack E Peterson and the weakest is J Fielding Douglas ('Josh').

• Ogilvy & Mather may need to give them a "quckie refresher course".

https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=frny0059