Peter Atteslander

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This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

Peter Atteslander a tobacco helper who had retired from the University of Augsburg. He was run by Philip Morris Corporate Services.

In February 1995 the new CEO of Philip Morris, Geoffrey C Bible took control of the tobacco industry's main fightback program and completely reformed the organisational structure of the company's lobbying and disinformation activities. Philip Morris virtually dominated the global tobacco industry's fightback program at this time and he realised that the problem had become global, rather than being confined to just the developed world.

Bible therefor merged the active lobbying/scientific-witness arms of both the domestic (PM USA) company and the international (PMI) division (with many national companies) and creating three new, closely-linked headquarter entities.

• Corporate Affairs (CA) now ran the main disinformation campaigns, and they looked after the 'grants' and 'donations' given to think-tanks and university institutions which housed scientific lobbyists for the industry.
• Worldwide Scientific Affairs (WSA) took over the old Science & Technology/Scientific Affairs operations. It now controlled the many academic and scientific consultants that had been recruited around the world: the open/admitted advisers who were paid by annual retainers; those who received grants and were open about it while always claiming to be "independent" of tobacco influence; and the numerous WhiteCoats who preferred to operate in secret, and were generally paid only on a services-rendered basis. WhiteCoats were usually paid through their own private consultancy firms, or via pseudo-scientific associations (IAPAG, ARIA, EGIL, IAI, ARTIST etc.) set up specifically to provide a money-laundry service and cover.
• Worldwide Regulatory Affairs (WRA), was an extension of the old Washington lobbyist in-house staff, but with experts in other countries, and now operating on a global scale. They did the political lobbying and wrote the wording of the bills. The were mainly lawyers.

As part of this restructure, the head office of the company requested information about the scientists who had been recruited and run over the previous few years by the regional divisions of the company. This document from the Swiss branch run by Helmut Gaisch and Helmut Reif gives us their evaluation of some of their contractors. See original document: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/acs36b00/pdf.

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Prof. Dr Peter Atteslander. University of Augsburg.

• Retired but still active in Augsburg. President of Swiss Academy for Development (SAD); Chairman and organiser of seminars on public health of the European Forum Alpbach.

  [Note: The Swiss Academy for Development (SAD) was important to Philip Morrs because it had economic implications in allowing them to base in Switzerland and operate in Europe under free-trade rules. He was also one of the organisers and speakers of the lecture series on health at the Alpbach Forum.]
  

  Regional WHO advisor for Public Health.

  [This would have earned him thousands of dollars a year alone — they always needed insiders to inform them about WHO activities.]

• Industry: Scientific advisor to the Swiss NMA; scientific advisor to PM SA, Lausanne; participated for PM in a public hearing of the Swiss Federal Health Authorities; published paper in defense of the holistic view of the threats to public health.

  [The NMA (National Manufacturer's Associations) were national organisations which were the equivalent of the US Tobacco Institute]

  [SA= Scientific Affairs at Philip Morris's Swiss headquarters in Laussane]

  This was based on the claim that the health bureaucrats needed to look at the 'Big Picture' — primarily diet and chemical exposure — rather than just focussing on smoking]

• Current work for PM: Assessment of questionnaires/health-related polls; advice on Swiss NMA and laws; Letters-to-the-editor. He has been sponsored for SAD and for European Forum Alpbach. Paid $24,000 in 1997 and $20,000 budgeted for 1998 [and has] excellent links to Asia and China.

  [These were rapidly developing markets for US companies]

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