Philip R. Grant

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

Philip Grant (he normally didn't use his middle initial) was a lawyer employed by Lorillard, Inc. Grant served as counsel to the company from 1965 to 1966, then as Vice President and General Counsel from 1967. H seems to have been replaced at Lorrillard by Arthur J Stevens in late1969.

His most notable role with the company was as an active member of the Committee of Counsel which controlled most of the underhand activities of the industry through its overall direction of the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR). They engaged in a number of scam operations to dissemble the science, and delay anti-smoking legislation and regulations. The key to the tobacco industry's survival was not in proving cigarettes were safe, but in continually throwing doubt on any scientific findings that they weren't.

Brief Biography

• 1962-63: Grant was employed by Perkins Daniels McCormack & Collins which were general outside counsel to the P Lorrilard Company. He was engaged in business and trademark negotiations. [1]
• 1965-66: Now working for the company as a general lawyer
• 1967-68 Vice President and General Counsel
• 1969 He seems to have been replaced by Arthur J Stevens who took over Committee of Counsel functions.

Documents & Timeline

1968 June 27 William Kloepfer of the Tobacco Institute has written to Rosser Reeves at the strategy company Tiderock Corporation. This was about the collaboration between the tobacco industry and the American Medical Association (known as AMA Education & Research Foundation or AMA-ERF). Tiderock appears to have been the one who proposed the idea of funding an AMA research program back in June, at a joint tobacco company meeting.
This was a successful ploy to involve the medical profession in a research program funded by the tobacco companies where the tobacco industry could only win. With adverse fundings, they would either deny the validity of the research, question the bias of the researchers, or produce their own quick research program, that would prove the opposite.
They could always maintain that the dangers had not been proven ... witness the need for AMA-controlled continuing research...

• Kloepfer and Reeves had met earlier this month to discuss the AMA-ERF, and Tiderock had been commissioned for two activities.
  

1. The TI has decided that both a position paper and the advertising project are still needed. "However events in San Francisco last week have reduced the urgency of publication." This was concerning a release by the AMA-ERF of a report on joint research due on June 19.

• Daniel Horn of the American Cancer Society has been urging the AMA to withdraw the report.
• Leonard Schuman and Stanhope Baynes-Jones (both ex-Sur-Gen Advisory Committee members) agreed with Horn and were to take their objections to the trustees of the AMA.
• Kenneth Endicott (Director of the NCI) and Senator Clements (President of the TI) were proponents of the joint research idea. The Tobacco Institute saw the collaboration as defusing attacks on tobacco from HEW ... "It's a new ball game."

2. The Tobacco Institute wanted to have the ads and position paper cleared by their lawyers Shook Hardy & Bacon and ready for release.

Participants in the San Francisco meeting were:

AMA-ERF Committee as of June 1968 [2]
Tobacco Industry representatives -- Committee of Counsel
Earle C Clements	Tobacco Institute	President Executive-Director/lobbyist
Philip Grant	Lorillard Corp	Inhouse legal counsel
Frederick P Haas	Liggett & Myers	General counsel
Cyril Hetsko	American Tobacco	Inhouse legal counsel
H Henry Ramm	RJ Reynolds	VP and General Counsel
Paul D Smith	Philip Morris	General Counsel
Addison Yeamans	Brown & Wlliamson	General Counsel
Tobacco Research Council/CTR
Richard J Bing MD	Wayne State Uni	CTR & AMA/ERF (cardiologist)
McKeen Cattell MD	Cornell University	CTR (pharmacologist)
Leon O Jacobson MD	University of Chicago	Chrm of the CTR SAB. physician
Clarence C Little ScD	TIRC and CTR	Scientific Director
Sheldon Sommers MD	Columbia University	CTR (next Scientific Dir.) pathologist
National Institute of Health
Francis R Abinant	National Inst of Allergy & Infectious Diseases
Carl G Baker MD	National Cancer Institute	Dir. of Etiology
Kenneth Endicott MD	National Cancer Institute	Director Lung Cancer Task Force
Paul Kotin MD	Nat. Environmental Health Science Center of HEW	(ex-TIRC SAB)/Lung Cancer Task Force
Gardiner C McMillan MD	National Heart Instititute	ex-Tobacco Working Group of NCI
Ian A Mitchell MD	National Cancer Institute
The AMA's Education Research Foundation (ERF) Committee
Robert J Hasterlik MD	Uni of Chicago	Prof. Medicine
John B Hickam MD	Indiana Uni	Prof. Medicine. Member SGAC
Paul S Larson PhD	Med. College of Virginia	Chairman AMA-ERF
Maurice H Seevers MD	Uni of Michigan	Prof Pharmacology.Member SGAC
Ira Singer PhD	Am. Medical Assn	Sec of AMA committee.
SGAC=Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking & Health SAB=Scientific Advisory Board.[3]

 

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1968 Dec 26 David R Hardy of Shook Hardy & Bacon was dealing with Philip Grant and 5 other members of the Ad Hoc Committee (with ccs to Hon Earle C. Clements and H Thomas Austern)
The statistic professor, Theodor Sterling has written to Robert Hockett at the CTR. He has included "four enclosures pursuant to the contract between Washington University and the CTR." These are, in fact, about the grants being made to Sterling (then at Washington University) for a possibly 'review' of the Public Health Services (PHS) report on morbidity: Cigarette Smoking and Health Characterisation.

• Sterling had previously made a submission to the Public Health Service report. (probably ignored)
• Sterling has convened an undefined "Advisory Panel" which has produced some recommendations (A "Status Report") supporting his submission and conclusions - that the claims made by the PHS in the report "cannot be justified"
• Sterling doesn't think anything can be done with the Status Report, but he recommends they lobby for a "Presidents Science Advisory Committee" (PSAC)to stop the PHS publishing such material in the future.
• He believes that such a PSAC would carry enough prestige to force Oscar Hammond (who did the Beagle dog smoking study) to turn over his primary data to scrutiny and reanalysis by industry lackies.
  Hardy, however, sees that..

  Obviously, there are problems in setting up any advisory group whose conclusions might be construe as binding on the industry. There would certainly be implications involving the press & industry-government dialogue.

[Note: Hardy puts "Advisory Panel" in quotes ... as if to suggest that he doesn't believe it exists.]

[Sterling seems to be lobbying them for more grant money to attach Oscar Hammond through his fictitious panel]

[4] <tdo>resource_id=4029 resource_code=grant_philip_r

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