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Trevor Butterworth is former fellow at a defunct corporate front group called [[Statistical Assessment Service]] and the current Executive Director for Sense About Science USA.<ref>Sense About Science USA website, accessed February 2018, http://senseaboutscienceusa.org/who-we-are/</ref> Reporters with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Butterworth was an "impassioned defender" of the chemical BPA who "regularly combs the Internet for stories about BPA and offers comments without revealing his ties to industry."<ref>Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 22, 2009 http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195297.html/</ref>The Intercept reported that Butterworth's defense of the chemical industry has "reverberated across an echo chamber of free-market organizations, including Philip Morris’s product defense law firm, Koch-funded think tanks, chemical and food-packaging industry trade groups in Europe and the U.S., and an ostensibly neutral environmental health research foundation run by a chemical industry PR firm."<ref>Liza Gross,
SEEDING DOUBT How Self-Appointed Guardians of “Sound Science” Tip the Scales Toward Industry, The Intercept, November 15, 2016 https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/</ref>Butterworth has also defended the soda industry against taxes and sought to create disinformation that is beneficial to the pharmaceutical industry.<ref>Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 22, 2009 http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195297.html/</ref><ref>Paul D. Thacker, STAT, January 30, 2018 https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/30/pharmaceutical-industry-fake-news-tobacco/</ref> ==Chemical Industry Defender== ==DEFENDING THE SODA INDUSTRY== Research from UCLA has found a direct link between soda and obesity.<ref>University of California, Bubbling over: New research shows direct link between soda and obesity, September 17, 2009 http://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/newsroom/press-releases/pages/details.aspx?NewsID=30</ref> Trevor Butterworth later ridiculed the future director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for writing in the New England Journal of Medicine that "a penny-per-ounce excise tax could reduce consumption of sugared sodas by more than 10%."<ref>Trevor Butterworth, Can A Soda Tax Really Curb Obesity?, Forbes, SEP 16, 2009 https://www.forbes.com/2009/09/16/nejm-health-obesity-cigarettes-opinions-contributors-soda-tax.html#4442bb271311</ref> Butterworth also denigrated a tax on sodas that was being considered by NYC, writing for Forbes that "the ban is unlikely to have any impact on obesity—and even if it does, it will be too small to be measurable or, rather, won’t be measured at all. The evidence that soda has been the lead driver of the obesity epidemic is larded with assertion rather than hard data."<ref>Trevor Butterworth, Mayor Bloomberg’s Soda Ban: Why It Won’t Work, Daily Beast, May 31, 2012 https://www.thedailybeast.com/mayor-bloombergs-soda-ban-why-it-wont-work/</ref> NPR reported that the World Health Organization urged countries to tax sodas. Dr. Douglas Bettcher, director of the WHO's Department for the Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases, says that "consumption of free sugars, including products like sugary drinks, is a major factor in the global increase of people suffering from obesity and diabetes." Blecher stated, "If governments tax products like sugary drinks, they can reduce suffering and save lives. They can also cut healthcare costs and increase revenues to invest in health services."<ref>Allison Aubrey, Tax Soda To Fight Obesity, WHO Urges Nations Around The Globe, October 11, 2016 https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/10/11/497525337/tax-soda-to-fight-obesity-who-urges-nations-around-the-globe</ref> Researchers at UCLA later confirmed the importance of a soda tax, writing, "Educating people to drink fewer sugar-sweetened beverages only works to a point. After that, taxation on an unhealthy product — along with putting those taxes toward public health programs — would help far more.”<ref>Ryan Hatoum, Do soda taxes help curb obesity?, UCLA, October 26, 2016 https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/do-soda-taxes-help-curb-obesity</ref> When research began to show that diet soda might not stave off weight loss, Trevor attacked researcher Susan Swithers, a psychologist at Purdue University in Indiana.<ref>Trevor Butterworth, Does diet soda actually make you gain weight?, The Week, July 12, 2013 http://theweek.com/articles/462249/does-diet-soda-actually-make-gain-weight</ref> Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Yale Cardiologist Harlan Krumholz wrote that he would no longer drink diet sodas because they may actually disturb your metabolism and set you up for weight gain. Krumholz also wrote other researchers at Yale had warned that artificial sweeteners also affect hormone secretion, cognitive processes and gut microbiota.<ref>Harlan Krumholz, Why One Cardiologist Has Drunk His Last Diet Soda, The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2017 https://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2017/09/14/why-one-cardiologist-has-drunk-his-last-diet-soda/</ref> ==SOURCES==