Template:ARIA/EGIL
THE SHAM AIR-EXPERT ASSOCIATIONS | |
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The tobacco industry recruited academic and some general consulting scientists as ETS consultants. The only qualification needed was a willingness to work for the tobacco industry, and the ability to lie about qualifications and their independence.
After recruitment, they were trained in the basics so they had some semblance of expertise in the field of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) measurements or Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) health concerns and the consequences of smoking. They only needed enough to bamboozle politicians at inquiries, or avoid significant media scrutiny. These freshmen-'experts' needed to be given manufactured citations and other pseudo-scientific credentials. The most obvious technique was to list them as speaker of discussants at scientific conference on indoor air pollution, and ensure that this was published in the proceedings. This was easy to arrange because the tobacco industry conducted sham closed-conferences fairly regularly with of its own mercenary scientists -- and they always published the proceedings as if they were genuine scientific publications (often in more than one langage). At these conferences, the neophytes would be submerged with a group of like-minded mercenary academics and then installed inone of the industry's specialist pseudo-scientific associations. Membership of these (by-invitation-only) associations added to the WhiteCoats' standing in the scientific community, and the system allowed other well-paid members to 'peer-review' any research they might do for the industry. The organisations were well-funded and controlled through the lawyers Covington & Burling and were generally known by their initials: | |
IAPAG CEHHT | Indoor Air Pollution Advisory Group set up within the Pharmacy Department of Georgetown University by Sorell Schwartz, Nancy Balter, and Philip Witorsch. IAPAG had a subsidiary (actually created earlier) called the CEHHT Center for Environmental Health and Human Toxicology (established 1982) provided literature collection services and providing testimony at legislative and regulatory hearings. It also acted as a laundry channel for payments and for specified research grants until 2000.[1] |
ARIA | Associates for Research on Indoor Air. This was the main pseudo-association in the UK and Europe. It was founded by Professor Roger Perry (Imperial College) and a freelance consultant George B Leslie who ran it with the help of his wife. Professor Francis Roe was also a prominent member and Frank Lunau became its President.. Leslie and Perry became the major recruiters for the tobacco industry globally. |
IAI | Indoor Air International was an offshoot of ARIA run by Lanau, Leslie and his wife. It established itself as the organiser or co-organiser of so-called scientific conferences on air pollution/indoor air quality (IAQ) and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) around the world. It also had its own scientific journal. |
ISBE | International Society of the Built Environment this is little more than a name-change from IAI - its successor. It was still an offshoot of ARIA run by George B Leslie and it organised so-called scientific conferences on IAQ and ETS.[2] In defending the Racketeering (RICO) Case the legal argument for the defense was that the ISBE had not been identified in the MSA, and therefore it could continue to operate. Unlike the CTR and Tobacco Institute it didn't need to be dissolved under the MSA agreement.[3] |
EGIL | Swedish for "Experts on Indoor Air". This was created by Roger Perry and ARIA for the Scandinavian tobacco industry. George Leslie used this pseudo-scientific association when recruiting in Scandinavia. It was under the control of Tors Malfors (aka Sven Eric Torbjørn Malmfors) who was a professor in toxicology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. EGIL eventually disbanded when members began to fight others over who had the rights to rip-off some clients. |
EMIES | Eastern Mediterranean Indoor Environment Society run by Professor Aly Massoud of the Ain Sham University, Cairo |
ARTIST | Asian Regional Tobacco Industry Science Team This was the later name given to APAIAQ-- and it broke up in 1992. Later it was revived as a different type of organisation with employed tobacco scientists. Some members were toxicologist consultants, paid by the industry in some way. |
APAIAQ | Asian Pacific Association for Indoor Air Quality was the first academic Asian WhiteCoats association. It was run by EHS Consultancy's Sarah Liao and Philip Morris's Donald S Harris in Hong Kong, and later became ARTIST. It was initially called the Asian ETS Project run by John Rupp of C&B. |
AAOH SCIA | The Standing Committee on Indoor Air was created by Malinee Wongphanich and Benito Reverente (both Asian WhiteCoats) who were successive presidents of the Asian Association for Occupational Health (AAOH). They used this Standing-Committee of AAOH to hide the payments for some Asian WhiteCoats. |
APTRC | The Asia Pacific Tobacco Research Conference was put together in 2001, well after the Master Settlement Agreement. It was set up by the Swiss executives of Philip Morris (at FTR), using the company's Hong Kong branch: it ran a conference in Korea in 2002. |