Jesse Hathaway: Government Grant Funding Corrupts Tobacco Research, Holds Back Scientific Inquiry

[CarolT]

Two more FDA funding opportunities were announced this week:

FDA/NIH to waste another $3 million to fund 10 activist researchers to further exaggerate risks of hookah/shisha, demonize the products, and advocate even more unwarranted FDA regulations (as FDA’s proposed Deeming Regulation would ban ALL nicotine shisha/hookah products 24 months after issuance of Final Rule)
Search Grants | GRANTS.GOV
RFA-OD-15-005: Chemistry, Toxicology, and Addiction Research on Waterpipe Tobacco (R01)

FDA/NIH to waste yet another $5 million to study mandating nicotine reductions in cigarettes (which prompts smokers to smoke more cigarettes and inhale more deeply)
Search Grants | GRANTS.GOV
RFA-OD-15-006: Abuse Liability Associated with Reduced Nicotine Content Tobacco Products (R01)

And yet, just several weeks ago, a FDA funded study by Benowitz (who has advocated mandatory nicotine reductions in cigarettes for past two decades) found reducing nicotine levels in cigarettes didn’t reduce likelihood of smoking cessation
Effect of reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes on cigarette smoking behavior and tobacco smoke toxicant exposure: 2-year follow up - Benowitz - 2015 - Addiction - Wiley Online Library
Low-Nicotine Cigarettes Fail to Sway Smokers | UC San Francisco
Low-Nicotine Cigarettes Won't Necessarily Help Smokers Stop
Lower nicotine cigarettes, e-cigs not helping smokers quit - UPI.com

It's so totally corrupt it's sickening. I looked at one just before your two links here, RFA-OD-15-004: Tobacco Regulatory Science Small Grant Program for New Investigators (R03)
Under "Scientific/Research Contact(s)," at the top of the list is "Rachel Grana, Ph.D.," at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Searching her name brought up this: "Study debunks health claims for e-cigarettes," co-authored with none other than Stanton Glantz. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/study-debunks-health-claims-e-cigarettes

So, as of May 2014, she was a "a postdoctoral fellow at the UCSF Center for tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE)," and now she's shoveling money out to them in the name of the National Cancer Institute.

Another of her little treasures, "‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party," also with Glantz, in which they concoct a bogus conspiracy theory deserving of a "Tinfoil Hat Award" which misinterprets Philip Morris contributions to Americans For Prosperity as supposed exclusive tobacco industry control of AFP by ignoring all the other industries involved.
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2013/02/20/tobaccocontrol-2012-050815.full

I can't think of one single thing that either AFP or CSE or the Tea Party have ever said or done on behalf of smokers' rights. Nor does this cheap smear sheet mention any. No, simply advocating generically for "lower taxes" does not count. Nor does empty blather about "personal responsibility" or the "nanny state." And isn't it nice that this bilge was funded by National Cancer Institute grants, which they assure us "played no role in the selection of the research topic, conduct of the research or preparation of the manuscript." Right, all they did was handpick a stooge whom they knew would manufacture the exactly the kind of trash they wanted. It's nice as well that government agencies are financing the opposition to groups and people outside of government who simply want to have a say in government policies.

The remedy for this outrageous travesty is a PURGE - remove all those crooked money-shovelers and ban them for life, along with their supervisors.

 

[CarolT]

Which is clearly an indictment of what mainstream media has now become.

So who's to blame for the perversion of both science and media?
In the end, it's us.

Yeah, money is a big part of the problem.
But it still comes down to us.

Who is "us"? Did you write to your Congresscum and tell them to give money to charlatans to commit scientific fraud? I know that I damn sure didn't.

How about those who pulled the strings to create the National Cancer Institute back in 1937, namely the American Society for the Control of Cancer (which is now the American Cancer Society), with friends from Harvard? They had a boatload of other friends, too, such as John D. Rockefeller Jr.
The American Society for the Control of Cancer

And the head of the ACS, Mary Woodard Lasker, was the most powerful health lobbyist in history, and she and her cronies pulled the strings to create the other Institutes of the National Institutes of Health as well.

"For the past twenty years, Mrs. Lasker has been, in the words of one federal health official, 'the most important single factor in the rise of support for biomedical research.' In the process, she has helped the NIH budget to explode from $2.5 million in 1945 to $1.4 billion this year, influenced Presidents, immobilized Secretaries of Health, Education, and Welfare, selected health policy makers, and pushed health policy in controversial directions."

"Mrs. Lasker's network is probably unparalleled in the influence that a small group of private citizens has had over such a major area of national policy. One federal official refers to it as a 'noble conspiracy.' Gorman calls it a 'high class kind of subversion, very high class. We're not second story burglars. We go right in the front door.'" (The Health Syndicate / Washington's Noble Conspiracy. By Elizabeth Brenner Drew. The Atlantic Monthly 1967, Vol. 200, pp. 75-82)
Industry Documents Digital Library

And, Mary Woodard Lasker's stepson, Ed Lasker, was on the board of directors of Philip Morris for 20 years!!!!! Now, that tells you who is really in control of Philip Morris.

 

[DC2]

Who is "us"? Did you write to your Congresscum and tell them to give money to charlatans to commit scientific fraud? I know that I damn sure didn't.

Us is the collective of all of us in this country.
As I said, it is "us" who voted in this mess.

You want to talk to your neighbor, your loved one, your friends...
About how we are being dissected for profit?

Tell them to stop voting for the charlatans who fund the charlatans.
They'll dissect us all in the end.

The people you note in the rest of your reply would not matter a whit...
If we didn't vote in people who succumb to their money.

 

[AndriaD]

Us is the collective of all of us in this country.
As I said, it is "us" who voted in this mess.

You want to talk to your neighbor, your loved one, your friends...
About how we are being dissected for profit?

Tell them to stop voting for the charlatans who fund the charlatans.
They'll dissect us all in the end.

The people you note in the rest of your reply would not matter a whit...
If we didn't vote in people who succumb to their money.

The problem, though, is that even if they are nice, ethical people BEFORE they get elected... just becoming involved in US politics exposes them to so much corruption, they cannot HELP but succumb to it, and become as dirty as everyone else in politics. It's the very nature of the game, it's corruption pure and simple.

Andria

 

[caramel]

The problem, though, is that even if they are nice, ethical people BEFORE they get elected... just becoming involved in US politics exposes them to so much corruption, they cannot HELP but succumb to it, and become as dirty as everyone else in politics. It's the very nature of the game, it's corruption pure and simple.

Andria

So how many nice, ethical people do you think could survive an american election campaign without resigning in the middle? As a percent?

 

[AndriaD]

So how many nice, ethical people do you think could survive an american election campaign without resigning in the middle? As a percent?

0%. During the process, their ethics start to slide, just a smidge... if they don't start sliding, then they resign, rather than be associated with such absolute VERMIN.

Andria

 

[CarolT]

Us is the collective of all of us in this country.
As I said, it is "us" who voted in this mess.

You want to talk to your neighbor, your loved one, your friends...
About how we are being dissected for profit?

Tell them to stop voting for the charlatans who fund the charlatans.
They'll dissect us all in the end.

The people you note in the rest of your reply would not matter a whit...
If we didn't vote in people who succumb to their money.

"They" control both parties, so there are no candidates to vote for. And the masses either don't care enough, or believe in their lies.