Academic Freedom?
Today the University of California Faculty Senate meets again to debate the pros and cons of the University continuing to accept research money from tobacco companies. It remains to be seen whether they will act on this agenda item or not, as they have been debating banning tobacco money for many years.
The current round of debates at UC is fueled in part by a recent federal court ruling. On August 17, 2006, the court ruled against Phillip Morris in United States v. Philip Morris USA, Inc for violating Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act, and for "fraudulent corporate actions" and "disingenuous relationship with academic research institutions". The decision is being appealed, but is convincing enough to be used as fodder in this latest round of debates by those at the University who are lobbying to ban tobacco funding.
Responsibility for making the decision about tobacco funding has become a bit of a political hot potato; the Faculty Senate recently passed the issue to the Board of Regents, who in turn passed the issue back to the Senate. The regents have the final say but are advised by the Faculty Senate. Since 1995, the University has received about 108 grants totaling $37 million dollars from tobacco companies. The University will point out that the tobacco money is only a small amount of the total grant money. It received $15.8 million dollars in ongoing tobacco grants from Phillip Morris in 2006, out of $4 billion of contracts and grants awarded that year.
For those who favor banning tobacco, the court ruling provided more credence to evidence that the tobacco industry thwarted and influenced research. According to information at UCSF, the schools of public health at Harvard, John Hopkins, Columbia; Emory, Harvard and John Hopkins medical schools, as well as some international universities ban tobacco money.
In fact anti-tobacco money advocates point out that the University of California is now the only university that forbids individual departments or schools from declining tobacco money, a rule the Faculty Senate passed in 2005 after several UC entities independently ruled against accepting tobacco funding.
Blanket Ban?
People argue that researchers should be solely responsible for the soundness of their own potentially controversial science research programs. But there is evidence that not all researchers at the University of California were frank about their connections to tobacco, and that not all scientists who received tobacco grants published research that was sound or honest.
Some faculty object to the ban, saying that barring money from tobacco would create a slippery slope and open the doors to more funding source curtailments based on arbitrary ethics or morals. But slippery slope scenarios don't seem to be a problem at other schools that bar tobacco money.
Drawing an analogy from (controversial) history about the American Indians and their demise from smallpox infected blankets, one faculty member likened tobacco money to smallpox infected blankets. They quipped; "we like to stay warm, we like blankets, just not from Jeffrey Amherst guy and his cronies".
UC is reluctant to ban tobacco money for many reasons, but the academic freedom argument seems to gain the most traction. The idea of a ban repels many UC faculty, who cringe at the thought of imposing rules on what faculty members can or can't study. To counter this, other faculty argue with equal vehemence that accepting tobacco money impedes academic freedom by biasing research outcomes.
Interestingly, the individual freedoms argument, in the form of libertarian rationale, is commonly used to support tobacco sale and use. The book by Christopher Buckley and movie "Thank-You For Smoking" is based (humorously) on this argument. Amartya Sen criticized the use of libertarian arguments against public smoking bans in a Financial Times editorial Monday titled, "Unrestrained Smoking is a Libertarian Half-way House".
Second-hand smoke causes health consequences to non-smoking victims as well as smokers. If people should be free to smoke despite the known health risks, than society is left with uncomfortable choices. We can systematically deny smokers and their smoke related illnesses the myriad public resources that come to their aid in disease. This is an unconscionable decision of "a monstrously unforgiving society", says Sen. Or all the smokers must be treated and everyone else bears the cost, despite our massive body of knowledge about the inevitable disease burden caused by smoking. Notes Sen: "We should not readily agree to be held captive in a half-way house erected by an inadequate assessment of the demands of liberty".
Based on the August 17th conclusions of the court, the continued acceptance of Tobacco's investment in research only abets the tobacco industry's substantiation of false claims about the benign affects of smoking. While tobacco companies profit, systemic health problems of smokers burden the health care system and raise insurance costs. These costs ponderously burden the UC system, its insured, and the state of California. Whose sense of liberty is this?
No doubt the Senate will argue all of these points vigorously. It remains to be seen how or if they will act.
-------------------------------
♥♥♥The movie "Thank-You For Smoking" humorously, but in all seriousness, presents libertarian arguments for smoking.
NOTE: The Academic Senate postponed the vote until May.
CORRECTION (May 7, 2007): This article previously compared information in an article in the journal Science, to several documents listed at the library on the UCSF site. Here's one. (Link opens Acrobat!) We wrote the following: "Science wrote in, "UC Balks at Campus-Wide Ban on Tobacco Money for Research" (January 29, 2007); "...the University of California (UC) has delayed voting on a plan to impose a blanket ban on research funding from tobacco companies. If approved, the ban would make UC the only U.S. university to forbid tobacco dollars campus-wide."..." Acronym Required's original article cited the UCSF website information indicating that 21 U.S. Universities and Centers "decline tobacco funding". We have since contacted most of the universities listed on the UCSF site and couldn't duplicate UCSF's site information that 7 universities had campus wide bans, although many schools have units that disallow tobacco funding. All of the schools we contacted from the UCSF list allowed researchers to accept tobacco money, but most also allowed schools to institute bans, which UC does not. Some universities we contacted were under other constraints such as state guidelines around accepting tobacco settlement money while accepting tobacco industry grants. A more recent list of campus-wide policies (A.R. has not verified) is here.
