May 2007 Archives

Microsoft Comes out Swinging

Microsoft announced this week that open source software infringes on 235 of its patents. The company is cagey about which patents and what the detailed infringements are. It does say that the Linux kernel infringes 42 patents, and that Linux's user interface (UI) infringes on 65 patents -- some very proprietary button placement no doubt, and very precious look and feel.

If they revealed more of the details, the software in question could be changed, and/or people would refute their charges. Instead, in an atmosphere of heightened awareness about frivolous patents, they're careful to avoid an SCO-like courtroom reckoning. Instead, reminiscent of the RIAA, the company is shrewdly using the media to brandish the specter of lawsuits over the growing open source community.

Microsoft paid Novell a few hundred million dollars for "coupons", which Microsoft can then sell to customers for Linux subscriptions. Novell, arguably eviscerated by Microsoft in the past, heaved itself back into a negotiating position with its SUSE Linux. Microsoft, for its part, has increasing found its expensive, proprietary, patch-needy software challenged by Linux. The deal was no doubt an attempt to stem the growing number of businesses abandoning its platform and opting for Linux.

There's a article on Microsoft's position, with some history on Linux, licensing, the legal claims, and open source in this Fortune article. The deal exploited loopholes in the GPL license which governs Linux distribution. Novell and Microsoft agreed not to sue each other's customers for patent infringement. The marketing collaboration may have been primary for Novell, and Microsoft was most likely also motivated to set a precedent. However, as Fortune noted, the deal naturally received scathing reviews from some small companies and open source purists.

"In free-software circles...the Microsoft-Novell entente was met with apoplectic rage. Novell's most eminent Linux developer quit in protest. Stallman [and his Free Software Foundation], of course, denounced it. Not only did it make a mockery of free-software principles, but it threatened the community's common-defense strategy."

Apparently companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, AIG, and members of the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), approved the collaboration, which also got Linus Torvalds' blessing.

Ghosts of Big Blue

What's Microsoft up to? Some people have suggested that the Vista rollout wasn't as successful as Microsoft had hoped and that Microsoft is desperate. Microsoft sometimes misses the boat, and when they do they generally try anything they can to get back in the game anyway they can. They were famously late to the Internet party, but they now brag about Word's new html capabilities. They might be able to symbolically improve the 2003 edition of Word simply by adding the word "blog" to the dictionary. The 2003 version suggested that when I typed "blog", what I really meant "bog", or "bloc", or "blot", or "blob" or "blow" (in that order). As in, gee, we're really bogged down with Vista, let's form a bloc against Linux, let's obliterate it. Open source? We don't hear you, we don't hear you -- let's blot it out! Let's turn Linux customers to trembling blobs. Wow, this open source "movement's" tougher than we thought; this really blows.

Microsoft fails to surprise, since it has a track record of using strong-arm tactics, but open-source is not Netscape. Open source has growing support, both from organizations and individuals. Sun's Jonathan Schwartz, in a little Sun manifesto, did suggest pithily the Microsoft needs to wise up and "innovate, not litigate". He notes:

"You would be wise to listen to the customers you're threatening to sue - they can leave you, especially if you give them motivation. Remember, they wouldn't be motivated unless your products were somehow missing the mark."

Open source, he said, "is not a genie any litigator I know can put back in a bottle."

However it will most likely be a protracted battle. According to the Fortune article, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, AIG Technologies, HSBC, Wal-Mart, Dell and Reed Elsevier have bought coupons. These clients are naturally tremendously risk adverse and this may seem like a good option for them and their customers, rather than have Microsoft forever dangling hints of law suits around them. But importantly, these companies also depend on patent protection. They probably recognize open source as a common foe. Indeed some of them, like Reed Elsevier, are fighting their own, similar, open access battles.

Sciences International: Vanity Press and the Education of the Layperson

(Continued from previous post)

In 2005, Sciences International Inc. (SII), a private company hired to run the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) in the NIH, publicized on their website their mission to educate the "layperson". As all companies do, SII was working to raise its company status with public appearances, professorships, and peer reviewed research in publications.

Getting research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals is a time consuming, challenging task, commensurate with the also burdensome role of peer review, editing and analysis on the part of the journal. In some cases, SII sometimes found it easier to create their own journal, called Risk Analysis ask some of their staff to review the papers, and then publish -- presto. So when they wrote on their website:

"One of our staff is among several scientists who have questioned the dichotomy between cancer and noncancer risk assessments. He has argued that low-dose estimates of cancer risk should not be obtained from linear extrapolations; rather, only RfDs and RfCs should be provided. This work has been peer-reviewed and published in Risk Analysis."

What they really meant by "peer review" wasn't that peer review, but the one where you show your manuscript to your employee, who says - yes that looks good, let's run off some copies in the cellar. Risk Analysis and the associated Society for Risk Analysis, were both founded by Sciences International's founder and long time president, who also serves as editor in chief of the journal. Other SI employees who served on the journal editorial board included the Area Editor for Health Risk Assessment and the Managing Editor of the journal.

As with many pieces of this the story, one can devise alternate plausible explanations for this move by SII. On one hand perhaps the company founded a well needed journal for a niche area of research. On the other hand, it's more impressive to self-publish your research in your own journal than to limit yourself to the company blackboard or your intranet blog. However, needless to say, research published in your own journal could be judged by scientists as being less rigorous than research published in a slightly less insular, non-company owned journal. But many readers, especially the average visitor to your company website just wouldn't know the difference.

For years, SII continued its work refining safety regulations, educating the public, and then like a well oiled machine spinning around to sell services to the chemical industry on the back of it's public works.

But by the time of their bisphenol A report, BPA had been receiving wide attention in many quarters. Researchers published hundreds of papers, regulatory attempts to place in states like California and cities like San Francisco, and efforts by scientists like Frederick Vom Saal kept attention on the issue of the low-dose health effects of BPA. Environmental groups such as EWG and coverage in publications like the Wall Street Journal and Nature, and local TV stories had contributed to a different sort of public education and alerted the public to signs of business malfeasance that undermines the public interest.

80,000 Chemicals, So Little Time

We want to assure ourselves that the contractors are honest -- I do. Of course there are many different ways to judge the actions of this tiny contractor, and I would like to believe that everything's on the up and up and that this contractor had public interest in mind. But citizens have good reasons to be wary especially when it comes to BPA. We know that the American Chemical Council, SI's client, sponsored websites like www.babybottle.org to reassure consumers of the safety of bisphenol A in plastic bottles. There's tremendous industry incentive to disavow low-dose BPA research. And if the long record of bisphenol A lobbying itself isn't warning enough, we know that the tobacco industry research denied the link between cigarette smoking and cancer and the petroleum industry produced "evidence" against global warming. We're familiar with the discrepancies between corporate science rhetoric and public health science. Here we're presented with SII's claims of innocence, versus what looks to be a written record all but bragging of conflict of interest.

In the EWG's latest statement they insist the NIH should conduct their own overview of the conflict of interest review of SII's work, rather than simply accepting SII's self audit and its admissions of historical conflicts of interest. When the Washington Post interviewed a staffer for Democrat Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, last month, he said Waxman wanted to review all of SII's previous recommendations. But the Post also interviewed NIH officials who said they would not review Sciences International's past work.

If Sciences International was working more intently on behalf of its industry clients than on it's regulatory contracts, its actions went on for over a decade with brazen openness. Eventually, EWG feretted out some interesting SI machinations at NERHR, and NIH fired the contractor. But Science's International, a ten person company with hefty public marketing claims in the public record was an easy target, both to expose and to fire. If the oversight is truly as lax as it looks, then certainly companies with inclinations to skew results in favor of industry would merely need to cover their tracks better than SI did. Search the internet to see how many other companies in the same business area (and there are quite a few) clearly listing their clients and ambitions on their websites. Most are publicly opaque about the details of their business deals.

There are no easy answers that will solve the problem that don't involve summoning resources to pay better attention to what goes on in these contracts. There are over 80,000 chemicals in use today. Despite all the public attention to bisphenol A, the public comments section of the bisphenol A draft contains only a few comments, 4 from industry groups, 2 environmental groups, and one Ph.D. expert (1). The capacity and budget of government is outranked by that of industry. The NIH has burgeoning responsibility and a shrinking budget. The idea of taxes in the U.S., which could potentially fund more concerted government oversight efforts is anathema to most citizens. Industry, on the other hand, is flush with resources. In the Wall Street Journal editorial page last week, a quarter page ad announced boldly that the "business of chemistry contributes $635 billion" to the economy, and "helps support 17% of GDP". Chemicals are "essential₂gdp" according to the ad sponsor, the American Chemistry Council. There was no EPA ad on the other side of the page that said, "Saving Your Babies' Lives -- Your Precious Children, What's it Worth? The EPA, Protecting Your Family, Protecting Your Health. Overseeing Chemicals, One Tax Dollar at a Time".

----------------------------------------------------------------

(1) The Center for Reproductive Health and Risks CERHR has extended the comment period for the bisphenol A draft.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Los Angeles Times reported on the EWG action and subsequent NIEHS firing March 4th, and April 4th.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Acronym Required previously wrote about bisphenol A in the following articles:

Plastic Bottles- Protecting Your Baby, by the ACC (July, 2005)

Bisphenol-A and Phthalates Bill in California (January, 2006)

San Francisco Bans Bisphenol A, Phthalates (July, 2006)

San Francisco phthalates & Bisphenol A Ban (November, 2006)

Sciences International: Health and the Environment

It reads like the classic story of the fox guarding the hen house. Sciences International, (SI), a small company with clients like the American Chemistry Council, Dupont, WR Grace, and Exxon Mobil, also ran the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), a project in the NIH's toxicology program (NTP) charged with deciding which environmental toxins pose health risks to reproduction and the development of unborn children.

Science International wrote a report last year on bisphenol A's (BPA) safety, which came to the attention of the public and congress when the Environmental Working Group (EWG) alleged that the conclusions were biased towards industry research studies in a Feb. 28th letter to the NIH hiring director.

Reproductive health and development, like children's health, is always a lightening rod for public attention, and increasingly, so is bisphenol A. Science International's review of the literature on bisphenol A caused enough concern among scientists, members of congress, and public health official that in the ensuing brouhaha, the NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) terminated Science International's $5.24 million contract running CERHR. After the termination, Herman Gibb, the president of the approximately ten person company insisted to the Washington Post, "I don't ever believe in my heart of hearts there was a conflict of interest".

When the story made headlines last month it seemed to confirm our worst fears. NIEHS accepted a contract apparently written by Science's International to run CERHR without listing company's conflicts of interest, an arrangement that seems ripe for abuse. Acronym Required looked into the details of the story, which do little to allay those concerns. Had SI, working for the FDA, the NIH, and now CERHR, as well as significant numbers of chemical companies perhaps systematically watered down environmental safeguard regulations over the past decade to suit it's corporate clients? The Science International incident reveals the potential pitfalls of blending government and industry work, both for companies like SI and for public health and welfare.

Science International's Bisphenol A Study

Bisphenol A binds to estrogen receptors and can cause deleterious health effects such as decreased sperm count, enlarged prostate, cancers, diabetes, early puberty, and immunological and developmental effects. It's potent at very small doses and ubiquitous, found in everything from dental resins to household products like canned food, plastic food containers, and baby bottles. Today 95% of the population carries detectable levels of the chemical in their blood and hundreds of scientific research reports indicate BPA's toxicity to humans.

According to critics, Science International's first draft report on the health effects of BPA was biased. The report concluded the opposite of what hundreds of government funded BPA studies conclude. A survey of the research on bisphenol A effects shows that 92% over 100 (109/119) government studies on BPA found adverse health effects, whereas all 11 industry funded studies found that BPA caused no adverse health effects. Scientists critical of the Science's International report said that the review panel favored industry results while ignoring unreliable industry results base on unscientific methodologies like lab protocols that used no controls.The EWG also questioned whether SI's principal scientist could neutrally evaluate the dangers of bisphenol A (BPA) since he had worked with Dow Chemical and the European Chemical Industry Council -- entities with business interests in BPA.

Sciences International wrote the meta-study of the research studies, then chose the panel who reviewed their work. While SI said that the final conclusions as to the hazards of bisphenol A during reproduction and development were the panel's, when Acronym Required looked at the panel's edits of Science International's first draft they were stylistic, not scientific.

A New GovBiz Model?

Can a company consult to the chemistry industry and also evaluate the safety of that industry's products -- without bias? Can we trust government, industry partnerships to evaluate science when their contractual agreements cede the very principles we use to ensure integrity in research and in business, like peer review, conflict of interest statements, and competitive bidding processes? An older CERHR website described the partnership between SI and the CERHR:

"Under the direction of Michael Shelby, Ph.D., Director, CERHR at NIEHS, scientific and support staff at NIEHS and Sciences International, Inc. operate the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR). The Principal Investigator, Anthony Scialli, M.D., leads the scientific and support staff at Sciences International, Inc."

In addition to the BPA report, SI also produced reports profiling the safety of many other chemicals during their contract with CERHR. Sciences International consulted for 10 years with the FDA and the EPA, and worked with corporate clients like GE, Union Carbide, Hoechst Celanese, Otsuka Chemical, Cytek Industries, a plethora of law firms, and industry groups such as the American Chemical Council, Synthetic Organic Chemical, the Acrylonitrile Group, and the American Petroleum Institute. The EWG wrote in one letter to the director of the National Toxicology Program (NTP), about the "ethical concerns surrounding this contractor that involve apparent financial ties with the chemical industry..." Indeed, when we perused SI's older websites, they wrote clearly about the work they performed:

"Nowhere is Sciences' exposure assessment experience more evident than in EPA's new Clean Air Act residual risk program...[]...EPA generally applied, for the first time, this guidance in a recent residual risk case study of the secondary lead smelting industry. That guidance, or some variation of it, will be used to address residual risks for all remaining industrial categories with MACT standards. Working for a coalition of seven major trade associations (Chemical Manufacturers Association, American Petroleum Institute, American Coke and Coal Chemicals Institute, American Iron and Steel Institute, National Mining Association, American Forest and Paper Association, and Association of International Automobile Manufacturers), Sciences prepared detailed comments on the case study approach and results, and presented a report on March 1, 2000, to EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB). The ensuing SAB draft meeting report clearly showed that Sciences' comments played a major role in their analysis, which included a recommendation to revise the case study and return it to the SAB for a second review.

Sciences also developed a vastly improved exposure and risk assessment method for evaluating coke oven residual risks and recently gathered residual risk data on the gasoline distribution industry for the American Petroleum Institute. Sciences' staff includes an ex-EPA manager who led for six years the hazardous air pollutant regulatory efforts for the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards (OAQPS). In that position, he managed the initial development of the Human Exposure Model and was a member of the group that wrote the Agency's initial exposure and risk assessment guidelines. Earlier, he conceived of and managed the original 4-year study of the organic chemical manufacturing industry that ultimately formed the basis of the Hazardous Organic NESHAP (HON), he also..."

Naive marketing hype, or conflict of interest? If boasting to chemical companies about your company's power to have its way with government is inherently wrong, then for years Sciences International promiscuously flouted the rule in marketing material on their public website. Clearly, SI had strong ties to the chemical industry. But was it some especially insidious arrangement, a punishable offense? Or is this just how the U.S. government works?

Many companies who contract with the government also work for business clients who gain honest efficiencies and insights from consultants' familiarity with government rules and ruminations. In general, we wouldn't be shocked to find private contractors running public agencies, because privatization is a goal of recent governments -- both Democrat and Republican. The increasingly fuzzy demarcations between private and public entities constitute contracts in Iraq, New Orleans, U.S. National Parks and atmospheric weather monitoring operations. Overall, companies who mix business relationships with government work fare well these days. The Homeland Security Index, for instance, which includes SI's parent company Tetra Tech, rose 5.3% last quarter, whereas the S&P 500 posted -.86%, the DJIA; -1.70%, and Nasdaq; -1.57%. Are these corporate/public relationships the new normal, or something else, given that SI was summarily fired?

The Etiquette of Serving Two Masters

In one of two good pieces Nature wrote on the subject a couple of weeks ago, ("Regulators pull contract for chemical review" 446;958-959, Apr. 26), the author noted, "there's a legal grey area" that contractors navigate in dealing with clients. Nature makes a point. If you find SI's client mix disturbing, then the client list of most law firms or consulting companies might also disturb you. How are consulting companies supposed to separate the clients? Nature quoted one toxicologist who pointed out that the rules are unclear, even for companies like Sciences International, he said, who (as Nature summarized) "try to segregate industrial and government work to limit conflicts".

Contrary to what the consultant assumed, however, and perhaps leading to to its undoing, Science's International did not convincingly "segregate" it's constituencies. Here are some excerpts from their 2005 site.

"...EPA estimated very high cancer risks in one assessment of a regulated industry. Sciences developed a much more accurate exposure model and also reassessed the cancer unit risk estimate using much more recent worker epidemiology data and biologically-based modeling approaches, originally developed by Sciences' experts. Sciences' revised study showed that actual risk estimates were two to three orders of magnitude lower than EPA's earlier conservative estimates...."

"Sciences has unique experience in assessing health risks due to inhaled air toxicants. Sciences' experts were selected by the EPA, as sole source contractors, to work on the underlying methodology by which the EPA develops its safe levels of exposure to chemicals by the inhalation route..."

"...Through a contract with the EPA, Sciences carried out the quality assurance and validation of BMDS, making several critical recommendations that influenced its development. ...[]...Sciences is also currently involved in a similar effort for EPA's recently developed Categorical Regression (CatReg) software...[]...A 5-person Sciences International team is writing the EPA Benchmark Dose Guidelines. With all these considerations in mind, we are in an excellent position to apply the BMDS and CatReg methods to particular substances that would benefit from these approaches."

"[Sciences International scientists]...have applied a biologically-based model approach to coke oven emissions for the industry and derived an alternative cancer potency factor which has been accepted by the EPA. We believe that our ability to utilize accurate dosimetry and pharmacodynamic models in tandem in risk assessments provides unique opportunities to the chemical industry."

SI's statements seem clearly intended to sway a corporate audience. SI clearly tries to establish itself as an ally to the chemical industry, "working on underlying methodogies", a company who changed EPA estimates "two to three orders of magnitude lower", who made "critical recommendations" that "influenced" standards, and created "unique opportunities [for] the chemical industry". Under their "sole contractor" status, SI and its government clients had perhaps short-circuited the bidding process. EWG highlighted portions of a 1999 a letter from SI to RJ Reynolds, where the company wrote:

"Our experience in supporting these government agencies in the advancement of science gives Science a unique credibility to negotiate with regulators of behalf of our private sector clients, to speak authoritatively in the scientific community, and to be accepted in legal proceedings and by the public."

According to Sciences International's own self-promotion, it had broad influence in many agencies, which benefited chemical companies. But without knowledge about the specific science behind SI's marketing, it's difficult to discern what changes they made. It would require a research team to analyze whether those changes were indeed detrimental to health -- whether they are a sleight on behalf of industry, or whether SI simply refined the EPA's less accurate or outdated measurement techniques. Maybe the government standards for indoor and outdoor air, water, etc., did benefit from adjustments based on SI's expertise.

Toxic Puffery

Many big companies in Science International's position keep a more sanctified public front, a website splashed with value concoctions of their love for children, concern for animals and stewardship of the great outdoors. Naively or greedily, Sciences International tossed discretion to the wind and instead promoted their business, aggressively emphasizing the their influential role in government and their willingness to leverage that value proposition for corporate clients.

SI redesigned their website a couple of years ago, and seemingly came to its corporate senses, including a more publicly agreeable photo collage of children and trees, and a client list scrubbed of corporate entities. The new site brags less about the company's experience drafting "more accurate" measurements of exposure assessment and dose-response for the EPA. But sometimes information on the internet doesn't die as cleanly as people might wish. Occasionally ghosts of past lurk about to startle the unsuspecting with a bump in the night, a startling reminder of pasts long since banquished. SI's old website revealed SI's habit of not separating clients. The entire business model, in fact, leveraged conflicts of interest.

"...Sciences' methods development work is often sponsored by public agencies, such as the U.S. EPA, while applications work is most often for the private sector where agents of particular concern need to be addressed. Sciences' knowledge of the acceptable regulatory methods and practices can facilitate ultimate acceptance of these analyses for the private sector."

Dr. Gibb insisted that in cases where SI's government work with one chemical coincided with corporate work, consultants on one contract had no knowledge of what their cohorts were doing on another. How shall we interpret that? On one hand, consulting can be like that. On the other, this was a ten person company. The president doesn't know what people are working on? He complained to the journal Nature that the NIEHS action was unfair "with a capital U". Perhaps so, but then it would probably be fair to say that for whatever their intents and purposes, SI's record just happened to look fishy with a capital F.

Despite the challenge of sorting out what the company was really up to, SI's work is fraught with appearances of conflict of interest. As EWG pointed out, the NIH was remiss not to look at Sciences International's website years earlier. Even a half-hearted glance would have hinted at a slew of conflicts.

According to the Los Angeles Times, in response to NIH inquiries about their duel roles, Sciences International acknowledged that they had prepared Federal health reviews for styrene, ethylene glycol, and soy formula, while working for a styrene trade group, the American Chemistry Council, and the United Soybean Board. However, the president, Herman Gibb, told the Washington Post that he had only learned "last month", because of the NIH's information request request, that the company had worked for the chemical trade companies while simultaneously working to ascertain safe levels for those chemicals.

(Read the continuation of this story, starting with "Vanity Press and Educating the Layperson", in the next post)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Acronym Required previously wrote about bisphenol A in the following articles:

Plastic Bottles- Protecting Your Baby, by the ACC (July, 2005)

Bisphenol-A and Phthalates Bill in California (January, 2006)

San Francisco Bans Bisphenol A, Phthalates (July, 2006)

San Francisco phthalates & Bisphenol A Ban (November, 2006)

UC and Tobacco

Wednesday was perhaps a typical University of California (UC) day. En route to their commencement celebrations, UC Berkeley students passed custodians who were picketing for raises. In support of the protesters, their scheduled speaker, Danny Glover, canceled his talk. A few dozen UC students on several campuses started a solid food hunger strike to protest nuclear research, in what U.S. News and World Report suggested might be "a boon for the pudding industry". Meanwhile, the UC Academic Senate, for its part, defeated RE-89, a measure aimed at barring tobacco industry funding of academic research.

The senate voted 43-4 against RE-89, with 3 abstentions. RE-89 represents the most recent push by some UC faculty to ban tobacco industry sponsorship. It follows last year's D.C. District Court decision, which confirmed in 1,742-pages that, among other transgressions, five tobacco companies lied about the hazards of tobacco and smoking for 50 years, enticed children to smoke, and used university researchers to help undermine anti-tobacco litigation efforts.

In trying to ban tobacco funding across the UC system, faculty were responding to a recent UC policy limiting individual schools from setting policies to ban tobacco money. That measure, enacted in 2005, overturned the tobacco funding policies set by the nursing, medical, public and family health schools, on the Berkeley, UCSF, UCLA, and San Diego campuses. By setting policy, University leadership forbid those schools, with their public health missions and first hand experience with the devastating tobacco related morbidity and mortality, from declining tobacco money. Other universities, such as Ohio State University, Harvard, and John Hopkins, have no such limits on individual schools whose academic missions clash with the goals of tobacco companies.

Why Tobacco?

Stanford University is also considering a campus-wide ban on tobacco funding, and professors there argue divisively along the same lines as the UC faculty. Some contend that professors should be free to pursue whatever research they choose, including tobacco. Others say that if any business ever earned the label "evil", it's the tobacco industry, and that continuing to welcome tobacco's dollars on campuses undermines university goals.

Faculty who disapprove of tobacco funding are often associated with public health or medical schools, in some cases they've devoted their scholarship to studying the tobacco industry. The UCSF contingent of the Academic Senate voted for the UC ban, and the UCSF campus is dedicated solely to medicine and graduate science research. Stanford tobacco industry historian Robert Proctor noted, "We really don't want to be collaborating with an industry that is producing the world's largest preventable cause of death."

University presidents, on the other hand, generally argue for what they call academic freedom. They maintain that academic integrity and conflict of interest guidelines for research cover any touchy issues that might arise in sponsored research. Evidence doesn't always support this claim. A 2003 study by a UCLA professor was one of four examples of academic research tainted by tobacco funding cited by Judge Kessler in her court decision. (In response to various ethical breaches, all UC staff and faculty are required to take a 30 on-line minute ethics class this year.)

Stanford President John Hennessy said "This is a political message, and I am very concerned that we are changing our academic policy to send a political message." His statement no doubt meant that the university doesn't need to send a political message to tobacco companies, condemning their toxic products. But since the primary charge of University presidents is to raise money for campus, they wouldn't necessarily be too eager to muddy the waters of fund raising goals by implying that their university might be choosy about where it gets its money. That would be the wrong political message to send to tobacco companies.

University administrations across the United States are sensitive to the issue of tobacco funding. Although universities often post conflict of interest policies and publicly list their funding sources, when we called universities with questions about their tobacco research funding policies, we received a wide variety of interesting responses from administrators. Some talked very openly about their decision making processes, but others were especially guarded. Coincidentally these were generally the universities who posted affiliations with the tobacco industry.

It's a tricky balancing act for universities. Although many have divested their tobacco interests, these universities often continue to accept tobacco money for research. Since university communities are increasingly hostile to the tobacco industry and its smoke, these universities seem reluctant to discuss their nuanced policies. Tobacco industry money doesn't generally amount to a large percentage of research money but universities are quietly vigilant about protecting their rights to it.

-----------------------------------------------

Acronym Required wrote more about the UC tobacco policy decision process a few months ago in "My Lab Thanks You For Smoking".

A number of books have been written on the relationships between corporations and universities.

A recent report by Marks & Clerk, "Biotechnology 2007" found that from 2002-2006, academia led corporations in the number of patents filed. Japan, the University of California, and the U.S. government were the top assignees.

Last week's New Yorker has a cartoon with a couple of executives looking out over the smoke billowing out factory smokestacks. One guy asks, "Can't we just dye the smoke green?"

Like green beer on St. Patrick's day? There's a festival of green spirit taking over businesses these days. Everyone's doing it one way of another, although some companies manage to sashay further down the spectrum of bizarreness then others.

British Petroleum (BP), at sea perhaps, with Lord Brown outed in a British dither of morality, designed a website to take advantage of this brave new world of green sentiment. At http://www.greencurve.com, BP describes a gas station that pollutes less, bragging: "..Be sure to check out our toilet seats". British Petroleum also designed another website, http://www.alittlebettergasstation.com. This site actually looks remarkably similar to BBC's teletubbies site. The sites share the same kelly green colors, the same twangy children's tunes, and many of those misshapen babies. The gas station site has games for (I think) children, like one called "Gas Mania", as well ringtones, screensavers, and "baby mail" (I have no idea).

Petrol is fun kids!