Alonso Armijos Luna
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Alonso Luna was enlisted by the law firm Covington & Burling into a small group of Latin American academics and medical specialist who were willing to act under cover for the tobacco industry in their own countries. They were called "ETS Consultants" but they were actually enlisted as lobbyists -- they had no consulting role with the tobacco companies whatsoever. The report on him reveals this propaganda emphasis:
Dr Alonso Armijos Luna (Ecuador)
Dr Luna, a cardiologist, is the Dean of the National University of Loja Medical School. He appeared to be objective on the ETS issue. Unfortunately, Dr Luna does not have a particularly good presence and, according to the local PMI company, is not well known. [2]
- He was enrolled in the program on the urging of Philip Morris, below, who wanted a consultant in Ecuador, even if he wasn't very good. They knew him from previous closed conferences they had held in Bariloche, Argentina and also at McGill University, Canada.
| LATIN AMERICAN CONSULTANTS |
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| Latin American ETS Consultants Program |
| Latin American ETS (Doc Index) |
| Bariloche Conference |
The document goes on to list a number of scientists who had been interviewed but rejected on various grounds:
- (1) they are non-smokers or anti-smoking
- (2) they believe that ETS was a health hazard
- (3) they were not really scientist with the right expertise
- (4) those looking only for research funding, and
- (5) some who were too old. [3]
Documents & Timeline
A few dozen of these "ETS Consultants were recruited in the 1991-1995 period. The details are in the Latin American ETS (Doc Index) entry.
1991 Mar 27 The decision had been made by Philip Morris and British American Tobacco to recruit 14 medical ETS/IAQ Experts in Latin America. The lawyers Covington & Burling were given the job of interviewing the prospective recruits. At this stage they only had names -- the prospective recruits had not been approached. [4]
1991 Apr 9 Sharon Boyse, the Issues Manager at British-American Tobacco in the UK (later B&W in the USA) has written to tobacco lawyer John Rupp at Covington & Burling in New York. She says that the Chilean tobacco staff have difficulty in coming up with constructive comments or suggestions on the list of proposed ETS Consultants for Latin America. She also wanted to know what they intended to do with Dr Tezano-Pinto who had already been identified in the media as a tobacco tout. [5]
On the same day she writes to her company representative in Chile saying that she has asked C&B to add Tezanos-Pinto to their list … but that C&B "prefer to contact people themselves in an attempt to maintain independence of consultants from individual companies." [6]
- Obviously the self-delusionary aspects of this operation were important for the lawyers self-respect.
| 1991Background to the ETS Consultants recruitment program The American tobacco industry lobby was primarily directed by a group of corporate executives at Philip Morris, using the services of the Washington tobacco law firm Covington & Burling (C&B), to protect itself from legal 'discovery'. By the 1990s, the Tobacco Institute had re-asserted its role (under Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds) as the primary channel for lobbying in the USA, and had begun to extend its influence to involve both North and South America. It was also running the WhiteCoats (recruitment of scientific 'consultant' in Europe and Asia). Philip Morris called these recruited academics and medical specialists 'WhiteCoats' while the lawyers knew them as 'IAQ/ETS Consultants.' Potential recruits were approached through the lawyers, usually on the advice of other recruits. The lawyer would then conduct an interview where the scientist or academic would be ensured that their involvement would be kept secret, and so they could maintain the ethical position of an 'independent' and deny any direction from the tobacco industry since they would always be dealing through a lawyer or a third-party scientific society (like IAPAG or ARIA). Payment for services could also be channelled through these third-parties. Since most recruits had no knowledge of the engineering, medical or health problems of second-hand smoke (ETS) they were to be put through a brief training program developed and run at the Tobacco Institute under the name "College of Tobacco Knowledge". To provide them with a semblance of credentials in this new area of 'expertise', they would probably also be given speaking engagements at one of the many closed or controlled (by the industry) conferences on held around the world on the indoor air environment -- which always sought to point the finger for second-hand smoke problems at outside air pollution, carpet exudates, formaldehyde, radon, CO2. Free travel and luxury accommodation for closed conferences held in exotic locations was also a major factor in the benefits of working for tobacco. They also got to socialize with a group of like-minded mercenary contemporaries who would be available to "peer review" any research papers they might later submit (on a 'you-scratch-my-back' principle) to one of the industry's compliant journals. |
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1991 July 14 A training session for a group of Latin American ETS/IAQ Consultants was to be held in Rio de Janeiro in August. The lawyer Patrick S Davies (C&B) has checked out a list of medical/scientific consultants and is providing the Tobacco Institute with reasons to invite his suggested list to an initial training session on ETS. [8]
- The real interest in these notes is that they demonstrate that the lawyers idea of an ETS/IAQ Consultant has nothing to do with 'consulting' -- but everything to do with their potential as media promoters and their willingness to claim that ETS was a safe and at most a minor irritation, and that smoking as an individual's enjoyable pastime and possibly a basic human right. The recruit's academic qualifications and expertise had only one value to the tobacco industry -- and that was to establish them as 'independent public minded experts' when attacking the weight of accumulated evidence against cigarettes on health and environmental grounds.
