Cesar LG Camargo
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The surname is spelled without the normal R, as in "CARmargo". He spells it "Camargo" See his C/V
Dr Cesar L Gonzalez Camargo (aka Cesar Gonzalez) of Guatemala was a later (1992) Latin American ETS Consultant, enlisted after 1991 by the law firm Covington & Burling into the small existing 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.
There is no contemporary report on him. However he later floated a completely useless (except for propaganda) $86,000 research proposal with Maria del Rosario Alfaro and we have documents about their proposal:
The objective of this study is to acquire data on a variety of airborne substances in restaurants and offices in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. The levels of such substances will be compared with measurements taken outdoors, with published measures of outdoor air when available, and with existing data on indoor air quality from Europe and North America .
The research will result in a series of reports specific to each country, which will be submitted for publication in an international scientific journal. All data, apart from the Guatemalan pilot study, will be coordinated and analyzed at the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica using standard statistical analysis. The results will be reported in a complete technical report, which will be submitted to Universidad Nacional officials. The report will be provided to the study sponsors at the same time.
Based on this report, one or more scientific articles will be written summarizing the findings. Such article(s) will be submitted to peer-review scientific journals. The information also will be presented at conferences and seminars.[2]
See earlier recruitment also. [3]
| LATIN AMERICAN CONSULTANTS |
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| Latin American ETS Consultants Program |
| Latin American ETS (Doc Index) |
| Bariloche Conference |
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.
1991 Sep 30-Oct 1: A three-day meeting of the Latin American recruits was held in Rio de Janeiro. This was essentially their first training session, where most of the new recruits were introduced to the problems and propaganda of ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke), and IAQ (Indoor Air Quality). This was purely a personal bonding and training session, and a way for tobacco industry staff and executives to meet the recruits.
Those from the 1991 list who attended were Carlos B Alvarez, Celio Paula Motta, Antonio H Miguel, Jari N Cardosa, Francisco Radler de Aquino Neto, Remigio O Lopez Solis, Maria del Rosario Alfaro, Eduardo Gros, Lionel Gil, Osvaldo Fustinoni, Bruno Burger, Zinnia Cordero, Eduardo Souchon. [
Following the Rio de Janeiro meeting, the consultants were mailed the following ETS materials : the McGill book ; the Armitage book ("Other People's Tobacco Smoke") ; the Bariloche book ; the Oak Ridge ETS monograph ; the international ETS "white paper" ; the Hong Kong IAQ study ; the Will/Reasor extrapolation article ; the Lee article on ETS risk assessment; and the Layard/LeVois submission to the United States Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) on the epidemiology of ETS, lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. The consultants were given copies of other OSHA filings by United States tobacco industry consultants at the conclusion of the Miami meeting .[9]
1992 Feb 24-26: Another three-day meeting of the Latin American recruits was held at the Fontainebleau Hilton Hotel in Miami where each recruit gave a paper on a relevant subject. This was not a conference, but a personal bonding and training session and a meeting of the recruits. There is nothing in any of these papers that would be considered of even moderate interest in scientific circles in 1992. [10]
Those from the 1991 list who attended were Carlos B Alvarez, Celio Paula Motta, Antonio H Miguel, Jari N Cardosa, Francisco Radler de Aquino Neto, Remigio O Lopez Solis, Maria del Rosario Alfaro, Cesar Leonel Gonzalez Camargo, Lionel Gil, Osvaldo Fustinoni, Bruno Burger, Zinnia Cordero, Eduardo Souchon. One report says:
Before and after the group meeting, Chris Proctor and Patrick Davies met with several of the consultants individually to iron out details relating to possible IAQ field studies and other matters.
- Note Eduardo Gros did not attend. Cesar L Gonzarlez Camargo was included under the name "Cesar Gonzalez".
John Rupp concluded the group meeting first by offering the consultants access to the Georgetown IAQ database (IAPAG/CEHHT)-- which they accepted readily -- and then by opening the floor for suggestions for future projects. There were 8 projects and two field studies. Cesar Gonzalez suggested project was accepted:
"Dr . Cesar Gonzalez (Guatemala) has offered to conduct a small field study, limited to microbiological materials, in various sites in Guatemala . A copy of his proposal (which we retyped after receiving a poor facsimile transmission) is attached. The study would be useful for at least two reasons:
- (1) data of this type are sorely needed ; and
- (2) by conducting such a study, Dr Gonzalez would begin to position himself as an IAQ expert. Dr . Gonzalez has offered to complete the study for $2500.00 and an as-yet unspecified honorarium. Dr Gonzalez also has asked us to fund his membership in the American Society of Microbiology ($303 .00) . We believe it makes sense to provide this funding as well".
Gonzolez Camargo was obviously quicker on the uptake than the other consultants. He was already leaning on them for extra payments. And the lawyer's candid statement that the reason for doing the study was simply to give him some expert credentials is an extraordinary slip of C&B's normal circumspect language in producing reports like this. They usually pretended to believe that what they supervised was serious science.
- The consultants attending the Athens IAQ conference have been told that they will be reimbursed for their expenses but will not be paid for time spent at the conference. With regard to the other projects described above (including the proposed press articles on the Athens conference), we have sent letters to the consultants asking for formal proposals.
- Paul Williams has completed a Spanish translation of the McGill book (McGill University ETS Symposium proceedings). Paul Dietrich has given us an estimate for publishing 5000 copies of the book -- $7 .00 to $8 .00 a copy plus a one-time $3000.00 to $4000.00 design charge -- and has promised us a written quote within a week.
- Dr Remigio Lopez (Chile) expects to complete a Spanish translation of the Armitage book ("Other People's Tobacco Smoke") by mid-April. As you will recall, Dr . Lopez is to receive $4,500.00 for completing the translation.
- Dr Alvarez has offered to publish an article on ETS and cardiovascular disease in Acta Cardiologica, a journal that is distributed without charge to all cardiologists in Argentina. Dr. Alvarez believes that he can complete the article for $5000.00 . It would be ideal to discuss a draft of this article with Dr Alvarez during the Athens conference,
- Drs Gil and Lopez have expressed an interest in participating in the development of a regional article, written by an appropriate free-lance journalist for the popular press, on ambient and indoor air contamination in Latin America. [11]
1992 His C/V as sent to British American tobacco [12]
