Sorell Schwartz

{{#badges: Tobaccowiki}} Sorell L. Schwartz is a Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology in the Department of Pharmacology, Georgetown University Medical Center. He holds a PhD in pharmacology. He was a full time member of the Georgetown University School of Medicine faculty from 1968 until 1998, where he served as Professor of Pharmacology and Director of the Toxicology and Applied Pharmacokinetics program. Since 1998 he has been Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology and is currently director of the joint Georgetown University-Virginia Tech master's program in Biomedical Technology Development and Management. His current work is in adverse drug reactions, biomodeling, and protection of human research subjects.

He is best known today for his leadership (with Professor Philip Witorsch and Nancy J Balter) in consolidating a few academics (and some outsiders) into a consortia, which was actually a pseudo-lobbying firm. They established two groups which the tobacco industry used to launder funds to those willing to give evidence at hearings and court cases - the IAPAG, a pseudo-scientific association, and CEHHT, a consultancy firm hiding behind the appearance of being a department in Georgetown University.

ASSOCIATED ENTRIES
Center for Environmental Health & Human Toxicology (CEHHT)
Indoor Air Pollution Advisory Group (IAPAG)
IAPAG/CEHHT (Doc Index)
International Center for Toxicology & Medicine

IAPAG and CEHHT

In the middle 1980's, Schwartz headed a group of tobacco industry-supported academic consultants called the Indoor Air Pollution Advisory Group (IAPAG); he also organized a database of published scientific research papers that was used by the IAPAG members the preparing testimony on the environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) issue before legislative and administrative bodies. IAPAG members maintained a database on the latest smoking research, prepared critical attacks on adverse-smoking studies, and conducted short-courses to train sham air-testing consultants in order to boost their knowledge to the point where they could be used by the Tobacco Institute's lawyer as "scientific experts in air quality These operations were controlled and funded by the tobacco industry through lawyers at Covington & Burling.

It was later decided that they needed a university division in the Pharmacy Department as an umbrella for these tobacco (and other consulting) activities so Professors Sorell Schwartz and Philip Witorsch, with the help of Dr Nancy Balter set up the Center for Environmental Health & Human Toxicology (CEHHT). This unit was also a way to launder consultancy services from tobacco and other industries with poisoning and polluting problems, and it also added credibility to the IAPAG, by confecting an image of the group as a legitimate association of specialist scientists. Later the Tobacco Institute's Scientific Witness Team came in under the same umbrella.

Biography

He received a Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the Medical College of Virginia in 1963. He served in the U.S. Navy, assigned to the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute. His later associate in IAPAG an CEHHT, Nancy J Balter was also at the Naval Institute and they wrote a number of papers on immunology together.

As a graduate student (1959-63), he studied the mammalian metabolism of nicotine on which he wrote is doctoral thesis. This work was supported via a tobacco industry grant to his mentor., Herbert McKennis, Jr., a pioneer in the elucidation of nicotine metabolic pathways. The earliest reference to Dr. Schwartz in the tobacco archives is for a study on the metabolism of cotinine in the rat (presented at the Virginia Academy of Sciences in 1961). Decades later, cotinine, the major initial metabolite of nicotine, began to be used as a biomarker of nicotine absorption. He continued publish on nicotine metabolism through 1964, his work focusing on the the mammalian degradation of the alkaloid's pyrrolidine ring,

In September 1968, he was appointed Associate Professor of Pharmacology at Georgetown University Medical Center. From 1969 through 1976, he studied the interaction of nicotine with macrophages under grants from the American Medical Association, Education and Research Foundation Committee for Research on Tobacco and Health. The AMA-ERF Committee for Research on Tobacco and Health was an independently administered ten-year project funded by the tobacco industry. His published work under this grant reported on the suppressant effects of nicotine on macrophage function. It was suggested that this effect could be responsible for the increased susceptibility of smokers to infections. In the 1980's Dr. Schwartz turned his attention to physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling. He later published a PBPK model of nicotine and cotinine in humans, work done under a tobacco industry grant.

Tobacco industry involvement

In 1984, under Tobacco Institute sponsorship, Dr Schwartz organized a group of academic consultants into the Indoor Air Pollution Advisory Group (IAPAG) to evaluate and comment on the scientific data concerning Environmental Tobacco Smoke, or ETS on behalf of the tobacco industry. Members of IAPAG were asked by the Tobacco Institute to testify at legislative and administrative hearings concerning ETS-related legislation. They proffered their 'independent' views that ETS was part of a larger problem of indoor air pollution. These views were used by the Institute to support its policy to broaden the ETS issue beyond tobacco smoke.

A database of published scientific literature relevant to the ETS issue was also organized to assist IAPAG members in their evaluations of the environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) issue before legislative and administrative bodies.

In June, 1986 Schwartz organized an accredited continuing medical education program at Georgetown with the title: "Health Effects of Environmental Tobacco Smoke on the Non-Smoker." It was to be jointly sponsored by the Georgetown University Medical Center and the American College of Toxicology, and funded in large part by the tobacco industry. A few speakers withdrew after being contacted by a National Institutes of Health official, claiming they did not have knowledge of the tobacco industry support. The American Lung Association protested to the University about sponsorship of a tobacco industry-funded seminar and urged cancellation. The University refused, based on academic freedom grounds, and noted that the topic was an important emerging health issue.

Nonetheless, Dr. Schwartz (claims to have ...) canceled the program. The Tobacco Institute asked Dr. Schwartz and Georgetown to join it in a public claim that anti-smoking forces were attempting to censor scientific research and opinion. Both refused.

Thereafter, John Rupp, of the Tobacco Institute's legal firm Covington & Burling issued a long statement, independent of Georgetown, alleging censorship attempts by the ALA. The statement claimed that The ALA's actions were "a direct threat to scientific integrity" and an "an attempt to stifle free speech and academic freedom."

Schwartz says that he dissolved IAPAG after three years, in response the Tobacco Institute's pressure for the group to be more advocative. However the Tobacco Institute then established a separate "TI Scientific Witness Team" comprising some old IAPAG members and some non-academic private consultants.

Role in Dept. Of Justice Lawsuit

In 2004, Dr. Schwartz testified in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit against tobacco companies. He said that for three years (beginning in 1984) he testified on behalf of the Tobacco Institute at administrative and legislative hearings expressing the IAPAG views on the health effects of ETS exposure. He maintained that he quit in 1987 because pressure from the Tobacco Institute (TI) to "take a more advocative position" with regards to the industry's stand on the lack of health hazards presented by ETS exposure.

He also described how he learned that certain international conferences held prior to his involvement, and the published reports from which IAPAG had, in part, relied upon for its assessments, had been covertly organized and funded by the tobacco industry. He also testified that he did research on physiologically-based pharmacokinetic modeling of nicotine and nicotine metabolites under an industry grant to Georgetown.

The problem with this testimony is that all the members (without exception) of IAPAG were also independently acting as secret witnesses for the tobacco industry (claiming to be 'independent experts in indoor air pollution;), and doing pseudo-research to promote industry claims that direct smoking and passive smoking (ETS) were not harmful to health. Many, like the brothers Philip Witorsch and Ray Witorsch travelled the world for years at tobacco industry expense. They continued to use the IAPAG and CEHHT names to bolster their own credibility while acting as a surreptitious propaganda arm of the industry; giving witness in court cases and at legislative hearings, and to the media. Sorrel Schwartz and his associate Nancy Balter also organised and conducted training sessions for the new members of the TI Scientific Witness Team, so that they had scientific-sounding phrases to repeat.

Other SourceWatch Resources

• Tobacco industry
• The U.S. Government's racketeering case against Big Tobacco
• Tobacco industry PR strategies - Changing the Focus of the Debate
• Indoor Air Quality: Alternative Strategy

External links

Biographical Notes

• "Sorell Schwartz: Professor Emeritus", Georgetown University, undated, accessed January 2007.

General Articles

• Susan Heavey, "US professor says pressured to be tobacco advocate", Reuters, October 26, 2004.