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BMJ 2001;322:1118-1119 ( 5 May )
Jump to full article: British Medical Journal, 2001-05-04
Author: Smith and Campbell 322 (7294): 1118
Intro: Richard Smith, editor of the BMJ, is professor of medical journalism at Nottingham University, which has taken £3.8m from British American Tobacco to fund an international centre for the study of corporate responsibility. He argues that the university should return the money. The university's vice chancellor, Sir Colin Campbell, argues the opposite. Readers are asked to vote on bmj.com whether the university should return the money and whether Smith should resign if it doesn't. . .
How in such circumstances can Nottingham University accept tobacco money for an international centre for corporate social responsibility? The notion causes people to giggle. The centre's name reads like an improbable invention of Dickens, Swift, or David Lodge, one modern observer of the corruption of universities. Nottingham University looks either grasping, naive, or foolish; all are bad for a university that wants to be a world leader in thinking and study. . .
More than 100 million people around the world depend on the tobacco industry for employment. . .
The valuable collaborative medical research funded by the Cancer Research Campaign is based in the faculties of medicine and science; the British American Tobacco funding is to go to the business school in the faculty of law and social sciences.
In dialogue with the Cancer Research Campaign during 2000, the university indicated its intention to accept a donation from British American Tobacco. It further confirmed that, in accordance with the protocol, the new International Centre for the Study of Corporate Responsibility would be organisationally, fiscally, and physically separate from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmaceutical Sciences. . .
in furthering the university's research--and especially research that is relevant to the world's problems today--we welcome diverse sources of funding. In years to come, few people will question the fact that the University of Nottingham accepted funds from the tobacco industry. What they will see instead will be the high quality, globally relevant input to corporate social responsibility led by the university's business school
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Quotes from this article:
In years to come, few people will
question the fact that the University of Nottingham accepted funds from the tobacco industry. What they will see instead will be the high quality, globally relevant input to corporate social responsibility led by the university's business school.
Nottingham University vice chancellor, Sir Colin Campbell, on accepting £3.8m from BAT to fund an international centre for the
study of corporate responsibility. Smith and Campbell, <I>For and against: Should Nottingham University give back its tobacco money?</I>
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