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· Opinion/Surveys
non-USA, by Country
· UK
Organizations
· Nottingham
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Jump to full article: British Medical Journal, 2001-05-14
Intro: Doctors must act as advocates for the public on political issues regarding health matters. We will be seen as hypocritical and lose credibility with the public if the profession is seen to be taking any kind of sponsorship from the tobacco industry. Period.
I do believe that, if the tobacco industry wishes to fund research and/or education, the results will far outweigh any concerns one has over the health effects of smoking.
I think that the editor should resign whether or not the University keeps the money, however, since he has demonstrated a remarkable lack of tolerance and decency. As an editor of a prominent journal, he has considerable power and, I suppose, he uses that power to oppose smoking of tobacco products. One does not have to be a supporter of the tobacco industry to see that his position smacks of bias and bigotry. This does not bode well for the future of research.
It would be better, in my view, if the editor were to have attended to his editing and refrained from engaging in tobacco politics.
the University of Nottingham was unable to persuade BAT to donate money to a poorly resourced hospital in Uganda, yet they would provide large amounts of money to fund an International Centre for the Study of Corporate Responsibility in the UK. Perhaps the Centre's first act should be to investigate BAT's corporate (and social) responsibility.
The main reason to conduct a poll over whether I should resign from Nottingham was to draw attention to the particular episode in Nottingham and the broader question of tobacco sponsorship of academia. In this we seem to have succeeded. When Nottingham first made the announcement before Christmas there was depressingly little debate, even in the BMJ. This time round the debate has been hot.
I've also learnt a lot from the vote. I imagined that 80-90% would say that Nottingham should give the money back and that a similar proportion would say that I should resign. I was right about the first part of the vote but wrong about the second part.
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Quotes from this article:
The main reason to conduct a poll over whether I should resign from Nottingham was to draw attention to the particular episode in Nottingham and the
broader question of tobacco sponsorship of academia. In this we seem to have succeeded. When Nottingham first made the announcement before
Christmas there was depressingly little debate, even in the BMJ. This time round the debate has been hot.
And how. Responses to Richard Smith's offer to resign from Nottingham and the BMJ if NU didn't return BAT's funds are posted online. <I>Rapid Responses for Data Supplement: Survey: should the editor resign?</I>
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