More sunlight and less smoke

Dr Marewa Glover could hardly have said it more plainly. ‘‘The heartlessness of the people who work in the tobacco companies,’’ she told The Sunday StarTimes in 2010, ‘‘is beyond the imagination of most New Zealanders. We are a little bit naive about how evil people can be.’’ Nine years later she should reflect on that. Because look at her now.

The New Zealander of the Year nominee for her work improving the health of Ma¯ ori told Parliament’s health select committee that the effect of smoking in cars had been ‘‘exaggerated deliberately to scare people off’’ and that people healed from being exposed to second-hand smoke.

There’s no evidence that she did so insincerely. But she did it without disclosing that her work had received serious funding, $1.5 million, from the Foundation for a Smoke

Free World. In spite of that embraceable name, the foundation’s sole funder is global tobacco villain Philip Morris.

At present, no such disclosures are required. This highlights a gap in the rules around declaring conflicts of interest in submissions to Parliament. Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard is now looking into whether such declarations should be required. That’s a question worth asking. Greater transparency is a good thing, particularly if a submission might influence legislation.

A related question is whether such research funding invalidates or undermines the work itself. Glover’s defence, that the foundation paying her is sufficiently independent from its own funder, is far from compelling. When a foundation that owes its existence to Big Tobacco likes the direction your work has been heading, the phrase ‘‘keep up the good work’’ could become less an encouragement than an implicit instruction.

It could be said that the inherent challenge for

researchers to independently pursue their work with integrity applies equally to those funded by organisations with strong anti-smoking agendas.

But Philip Morris has a hideous, well-earned record for deceit and suppression. It is, for good reason, held in contempt and distrust, and the World Health Organisation has asked governments and public health bodies not to work with it.

Glover points out she’s received Lotteries Commission funding as well, so could similarly be said to have been funded by the gambling industry. However, that industry would be far less substantially affected by the smoking legislation about which she was speaking to lawmakers. MPs should have known about her tobacco funding connection. So should the public. Much as she doesn’t, herself, see this funding as a conflict of interest, people should have the chance to make up their own minds about that.

One final thing. Glover set up the Centre for Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty and Smoking. Her commitment to Ma¯ ori health has rightly earned her praise. So she might want to cast her mind back to 2009 when a pair of Ma¯ ori Smokefree Coalition interlopers rose from the floor at a meeting of Philip Morris’ parent company, Altria, in New Jersey. After dramatically expressing in te reo their ‘‘absolute contempt and derision’’ for ‘‘your product of death and illness’’ they obtained an on-the-spot apology from this hard-nosed outfit.

Not for all the lies and all those dead people that pepper Philip Morris’ past. But for cultural offence. The company had been selling, far away in Israel, a spuriously branded ‘‘Maori mix’’ of tobacco, with packaging including Ma¯ ori designs and a map of New Zealand. How’s that for an indigenous sovereignty issue?

Greater transparency is a good thing, particularly if a submission might influence legislation.