Gio Batta Gori

Dr. Gio Batta Gori was a tobacco industry consultant, formerly with the National Cancer Institute. Gori believed a safer cigarette could be made, and that there were safe threshold levels for exposure to the chemicals in cigarette smoke.

Biography
He has a doctorate in biological sciences and a masters degree in public health. He was a former scientist and top official at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he specialized in toxicology, epidemiology and nutrition.

He held several positions at NCI between 1968 and 1980 including Deputy Director, Division of Cancer Causes and Prevention, Acting Associate Director, Carcinogenesis Program, Director of the Diet, Nutrition and Cancer Program, and Director of the Smoking and Health Program. 

After Gori left the NCI in 1980 he traded on the professional credibility he had accumulated, aligned himself with tobacco industry interests and reaped significant financial rewards in the coming years by serving those interests.

Gori & the Tobacco Industry
In 1980 Gori became Vice President of the Franklin Institute Policy Analysis Center (FIPAC), a consulting firm funded initially by a $400,000 grant from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation (B&W). Following its initial formation, FIPAC continued to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding annually from B&W. . Gori worked on Research & Development projects for B&W, such as analysis of the sensory perception of smoke and how to reduce the amount of tobacco in cigarettes. By 1989, Gori was a full time consultant on environmental tobacco smoke issues for the Tobacco Institute in the Institute's ETS/IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) Consultants Project. In May 1993, Gori entered an exclusive consulting arrangement with B&W, reaping pay at the rate of $200/hour a day to $1,000/day for attending conferences. 

Activities in which Gori engaged on behalf of the tobacco industry included attending conferences, writing and publishing books, letters and papers, and lobbying.

Following are links to previously-secret tobacco industry documents from the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library showing the financial income Dr. Gori reaped from tobacco companies between 1980 and 1999 (over a 19 year period):

Brown and Williamson funded projects; B&W pays Gori $400,000 for the establishment of the Policy Analysis Center. Other payments follow: 1981 $300,000;  1982: $300,000 plus another $300,000 1983: $76,000; 1984: $465,000; 1985: $253,000
 * 1980-85 http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/pak01c00

B&W pays Franklin Institute Operating Fund (Dr. Gori) 1981: $540,000; 1982: $1,275,000
 * 1983-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/lhp33f00

B&W budget: Dr. Gio Gori 1985 $100,000;  1986 $100,000
 * 1985-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/urj23f00  (page 16)

General Corporate matters: Dr. Gori: $121,111
 * 1986-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/pup33f00  (page 3)

"Dear Dr. Gori: Enclosed is the consultancy        agreement between you and Brown and Williamson...         It has been signed for Brown and Williamson by our         President, T. E. Sandefur, Jr."
 * 1986-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/uue21f00

One of many B&W vouchers for Gori lists him as "General Corporate Matters Consultant" Month of September totals about $4K for that month. Credited "as per Gori contract."
 * 1986-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/eue21f00

B&W pays Gori $150,000
 * 1988-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ksp13f00

B&W pays Gori $132,000 Total amount budgeted for Gori in '89: $1,152,000
 * 1989-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/fif20f00

B&W pays Gori $130,000
 * 1990-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/miq13f00

B&W pays Gori $130,000
 * 1991-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/yiq13f00

Tobacco Institute pays $150,000 to get a white paper written: "Principle Author" Gori. Also pays Flamm and Gori $5,000 to write op-ed on         the costs of regulation for the Wall Street Journal. Also pays Flamm and Gori $10,000 for another paper.
 * 1991-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/hai91f00

Gori bills B&W through B&W's legal firm Covington and Burling for $1,0737 of "consultation services"
 * 1992-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/wvp33f00

B&W pays Gori $40,000  1994 budget: another $40,000 for "S&H, Regulatory, GTP"
 * 1993-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/xjq13f00  (page 19)

"You will be paid for those services at the agreed rate        of $200 per hour for each project assigned to you...         and at the rest of $1000 per day for conference-type work" Letter from Ernest Pepples, VP B&W, to Gio Gori
 * 1993-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/npk93f00

"Please find enclosed Lorillard check for $6000"
 * 1999-   http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/sxy15d00

Book

 * Gio Batta Gori, Virtually Safe Cigarettes: Reviving an Opportunity Once Tragically Rejected, Ios Pr Inc, January 2000. ISBN 1586030574 ISBN 978-1586030575

Other SourceWatch Resources

 * Tobacco industry
 * John Luik
 * Secondhand smoke
 * The Health Policy Center

Articles By Gori

 * G.B. Gori, "Easy target: who really profits from "shaking down" the tobacco industry? Not likely tobacco consumers", Tobacco Reporter: 34, March 1997. Opinion piece written by Dr. Gio Batta Gori in which he contends that it is time to revisit the theory that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Attempts cast doubt upon the scientific conclusions about the health hazards posed by secondhand smoke; scoffs at the idea that nicotine is highly addictive.
 * G.B. Gori and John Luik, Passive smoke: the EPA's betrayal of science and policy, Vancouver: The Fraser Institute (Canada), 1999. ISBN 088975196X This 118-page book published by Canada's Fraser Institute and written by Health Policy Center founder Gio Batta Gori and discredited Niagara Institute philosopher and ethics professor John Luik claims the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used "junk science" to distort the health effects of secondhand smoke.
 * Gio Batta Gori, "Less Hazardous Smokes?", Regulation, Cato Institute, December 1, 2002.

General Articles

 * The Tobacco Industry's Latest Attack on the Science of Secondhand Smoke 1999, Americans for Nonsmokers Rights
 * D. Hanners, "Scientists were paid to write letters: tobacco industry sought to discredit EPA report", St. Paul (Minneapolis) Pioneer Press, August 4, 1998. Lists "Dr. Gio Batta Gori, former top official at the National Cancer Institute (NCI)" as one of 13 scientists to whom the tobacco industry paid thousands of dollars to write letters to prominent publications casting doubt on the science of secondhand smoke.
 * Anne Landman, Stanton Glantz Tobacco Industry Efforts to Undermine Policy-Relevant Research American Journal of Public Health January 2009, Volume 99, No. 1, Pp. 45-58

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