ARTIST

The acronym ARTIST stands for the "Asian Regional Tobacco Industry Science Team," a group of Asian science-for-sale academics set up by Philip Morris to counteract arguments against workplace smoking restrictions and general Indoor air quality (IAQ) issues. The group was established in 1990, but the name came later, in 1998. These were academic and medical "consultants" who had been recruited across Asia as part of Philip Morris' Whitecoat Project.

The establishment of ARTIST came from the major recruiting drive of John Rupp of the tobacco law firm Covington & Burling, together with the two top tobacco scientists from the Associates for Research in Indoor Air (ARIA) group, Professor Roger Perry and Dr. George B. Leslie. They initially set up the English group ARIA, followed by EGIL, a Swedish/Scandinavian acronym for Expert Group for Indoor Air. Then ARTIST was created during the industry's extension of systematic scientific corruption into Asia.

Benefits
Like ARIA, ARTIST provided the academic and medical consultants with "distance" from the organizing tobacco companies. As consultants working through this organization they could claim:
 * not to be employed by the tobacco industry ever ... and have payments laundered through the ARTIST channels.
 * since the organization promoted itself as a general environmental consultancy, the individuals were no longer obviously attached just to "tobacco," even if this was the only non-academic work that they did.
 * as a member of ARTIST, these second-rate academics gained some status from the affiliation, and from the implied status of "consultant".
 * members of ARTIST had a vested interest in supporting each other, and in citing each other's research in their own research papers.
 * through ARTIST they had support through links to the tobacco industry's consultants, lawyers, scientists and databases.

Formation
One of John Rupp's consultant-recruitment reports early in 1990 mentioned the establishment of an Asian consultants group along ARIA lines, and emphasizes the problems in needing to train these people to the point where they had some credibility on the main issue  He wrote: 5. Consulting group

Our EC [European Community] consultants formed a consulting group called ARIA (Associates for Research in Indoor Air) that has its own brochure and is offering consulting services to companies and governments on IAQ [indoor air quality] issues. The ARIA model has been followed on a smaller scale by Asian consultants. We hope both groups will extend the reach and effectiveness of our consultants' advice on IAQ matters.

6. Europe in Asia Several of our European consultants have been deeply involved in helping to create the group of Asian consultants. One European has made several lengthy visits to Asia and has been the principal discoverer and recruiter of the Asian consultants. Several of the consultants have also been substantially involved in informing the Asians about ETS issues, as well as in providing other briefings on those issues in Asia. This has involved the loss of large blocks of time from their work in Europe, but the consultants involved are delighted that the Asian group has proved to be a successful offspring of their European programme.

In 1996, ARTIST appears to have wound down to the point where it then consisted of eight scientists representing Japan Tobacco, ICT, R.J. Reynolds, KT&G and Philip Morris. It claimed that it was nominally established "to exchange relevant scientific information and to coordinate programs" to fight smoking restrictions in the Asian region. ARTIST members met in Seoul, North Korea, in May 1996.

Related Sourcewatch resources

 * Philip Morris Corporate Scientific Affairs
 * Philip Morris Worldwide Scientific Affairs
 * Philip Morris' Whitecoat Project
 * Philip Morris' Latin Project

External resources
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