Revealed: ex-director for tobacco giant advising UK government on cancer risks
Revealed: ex-director for tobacco giant advising UK government on cancer risks
Questions raised about potential for undue influence after appointment of Ruth Dempsey, formerly of Philip Morris
A former director at the tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI) was handed a role on an influential expert committee advising the UK government on cancer risks, the Observer can reveal.
Ruth Dempsey, the ex-director of scientific and regulatory affairs, spent 28 years at PMI before being appointed to the UK Committee on Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoC).
The committee’s role is to provide ministers with independent advice. Yet since taking up the position in February 2020, Dempsey has continued to be paid by PMI for work including authoring a sponsored paper about regulatory strategies for heated tobacco products.
She also owns shares in the tobacco giant – whose products include Marlboro cigarettes and IQOS heated tobacco sticks – and receives a PMI pension. On social media she continues to engage with senior staff at the company, including liking LinkedIn posts for the chief communications officer and the vice-president of public affairs.
There is no suggestion that Dempsey has acted improperly or failed to declare her interests, which are listed in committee documents. She said she had always complied with the rules and that her contributions to the CoC were based on her scientific training and “decades of experience in the field”. She also said she was “no longer a representative of the tobacco industry” given she had retired and had disclosed details of her career and financial interests during the application process.
[…]
Prior to Dempsey’s appointment, the CoC was involved in reviews of both e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, two of PMI’s product lines.Dempsey is believed to have been appointed to the committee following an evaluation and interview conducted by a three-person panel, including a Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) official, after stepping down from her full-time role with PMI to establish her own toxicology consultancy in the summer of 2019.
[…]
Dempsey said she was “very sorry if anyone feels that my presence on the committee is inappropriate”.When she joined she did not have any active consultancy agreements with PMI but said the two she has had since had been properly declared. She also declared potential conflicts of interest when topics arose “that could be related to work I was doing as a consultant to any company”.
“In the five years that I have been a member there has been no topic related to tobacco products. If there had been, I certainly would declare my conflict of interest and would always follow the guidance of the committee chair regarding participation,” she said. She added that she had “never passed confidential or privileged information to PMI, and would certainly never do so”.
Hold on, in the last five years of the UK Gov's Committee on Carcinogens, smoking and vaping haven't come up once? Are we to take her at her word for that? If so that's insane. Obviously if it isn't then she needs to be out of there so fast her feet don't touch the ground.
Obviously if it isn’t thenshe needs to be out of there so fast her feet don’t touch the ground.She needs to fuck off either way, her word, and the words of the people who hired her are entirely worthless.
There is a significant conflict of interests going on (just being a shareholder alone means she's prone to making sure the industry continues to do well in the market), and even if we believe that she doesn't mean to (we shouldn't, she does), her bias is far too deep for it to not be impacting her decision making.
Eh, if the structure as described (members list their interests and sit out where there is a conflict of interest) is working as intended then I don’t see why she can’t have a job giving opinions on the cancer risk of eggs or asbestos or whatever. She might even be positioned well to understand those risks.
But it absolutely stretches credulity that an org focusing on cancer has not had a discussion she needed to sit out of in five years. Which means either the structure is not working as described (bad), she’s lying out of her arse (worse), or this org is simply not having these incredibly important discussions (catastrophic).
"In other news, Labour has appointed the fox as chief advisor on chicken coops."
Appointed in Feb 2020. Might want to check who was actually in government at that point
When I read the headline I was thinking it was a bit odd. By saying "the UK government" it seems to suggest that she was appointed recently under Labour.
I get that she's probably still there now but that's not quite the same thing. Although Labour need to get rid of her now, acting on this will demonstrate how they are different from the conservatives.
Five years consulting on cancer risks and not once was tobacco mentioned?
Are you fucking shitting me?
She was taking tax payers money to either lie and/or be blatantly incompetent. As it involved the Tory government it will involve corruption of some kind somewhere.
She was interviewed by The Tories who almost certainly had a particular viewpoint they wished presented to them. The vetting process was compromised.
Seriously I'm convinced that Tesco's carry out more thorough background checks.
I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to this former director- thinking her years of experience may have actually made her the ideal candidate for the job. Then I read more. Oh.
Just sometimes, sometimes you wish people would do good in their lives, right?
This whole stinks!