High ethical standards in the supplement industry

Talking Points Memo and other media have been covering the many thousands of dollars in allegedly unreported gifts from dietary supplement industry executive Jonnie Williams to Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and 2005 Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore.  Star Scientific, Williams' company, markets a product called "Anatabloc" for its supposed anti-inflammatory benefits.

Records maintained by The Virginia Public Access Project show that Star Scientific gave over $250,000 in campaign contributions in Virginia between 1999 and 2011. Much of that money went to McDonnell’s gubernatorial campaign and leadership PAC between 2009 and 2011. But the top recipient of Star Scientific donations during the 12 year period was actually Kilgore’s 2005 gubernatorial campaign. Star Scientific contributed $101,462 to the Kilgore campaign between 2002 and 2005. And Williams personally chipped in another $27,323. 

The FBI is investigating gifts from Jonnie Williams to McDonnell and members of his family in the growing scandal.

The Star Scientific website includes the usual supplement industry misdirection, hinting at medicinal effects while taking care not to state these claims in plain language.  For example, a news release hints at what disease Anatabloc's supposed anti-inflammatory properties could treat: "The company also reported positive results from a study conducted by researchers at the University of Virginia Medical School investigating the effects of anatabine in an animal model of idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis."  If the company actually claimed to treat a medical condition or disease, FDA would require the company to prove safety and efficacy in human trials.  With mere hints, the company is not obliged to prove anything in human trials.  All of this is typical for supplement company websites.

The real gem of the Star Scientific website is the lovely "Code of Ethics."  It has delightfully specific warnings against seeking to influence government officials through gifts.

When working with government agencies and officials, we must know the regulations and policies governing our conduct. What is acceptable practice in the commercial market may violate strict rules and regulations in government interactions. In all our dealings with governments, our actions must comply with applicable laws and regulations. Do not offer or provide gifts, gratuities or political contributions or discuss employment opportunities with a government official. Even paying for a business meal is prohibited by some government policies. To prevent legal problems for ourselves or the Company, and because laws differ throughout the country, you should work closely with Star's General Counsel when dealing with the government.

Perhaps Jonnie Williams and other Star Scientific executives will pull this dusty old document out of the company files and give it a second read.

What business model lets a person represent a neighborhood?

First, consider this 1999 article in the New York Times, which quotes community activist and businessperson Majora Carter on the topic of a garbage transfer station that had been proposed for the South Bronx.  This 1999 argument pitted (on the one side) an African American-owned business and a clean-air environmental group in favor of the transfer station against (on the other side) community advocates concerned about pollution from the transfer station.

The opponents shouted down representatives of the garbage company, saying the area already handles more than its share of garbage. They also accused the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition, which traditionally has opposed such projects, of accepting money from the company in exchange for its support.

''You are accepting money from them and playing their community partner,'' Majora Carter, an official with the Point Community Development Corporation, shouted at members of the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition. ''This is obscene.'' ...

''I don't care if it's a minority owned business,'' Ms. Carter, of the Point, who is also black, yelled at Mr. Jones at the public meeting. ''I'm a businesswoman too. I would not sell out my brothers and sisters that way.''

Later, but only later, read the harsh article today about Majora Carter in the New York Times.  This article may be unfair to Carter.  Yet, perhaps, Carter may have been too harsh in her criticism of Robert Jones, 3rd, and the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition in 1999.

For me, the lesson is two-fold: (a) we should have very high expectations for the ethical standards of our public interest organizations and entrepreneurs, and yet (b) these expectations should not be so high as to be impossible for any thriving operation to satisfy in the real world. 

Just like for-profit organizations, public interest organizations need a viable business model.  They may aim for small local impacts with cobbled together funding, or they may aim for larger impact with more substantial funding.  In the latter case, they must be vigilant about conflicts of interest and transparent about funding sources, but being a businessperson is not itself a sign of corruption.  Notice that even in the 1999 article, Majora Carter always described herself as a businesswoman.

[I had been thinking about similar issues in this February post.]

WSU invites Michael Pollan to speak

As you saw in the comments section on the U.S. Food Policy post about the Washington State University (WSU) controversy, food safety attorney and WSU alum Bill Marler issued a challenge to the university.

University officials had claimed that financial problems were responsible for the cancellation of a freshman orientation reading program centered on Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. Others had implicated pressure from state agribusiness interests with influence in university leadership. Marler's challenge, designed to distinguish between these two theories, was to offer to write a check himself for a visit by Pollan to the WSU campus. If the university's problems were really financial instead of political, Marler reasoned, it would accept his offer.

WSU accepted Marler's offer, the attorney's blog reported yesterday afternoon.

I knew it was the economic pressures that public education is facing and not any political pressure that caused the change in the reading of Omnivore's Dilemma and Michael Pollan's visit to Pullman. The WSU I graduated from and served, would not bend to that kind of small mindlessness.

Why be cynical? Who cares if the attorney is enjoying a bit of grandstanding? Why quibble about inconsistencies in the university's original position? What's the point in asking whether Pollan really needed either the additional publicity or the speaker's fee? This outcome makes everybody look better than they would under any alternative scenario.

WSU decision brings heightened attention to Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma

In a revealing irony, from which cowardly university officials everywhere may have something to learn, the decision by Washington State University (WSU) officials to cancel Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma as the common reading assignment for freshman orientation next year is raising the book to new heights of notoriety and importance in that university community.

Reports today in the Spokesman-Review and the Chronicle of Higher Education (pay site) make a plausible case that pressure from Washington agribusiness interests may have been behind the cancellation. One faculty colleague, who asked not to be named in connection with this controversy, told U.S. Food Policy that WSU has its own Pacific Northwest character that distinguishes it from traditional agricultural universities in other regions.

That said, WSU Regents include politically powerful farmers and ranchers such as former Regent Peter Goldmark who ran for U.S. Congress in 2006 and is currently Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands. With extreme budget pressures, I understand how this could happen, but I don't like it.

I imagine this foolishness will triple the number of incoming students at WSU who read the book.

In any case, it was never going to be possible to suppress engagement of these issues at Washington State. A different faculty member, economist Trenton Smith, just this semester shared a provocative and ambitious essay (.pdf) about market power and information economics in industrial food production. An excerpt:

[O]ver the course of the last century, the U.S. has witnessed a dramatic shift away from traditional diets and toward a diet comprised primarily of processed brand-name foods with deleterious long-term health effects. This, in turn, has generated increasingly urgent calls for policy interventions aimed at improving the quality of the American diet. In this paper, we ask whether the current state of affairs represents a market failure, and—if so—what might be done about it.

In a way, Trent's essay is an economist's reflection on the issues raised by the tradition of food industry criticism exemplified by Pollan. A while ago, when I reviewed Omnivore's Dilemma for the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, I encouraged professional colleagues to read the book in exactly this spirit -- to wrestle with it, criticize it, and be inspired by it to work on novel economics questions that have been neglected by the mainstream literature.

Regarding today's controversy, Smith says, "I have discussed (and will continue to do so) Pollan's work in my undergraduate food / commodities marketing course, and it would have been great to expand the discussion to the rest of the student body." He adds, "I also find it ironic that this was all happening around the time I issued a working paper on the insidious influence big business has historically had on consumer access to information about food!"

Update: See also Tom Laskawy at Grist.

Industry thwarting research

As the economy continues to slump, publicly funded research is also drying up. Are there risks associated with private industry funding research, and if so, how do we, as citizens, read research with a concerning eye? An article published in the New York Times yesterday by Andrew Pollack: Crop Scientist Say Biotechnology Seed Companies Are Thwarting Research addresses biased research in agriculture.

A statement made to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by 26 scientists was posted to a non-rule making docket titled: Evaluation of the Resistance Risks from Using a Seed Mix Refuge with Pioneer's Optimum AcreMax 1 Corn Rootworm-Protected Corn. The statement says:

"Technology/stewardship agreements required for the purchase of genetically modified seed explicitly prohibit research. These agreements inhibit public scientists from pursuing their mandated role on behalf of the public good unless the research is approved by industry. As a result of restricted access, no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology, its performance, its management implications, IRM, and its interactions with insect biology. Consequently, data flowing to an EPA Scientific Advisory Panel from the public sector is unduly limited."

In other words, some scientists feel as if industry has a chokehold not only on the research that is being conducted, but on what is actually being disseminated to the public. This research problem is largely under-reported and under-addressed to a science illiterate public. An article by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry called Who's Getting It Right and Who's Getting in Wrong in the Debate About Science Literacy, dives deeper into this equally important issue. You can add science based blogs to your RSS here.

Research should be a public good and government should be conducting research to protect the well-being of its citizens from corporate strongholds. Another example of the system failing by Tom Philpott of the Grist is in the issue of Why is the FDA unwilling to study evidence of mercury in high-fructose corn syrup? I would argue much has to do with attractive jobs. The Crème de la Crop of scientists and researchers are easily enticed by high paying jobs in industry, not in regulatory positions at FDA. The FDA lacks man power and funding. On the flip side, those who are working in for the public interest (i.e. the scientists who just published their statement to the EPA) are being manipulated as well.

A professor at Tufts, Sheldon Krimsky, has done extensive work on the effects of industry on research. He argues that a series of laws, federal policies and court decisions have enabled private interest "stakeholder science" to gain influence over university research. His book "Science in the Private Interest"sparked a website that continues to address these issues.
The key to change, Krimsky says, is separating the financial interests from the science. A daunting task indeed.

Cross posted from Epicurean Ideal.