THU AM: PARRISH on Industry’s EPA Risk Assessment Submissions
January 27, 2005 11:17 am by Gene BorioDOJ lawyer Gregg Schwind this morning showed Steven Parrish, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs for Altria Group, documents on the industry involvement in EPA submissions in 1990. The documents–especially a Shook Hardy Expense document that was disallowed yesterday– seem to show a close attention (author meetings and calls, revisions and edits) to the submissions of industry consultants such as Lee, Daniels, Clayton, Bucci, etc.
MR. SCHWIND: Yesterday, you said funding alone in your opinion did not affect the scientific independence of consultants. It’s clear from this bill that far more than just providing funding for research was going on, wasn’t it?
MR. PARRISH: Right
Mr. Schwind also tried to connect Kraft’s $2M funding of a diet/lung cancer study at Ernst Wynder’s American Health Foundation to a memo from Robert Pages to Mr. Parrish a year earlier, which stated,
“The epidemiology that has been supported by this money (c. $50,000/year to AHF) could also easily have been used in the study of nonsmoker lung cancer and/or diet and cancer.”