University Signed Secretive Grant Contract From Tobacco Company

Source from:  philanthropy.com May 22, 2008 05/23/2008

An extremely restrictive research-grant contract between Virginia Commonwealth University and the tobacco company Philip Morris USA breaks several of the university's guidelines and raises questions about whether higher-education institutions should accept money from the tobacco industry, reports The New York Times. The Times obtained a copy of the 2006 contract, which allows Philip Morris alone to decide whether the results of the research paid for with the grant are published. It also prohibits professors from discussing the work without the tobacco company's permission. Additionally, almost all patent and other intellectual-property rights are retained by the company - not Virginia Commonwealth or its professors, as is required by the university's sponsored-research guidelines. Many professors at Virginia Commonwealth had never heard about the contract, including the president of the Faculty Senate and the chairman of the department of internal medicine at the medical school. "When universities sign contracts with these covenants, they are basically giving up their ethos, compromising their values as a university," says Sheldon Krimsky, a professor at Tufts University who studies corporate influence on medical research. "There should be no debate about having a sponsor with control over the publishing of results." Francis L. Macrina, Virginia Commonwealth's vice president for research, and representatives of Philip Morris defend the arrangement as not unduly restrictive. Enditem