The American Council on
Science and Health bills itself as an independent research and advocacy
organization devoted to debunking "junk science." It's a controversial
outfit—a "group of scientists…concerned that many important public
policies related to health and the environment did not have a sound
scientific basis," it says—that often does battle with environmentalists and consumer safety advocates, wading into public health debates to defend fracking, to fight New York City's big sugary sodas, and to dismiss concerns about the potential harms of the chemical bisphenol-A (better known at BPA) and the pesticide atrazine.
The group insists that its conclusions are driven purely by science. It
acknowledges that it receives some financial support from corporations
and industry groups, but ACSH, which reportedly
stopped disclosing its corporate donors two decades ago, maintains that
these contributions don't influence its work and agenda.
attempt to ban
Yet internal financial documents (read them here) provided to Mother Jones show
that ACSH depends heavily on funding from corporations that have a
financial stake in the scientific debates it aims to shape. The group
also directly solicits donations from these industry sources around
specific issues. ACSH's financial links to corporations involved in
hot-button health and safety controversies have been highlighted in the
past, but these documents offer a more extensive accounting of ACSH's
reliance on industry money—giving a rare window into the operations of a
prominent and frequent defender of industry in the science wars.
According
to the ACSH documents, from July 1, 2012, to December 20, 2012, 58
percent of donations to the council came from corporations and large
private foundations. ACSH's donors and the potential backers the group
has been targeting comprise a who's-who of energy, agriculture,
cosmetics, food, soda, chemical, pharmaceutical, and tobacco
corporations. ACSH donors in the second half of 2012 included Chevron
($18,500), Coca-Cola ($50,000), the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation
($15,000), Dr. Pepper/Snapple ($5,000), Bayer Cropscience ($30,000),
Procter and Gamble ($6,000), agribusiness giant Syngenta ($22,500),
3M ($30,000), McDonald's ($30,000), and tobacco conglomerate Altria
($25,000). Among the corporations and foundations that ACSH has pursued
for financial support since July 2012 are Pepsi, Monsanto, British
American Tobacco, DowAgro, ExxonMobil Foundation, Phillip Morris
International, Reynolds American, the Koch family-controlled Claude R.
Lambe Foundation, the Dow-linked Gerstacker Foundation, the Bradley
Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust.
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