Who Is Behind The Amir Attaran/Errol Mendes FOI Requests?

Probably not the government. I have to disagree with the Dawg and Imp and the professors themselves on this one. More likely one of the eager volunteer witch-hunters Dawg makes note of. FOI laws have evolved and been liberalised in recent years, in Canada and a number of other countries. One result has been that activists on the Right--primarily--have found in these laws a useful means of harassing political opponents. The prime example is the use of UK FOI laws by climate change denialist Steve McIntyre and his acolytes at Climate Audit to, basically, launch a DOS attack on the scientists at CRU in East Anglia.

But it doesn't take a government actor to launch one of these crusades. Any fool can do it. I suspect that in this case it is some fool that has.

Bate Strikes Back!

Roger Bate responds to my article in The Mark:

Since your vitriolic attack not only hurts me but ludicrously tries to hurt others for reasons I am unaware of, it is my duty to respond. Amir Attaran is one of the most gifted and principled researchers I've ever met, which is why I wanted to help him stay at Harvard. As the then Director of Africa Fighting Malaria I allocated funds to Harvard for his work there, with no strings attached. AFM has never taken any funding from the tobacco or pharma industries and as such the funding for Attaran, which came from a private European foundation, was not either. I have responded to the allegations about me here. Any decent researcher would have found this article, making me wonder why no mention of my response was used in your article. The few proper journalists who’ve written about this topic have at least had the courtesy of contacting me directly for a response, but not you. I was probably foolish to briefly consult for Philip Morris in 1998, and definitely foolish for writing the letter you quote in the fall of that year – because of how it’s being used today. PM never responded to my letter and I never corresponded with the company again. I did not know at the time but the tobacco industry has largely been on the wrong side (your side) of the DDT issue (and would never have funded my proposal anyway). See [here] for AFM’s response to BAT’s opposition to DDT. DDT continues to save lives in the myriad countries it’s used, I have done nothing to be ashamed of, and I rest easy at night knowing I’ve fought on the right side of this issue!

Roger Bate,
fellow American Enterprise Institute,
rbate@aei.org

And here again is that letter he mentions; and here's an even nicer one.

Attaran Update

The Mark has picked up my story, which I am most proud of, on the connections among Iggy, Amir Attaran, a fierce critic of the government's Afghan policy, tobacco scientist Roger Bate, and the tobacco industry front group Africa Fighting Malaria.

A few things have happened since that piece written. For one thing, Attaran has denied receiving tobacco industry funding at the Carr Center (although not, clearly, from AFM). For another thing, I have been in touch with Adam Sarvana, whose work I quoted from extensively in the previous post, and he has expressed the opinion that Attaran is "principled" but was unfortunately taken in by Roger Bate's and the AFM's "Rachel Carson/Environmentalists have murdered millions of third-worlders" line.

So the working assumption must be that Attaran is unaware of the AFM, and Bate's, dubious pedigree. Nevertheless, the AFM is what it is: an tobacco industry front group. And it is certainly interesting that this letter from Attaran on the dangers of phasing out DDT use too quickly should wind up in the files of British American Tobacco.

Finally, this is the full-text of Roger Bate's letter to Philip Morris in which he outlines the aims and purpose of his anti-malaria "operation", which eventually became the AFM.