The American Council on Science and Health is a sleazy front group.

[bananas]

http://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/why-you-cant-trust-the-american-council-on-science-and-health/

WHY YOU CAN’T TRUST THE AMERICAN COUNCIL ON SCIENCE AND HEALTH
Posted on April 17, 2015 by Gary Ruskin

Why You Can’t Trust the American Council on Science and Health

The American Council on Science and Health is a front group for the tobacco, agrichemical, fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and other industries.

Personnel

• ACSH’s “Medical/Executive Director” is Dr. Gilbert Ross.[2] In 1993, according to United Press International, Dr. Ross was “convicted of racketeering, mail fraud and conspiracy,” and was “sentenced to 47 months in jail, $40,000 in forfeiture and restitution of $612,855” in a scheme to defraud the Medicaid system.[3]
  
  
• ACSH’s Dr. Ross was found to be a “highly untrustworthy individual” by a judge who sustained the exclusion of Dr. Ross from Medicaid for ten years.[4]
  

Funding

ACSH has often billed itself as an “independent” group, and has been referred to as “independent” in the press. However, according to internal ACSH financial documents obtained by Mother Jones:

• “ACSH planned to receive a total of $338,200 from tobacco companies between July 2012 and June 2013. Reynolds American and Phillip Morris International were each listed as expected to give $100,000 in 2013, which would make them the two largest individual donations listed in the ACSH documents.”[5]
  
  
• “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, Philip 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.”[6]
  
  
• ACSH has received $155,000 in contributions from Koch foundations from 2005-2011, according to Greenpeace.[7]
  

Indefensible and incorrect statements on science

ACSH has:

• Claimed that “There is no evidence that exposure to secondhand smoke involves heart attacks or cardiac arrest.”[8]
  
  
• Argued that “there is no scientific consensus concerning global warming. The climate change predictions are based on computer models that have not been validated and are far from perfect.”[9]
  
  
• Argued that fracking “doesn’t pollute water or air.”[10]
  
  
• Claimed that “The scientific evidence is clear. There has never been a case of ill health linked to the regulated, approved use of pesticides in this country.”[11]
  
  
• Declared that “There is no evidence that BPA [bisphenol A] in consumer products of any type, including cash register receipts, are harmful to health.”[12]
  
  
• Argued that the exposure to mercury, a potent neurotoxin, “in conventional seafood causes no harm in humans.”[13]
  

Footnotes

<snip>

[proverbialwisdom]

1. K&R