U OF T LINK TO TOBACCO UNDER FIRE

President's directorship criticized

University of Toronto President Robert Prichard is under fire in an
international medical journal after his refusal to step down as a director
of Imasco, the holding company for Imperial Tobacco.

He's used as an example of how universities, researchers, and teaching
hospitals world-wide remain gripped by an ``institutional addiction'' to
tobacco money.

``Through strategic appointments to boards, the tobacco industry uses people
in key positions to lend respectability to its activities,'' write
scientists at the government-funded Ontario Tobacco Research Unit in
Toronto.

Their work is published in the current issue of Tobacco Control, a
specialist publication of the British Medical Journal.

Hospitals and universities should sever all links with tobacco companies in
light of mounting evidence showing the unethical behaviour of this industry,
according to the authors of the commentary.

These institutions have a duty to improve and protect the public's health,
Joanna Cohen, main author of the study, said in an interview. ``If they have
relationships with tobacco companies, it flies in the face of their
mandate.''

Smoking-related illness kills 30,000 to 40,000 Canadians a year, Cohen said.
``And the tobacco industry is driving this epidemic.''

Labelling the U of T the ``university of tobacco,'' she said it's
particularly close to these companies.

``There's a real incestuous relationship right here in our own backyard,''
Cohen said. ``Not everybody's aware of that, and we don't know the full
extent of this throughout the country.''

Prichard refused to discuss the issue. ``I don't have any comment to make
about it,'' he said in a short interview.

Several members of the faculty of medicine have written Prichard, pleading
that he step down from Imasco's board, but the university president has
refused, said Cohen, a public health scientist. The research unit where she
works was set up by the province in 1993 to study and recommend smoking
control measures.

Other tobacco industry ties to U of T, and its affiliated hospitals, were
outlined in the journal, including: Imasco president and CEO Brian Levitt,
appointed to a board that guides the university's fundraising. Robert
Parker, head of the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council, who sits on
Women's College Hospital's fundraising panel. Hospitals affiliated with the
university accepted $225,000 from Imasco in 1996, and $191,000 in 1995.

``It's really a conflict of interest for these organizations,'' said Cohen.
She and other researchers are preparing to launch a nationwide study into
hospital and university ties to tobacco.

Parker, spokesperson for the tobacco industry, dismissed as ``ridiculous''
the call for a severing of relationships.

``I'm sure it's very morally satisfying to indulge in these attacks, but it
provides no progress whatever,'' Parker said.

He added that scientists would move closer to their goal by figuring out
ways to blunt the public's appetite for tobacco.

``They're looking in the wrong place,'' he said.

But Cohen said the industry can't dodge blame for the harm it causes.