‘Nicotine Nazis’: the brickbats hurled at scientists researching tobacco’s harms : Adrian O'Dowd / Nature

Comments and article shared by John Gilmartin

From today’s Nature post. Working in public health can get nasty. Below are current examples of attacks linked to smoking and food advocacy.
I have a Unicef related example. We were in Budapest in 1990’s involved with a local polio vaccine manufacturer which was having a quality problem. The problem was the Budapest lab substituted a locally grown mouse for the standard Charles River mouse that was supposed to be used in the toxicity test. The local mouse didn’t react to the locally made vaccine skin sensitivity test. The Charles River mouse did react to it, and that was picked up in testing as a failed toxicity test. Some of this vaccine was shipped to Serbia, and the Serbian MOH lab picked up the same failed toxicity test. They accused the UN and Hungarian vaccine lab of "poisoning our children.” WHO looked into, and to their surprise the Belgrade results were confirmed. Suddenly there was a conspiracy that we were poisoning Serbian children.

We put a team in Budapest to figure out what went wrong. It was a simple problem and easy to correct, just use the correct mouse from Charles River labs. Why did the Hungarian lab use a local mouse? Because they didn’t have foreign currency to buy the foreign mice. Was the vaccine toxic or dangerous? No, the test was not a form of toxicity that would cause any harm or danger, this was confirmed by a group of distinguished European national testing labs. There were no reports of adverse events from any of the vaccine in use.

What happened in the local media was interesting. At this time Audrey Hepburn was a goodwill ambassador for Unicef, and appearing in media frequently. Suddenly the nightly news host on the equivalent of Fox News was explaining to her audience that Audrey Hepburn was actually a witch, and every night was riding on her flying syringe filled with Hungarian/UN polio vaccine to poison children. I was in a coffee shop in Budapest watching TV as she shrieked about Audrey the witch, the UN and the Hungarians flying poisoned vaccine.

My last part in this was flying into Belgrade on a UN transport to meet with the Serbian minister of health. Commercial traffic was closed into Belgrade at that time. He was furious about the alleged toxic vaccine. My task was to advise him his testing lab was correct, that the Hungarian vaccine batch had indeed failed, and we were replacing it immediately. Then thank him for alerting us to the problem. He was pleased, his national lab supervisor was very pleased that her results were confirmed, and I got out on the next flight out.

The Hungarian vaccine lab was suspended as a supplier, it took a year for them to reestablish their qualification.

I don’t know if Audrey learned she was portrayed as a flying vaccine witch.

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Karen Evans-Reeves

Summary
A study co-authored by Karen Evans-Reeves examines the intimidation faced by researchers and advocates working on the harms of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods reveals that these individuals are often subjected to public discreditation, cyberattacks, lawsuits, surveillance, and even violence. The tobacco industry, in particular, has labeled such researchers as "militant extremists," "nicotine Nazis," and "health fascists" in an effort to delay or prevent regulatory measures. In extreme cases, physical threats have occurred, including the murder of a tobacco-control advocate in Nigeria and threats against a researcher in Colombia.


Key quotes
“I have been ridiculed on social media, my work has been criticized publicly by a tobacco company and by neoliberal bloggers, I have received Freedom of Information requests and a couple of legal threats if I continued with my work. This is incredibly distressing for those targeted, to know that you are being watched.”
“The dominant narrative was of perseverance...only two sources referred to staff leaving their job, with another individual potentially withdrawing from some of their usual advocacy activities.”