The Citizens For The Integrity of Science group doesn't appear to exist except in the mind of Milloy.

APCO Associates

This is a very large global PR and "communications strategy" organisation that keeps its head down and prefers not to be noticed. It was founded in 1984 by Arnold & Porter (the 'AP' in the APCO name) who were then the main legal council to Philip Morris, and who's representative, Murray Bring, still sits on the PM board.

APCO is now a subsidiary of Grey Advertising.
Their biggest client is Philip Morris, but they also service special-interest groups like National Rural Health Association and Coalition For Fairness In Medicare (anti Medicare).

APCO also has "alliances" with organisations like the International Management and Development Institute, they say:
"APCO is available to IMDI Members to provide separate public relations, government affairs and related services," they boast.

TASSC Revealed

TASSC's funders now include:

Milloy's own astroturf

Steve Milloy also runs an organisation called Citizens For The Integrity of Science, which he claims on his junkscience.com web site to be the funder and copyright owner of the site. Its registered address is at his home: 12309 Briarbush Lane, Potomac, MD 20854 -- which is also the location of his software company, Simusoft Inc.

Milloy privately flogs Pathogen Modeling Software, said to be

"PC software that simulates the growth of foodborne pathogens."
"For food processors, it is an inexpensive way to reduce the potential for food poisoning,"
the sales blurb explains. It apparently saves food companies from having to do laboratory checks, by simulating laboratory tests on the food itself.

Milloy is now better known in non-Internet circles as the executive director of TASSC (The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition), which is run by APCO Associates, an international PR and lobbying company which specialises in "grassroots lobbying" for corporate clients. APCO Associates, is a division of Grey Advertising.

TASSC was founded and funded by APCO, for Philip Morris. Then later when the tobacco industry joined in with the National Association of Manufacturers, it spread its interests wider. It managed to get a few hundred scientists to sign up to motherhood statement that says they support "sound science" and presumably reject junk-science. That's usually the last the legitimate scientist get to hear of the organisation, although their names and membership details are freely available, and used to support corporate lobbying.

TASSC has both Associate Members (legitimate scientists) and Advisory Members (mainly from the funding corporations, from public relations and lobby organisations, and a few science-for-sale practitioners).The real aim of the organisation, of course, is to generally discredit epidemiological and toxiocology studies that reveal evidence contrary to the funders interests.

APCO Associates keeps a low profile, but it shares a Washington DC office with a number of registered lobbyist organisations and some trade and industry associations, including the Business Roundtable and Business Executives for National Security, Inc. It seems to run these organisations, and has a finger in some more long-term and legitimate organsiations like the Washington Legal Foundation.

According to an article published by Professor Stanton Glantz and Elisa Ong in the famous UK medical journal The Lancet (April 8, 2000) entitled "Tobacco industry efforts subverting International Agency for Research on Cancer's second-hand smoke study." TASSC began as nothing more than a very clever, very subtle tobacco industry front.

It's aim was to redefine the rules of proof and standards of Epidemiology and Toxicology, to a level that made it impossible for regulators like the EPA, FDA and OSHA to ever regulate in a way that was based on the precautionary principle. Under these rules, tobacco would still be considered an 'unproven' health hazard, and escape regulatory controls on Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) etc.

Milloy and APCO have subsequenty extended the boundaries of the fake organisations activities beyond that of just supporting the tobacco industry. Papers in the Philip Morris on-line archives show that this was a deliberate project of the tobacco interests to utilise multiple attacks from different industry sectors -- all with similar regulatory problems. That's why Milloy is so obviously against any hint of a precautionary approach in regulations.

In the Lancet article the authors point out that TASSC was originally created by the Philip Morris tobacco company in order to sow seeds of scientific doubt about health risks associated with environmental tobacco smoke. And, owing to the extreme (and well-deserved) stigma associated with tobacco industry-funded science, they scrupulously disguised TASSC's links to Philip Morris.

The idea was that TASSC would spend most of its time and money talking about other so-called "junk science" issues such as Alar, global warming, radon, asbestos etc., Then Milloy could sneak in mentions of tobacco (or rather "anti-tobacco science" = junk-science) whenever he thought he could get away with it. Later he obviously found other clients who also needed the same service.

The Lancet article is available online at http://www.thelancet.com (Free guest registration) and you can also find the internal Philip Morris documents at Phillip Morris (and ask for TASSC).

In these archives of Phillip Morris (opened to the public following the tobacco settlement) you will find 199 references (some dupicates) to the tobacco industry's funding and control of TASSC. Milloy is now trying desperately to distance himself from TASSC.

SEE THIS SECTION FOR DOCUMENTED PROOF OF TASSC'S LINKS.

On the side, Milloy also ran another right-wing business-funded 'think-tank' called EPAN (Environmental Policy Analysis Network) and he runs a couple of his own companies, Milloy, Inc. and Simusoft, Inc., Most of the work of collecting information for the Junkscience pages comes from APCO which has a world-wide computerised monitoring service called IssueNet. The Junkscience.com site is just the visible tip of this global network iceberg, and Milloy is probably not much more than being the celebrity front-man.

His relationship with TASSC was much more important than the EPAN links (which probably only has one member) because TASSC has, and uses, the cover of many good scientists as members, and these are people who probably genuinely want to promote better science. It also has some other shonky scientists and science-entrepreneurial types in its membership lists (who seem to play a more prominant role than the genuine scientists -- so TASSC may be being used as a cover for other activities).

See this letter posted at the Junk Science page itself. Note the list of directors (mostly scientists who lobby for corporation), and note the fact that Milloy was savaging an anti-tobacco paper.

Mark Dowie of The Nation has also charged the New York Times with sloppy acceptance of material promoted by TASSC. In his July 1998 article Dowie says:

Ames is an active adviser to The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), a corporate-supported "watchdog coalition that advocates the use of sound sciences in public policy." TASSC has about 900 members, 375 of whom are scientists. The rest are executives from the chemical, oil, dairy, timber, paper, mining, manufacturing and agribusiness industries seeking ways to defend their products in media and the courts. TASSC's Web site offers examples of "junk science," alongside a host of entries defending bovine growth hormone, genetically engineered foodstuffs, dioxin, electromagnetic fields and endocrine disrupting chemicals. On the site can also be found almost every article Gina Kolata has written defending a chemical or technology. In 1995 TASSC awarded Kolata its "Sound Science in Journalism Award." Neither she nor the Times lists it among her awards and citations.

TASSC's funders include 3M, Amoco, Chevron, Dow Chemical, Exxon, General Motors, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lorillard Tobacco, Louisiana Chemical Association, National Pest Control Association, Occidental Petroleum, Philip Morris Companies, Procter & Gamble, Santa Fe Pacific Gold, and W.R. Grace, the pesticide manufacturers.

TASSC gets is public relations strength both from its list of 500 scientists who are deemed to be 'Associates' or if they are part of the elite band of lobbyists, 'Advisors'. It also gets some benefits from associations it has constructed with legitimate environmental organisations. For instance, Milloy's TASSC belongs to ECO, the Environmental Conservation Organization known around the world for its "wise use" umbrella network.

But one close look a TASSC's record will show a different picture. TASSC officials have regularly criticised highly-recognised and perfectly legitimate studies ranging from the quality of drinking water to the safety of baby food. TASSC claims that these adverse health reports are based on dubious science and are employing scare tactics to drum up financial support -- but they don't reveal where their own funding support comes from. In fact, it comes from Phillip Morris and other major US organisations with pollution and health problems.

Like all good public relations, the strength of the message being sold depends to a very large degree on the credibility of the organisation. Credibility is best promoted by merging genuine and fake claims, with the legitimate information blended carefully with the skillfully-crafted backlash material. When credibility has been established though a list of reputable scientists acting as advisors, it steadily becomes easier to make a claim of "junk-science" stick.

This is Milloy's particular skill. He is the best in the PR profession at blending legitimate criticism of bad science (and there's plenty around) with illegitimate criticism of science that is against his clients financial interests.

TASSC's scientists/members lend their names to the organisation on the basis that it's mission is purely one of advancing good scientific practice. They do so in the belief that TASSC is closely associated with government and environmental groups. Of course, that's not the whole story, but most of the scientists don't know that. Nor do the media, who are equally gullible.

TASSC gets a special mention in Ken Silverstein's book Washington on $10 million a day subtitled "How Lobbyists Plunder the Nation" (1998), as do the Competitive Enterprises Institute (below), and that other"Astroturf grassroot" lobby group run by C Boyden Gray, "Citizens for a Sound Economy".