PR Watch, Third Quarter 2000, Volume 7, No. 3

Flack Attack

Public Relations

PR Watch has reported in the past on the antics of Steven Milloy and his "Junk Science Home Page." His tobacco connections, however, were first revealed on April 8 in the Lancet, England's leading medical journal. The Lancet story detailed a covert industry campaign in the 1990s to undermine scientific evidence linking tobacco smoke to health problems in nonsmokers.

The Usual Suspects:

Industry Hacks Turn Fear on its Head

by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

A number of leading figures in the anti-environmental "sound science" movement have teamed up to launch a new front group aimed at smearing environmental and health activists as behind-the-scenes conspirators who "sow health scares to reap monetary rewards."

New Book Explores "Politics of Health"

Health

PR Watch editors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber are among the contributors to a new book from MIT Press titled Reclaiming the Environmental Debates: The Politics of Health in a Toxic Culture.

How Big Tobacco Helped Create "the Junkman"

by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Tobacco's Secondhand Science of Smoke-Filled Rooms

by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Organizations such as the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society estimate that direct smoking kills about 400,000 people per year in the United States--or, if you use the World Health Organization's estimate, about 3 million people per year worldwide.

Readers Invited to Trust Us, We're Experts

PR Watch editors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have completed a new book, titled Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future.An exposé of the PR techniques used to manufacture "independent experts," Trust Us, We're Experts will be published by Tarcher/Putnam and will be available in bookstores in January.