During a discussion after some presentations at the parallel session on Future of Tobacco Control in Europe, it was pointed out that tobacco industry (TI) representatives disguise themselves at meetings. The Chair invited TI reps in the audience to identify themselves, whereby four raised their hands.
The discussion heated up when one of them did not want to identify the company he was working for, because "it is not in the interest of his company".
Participants pointed out that in the past, TC meetings had the right to kick TI reps out of these meetings, and this attack was immediately followed by an objection from the TI man, who said this would not be ethical.
This immediately prompted an angry outburst of "How dare you speak of ethics when you are killing our children around the world!!!!"
The WHO rep pointed out that it is against WHO policy for him to be attending a meeting with TI reps present. The Chair pointed out that it may not be fair to attack the TI reps present, since they were attending legally, having registered, but rather the fault lies on behalf of the ECToH organiser.
Bruno Meili, the Head of the Swiss Cancer League and Organiser for this 4th ECToH, explained that the Organising Committee had discussed this in length, and finally decided that even if they were to disallow TI participation, they would still come in disguise, thus the final decision was to let TI in, so that they would attend as themselves rather than in sheep's clothing.
Participants disagreed, with the main argument that, one should not make it easy for them, and they may still come disguised regardless. Since TC is not allowed at TI meeting, why should TI be allowed here?
As the debate heated up more, one of the TI reps volunteered to leave the meeting, followed by the other TI colleagues. (As they left the room, one of them bursted out a cynical laugh - what was that about?)
So after all that, I will now NOT be posting summaries of the presentations made during this session on how the tobacco industry work, since this site is accessible to all, including TI (you can always email the conference organizers, granted you are on our side, of course).
(ECL is organising its annual meetings immediately following this ECToH, starting today with a Patient Support meeting, so I am for the moment overwhelmed and may unfortunately not be able to contribute more to this blog until after our meetings.)
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