In response to an alarming rise in chronic disease fueled, in part, by exposure to fossil fuels, chemicals, plastics, tobacco, and ultra processed food, the new Center to End Corporate Harm launched at UCSF last week with a panel featuring some of the scientists leading the new initiative.
The following are excerpts from the panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Tracey J. Woodruff, professor and director of the new center.
Industrial epidemic of disease
The rise in chronic disease, including cancer, cardio-respiratory, and neurological problems, is the manifestation of a global economic system that prioritizes products and profit over health. It’s an industrial epidemic of disease.
Our goal is to normalize corporate influence as a risk factor for disease because if we’re going to address the major risk factors of disease, we have to 
address how corporations are causing disease. We’ll be using science and industry documents to hold industry accountable. We are creating an educational curriculum, so that people learn about corporations as a risk factor, doing research to continue to identify the empirical basis of the harms, and then we will develop strategies around how to prevent these harms.”
Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, MPH
Director, Center to End Corporate Harm
What internal industry documents reveal
These [industry] documents basically told us what was really happening. It told us, in the words of the company executives, the scientists, the lawyers… elaborate campaigns to fund research that supported their product, suppress the research that didn’t support their product, and suppress researchers that didn’t support their product.
There were also documents which showed how these companies work together to influence the standards
by which science would be evaluated. No wonder it was so hard to convince policymakers and regulators about how biased this evidence was until we had these documents, so we could actually tell the story about how [conflicts of interest] influence science.”
Lisa Bero, PhD
Professor, University of Colorado
How Tobacco partners with other industries to sell its products
We’ve looked at how the tobacco industry used its relationship to the chemical industry to influence pharma when nicotine replacement was coming out. More recently, as tobacco companies realized that as smoking rates are going down, they need a future. The documents have shown how over 20 years ago, tobacco companies made plans to transform themselves into nicotine pharmaceuticals… coming out with new products like vapes that come in thousands of flavors, which rely on
flavor science from the food industry.
There are many opportunities to look in tobacco industry documents and find connections to other industry strategies. We’ve just scratched the surface of what’s happening in that space and there’s tremendous potential to do more.”
Pam Ling, MD, MPH
Director, UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education
How the Tobacco Industry influenced Ultra-Processed Food
I question whether without the engagement of the tobacco industry we really would have an obesity crisis and cardiometabolic disease crisis today. I think they were very influential and we’re only now starting to tap into the archive and understand from inside these companies how it was that the food industry learned to formulate products to make them addictive.
This information is critical for changing policy because we are in a window of opportunity right now where there is momentum to change this industry and make it less harmful.
Sometimes I feel like in America we are the last ones to see the benefits of science translated into policy. For example, Canadians – their fruit loops don’t have a lot of chemicals in them but ours do…. In America, we are probably going to have to wait years to undo the myth [that alcohol is safe] that is a consequence of the alcohol industry meddling in our science.”
Laura A. Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH
Professor, Institute for Health Policy Studies, UCSF
The importance of making industry documents available to researchers, the public
We spend a lot of time making the documents accessible in ways that make it better for [the user] to search… There are millions and millions of tobacco documents, millions of opioid documents, quite a few chemical and other
industry documents…. We let the documents speak the truth of what really happened and also try to figure out what, through them, we can do to stop it from happening again in the future.”
Chris Shaffer, MS
University Librarian and Assistant Vice Chancellor, UCSF
Corporate capture of regulatory agencies
Industries will use former scientists [from EPA] to come work for them to develop arguments. One example is when the tobacco industry was concerned about the regulation of a fumigant called phosphine. This would essentially cripple the tobacco industry if EPA’s standard was below what they use in their product.
The industry set up a coalition with a name people would not associate with the industry and they found a former head of one of the main research offices at EPA to do a review on the fumigant and argue that the science 
wasn’t supporting regulating it. Then over the next 2 to 3 years they set up meetings within the agency and trained EPA scientists to show that their hired scientist was using the right approach. Sure enough, they were successful and the EPA didn’t regulate phosphine.”
Nick Chartres, PhD, MHumNutr
Lead scientific advisor to the Center to End Corporate Harm
Senior Research Fellow, The University of Sydney
Developing educational curricula on corporate drivers of disease
All these industries have an arsenal of the best journalists, lawyers, economists, political scientists, and so we need to
think in the same way. If we can develop modules and educational materials that’s digestible to public health students, to students in other disciplines, as well as lawyers, economists, and others, we can really shed some light on this issue.”
Eric Crosbie, PhD, MA
Recipient of first pilot CECH grant
Learn more about the Center here:
https://prhe.ucsf.edu/center-end-corporate-harm
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