Mold coverup same as tobacco coverup

[Guest guest]

Because of some of the comments on Sickbuildings over the past few days, I

thought it was time to post this info about the tobacco coverup in case some of

you haven't seen this.  You will be disgusted when you read some of the details

of the tobacco coverup, but you will clearly see where the insurance companies

got their  " play book " for the mold coverup.

The following are excerpts from the federal government’s Executive Summary

explaining the tobacco industry’s efforts to cover up the harmful effects of

tobacco.

By late 1953, there had been at least five published epidemiologic

investigations, as well as others identifying and examining carcinogenic

components in tobacco smoke and their effects.  The researchers conducting these

studies had come to a categorical understanding of the link between smoking and

lung cancer.

In response to this growing body of evidence that smoking caused lung cancer,

Defendants and their agents joined together and launched their coordinated

scheme in the early 1950s. Defendants developed and implemented a unified

strategy that sought to reassure the public that there was no evidence that

smoking causes disease.  At the end of 1953, the chief executives of the five

major cigarette manufacturers in the United States at the time – Philip ,

R.J. Reynolds, Brown & on, Lorillard, and American – met at the Plaza

Hotel in New York City with representatives of the public relations firm Hill &

Knowlton and agreed to jointly conduct a long term public relations campaign to

counter the growing evidence linking smoking as a cause of serious diseases. The

meeting spawned an association-in-fact enterprise ( " Enterprise " ) to execute a

fraudulent scheme in furtherance of their overriding common objective – to

preserve and enhance the

tobacco industry’s profits by maximizing the numbers of smokers and number of

cigarettes smoked and to avoid adverse liability judgments and adverse

publicity. The fraudulent scheme would continue for the next five decades..

From the outset, the dual functions of TIRC/CTR, public relations and scientific

research, were intertwined. Rather than carefully and critically assessing the

emerging scientific data concerning the harms of smoking, TIRC/CTR focused its

energies and resources in two areas.  First, in its public relations capacity,

it repeatedly attacked scientific studies that demonstrated the harms of

cigarette smoke and worked to reassure smokers about cigarettes. Second, it

developed and funded a research program that concentrated on basic processes of

disease and that was distant from, if not completely irrelevant to, evaluating

the immediate and fundamental questions of the risks and harms associated with

smoking.

In short, Defendants' scheme to defraud permeated and influenced all facets of

Defendants' conduct – research, product development, advertising, marketing,

legal, public relations, and communications – in a manner that has resulted in

extraordinary profits for the past half-century, but has had devastating

consequences for the public's health.To read the entire Executive Summary of the

tobacco industry’s cover up, go to:

 

http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/litigation/usvpm/uspm2.pdf