Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Private interests and public goods: whose hand is on the wheel?

2002; Wiley; Volume: 97; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1046/j.1360-0443.2002.00175.x

1360-0443

Robin Room,

Public health and occupational medicine

The problem with ILSI is encapsulated in the two phrases used by James (2002) concerning its activities: ‘third party’ and ‘public–private partnerships’. ILSI's public presentation of itself is not as a representative of private corporate interests, but rather in two other guises. One is as a non-profit scientific entity acting on behalf of the common public good: ‘ILSI is a non-profit, worldwide scientific research foundation seeking to improve the well-being of the general public through the pursuit of sound and balanced science’ (http://www.ilsi.org/about/). In this guise, for instance, ILSI emphasizes that it is ‘affiliated’ with the World Health Organization, and presents itself as acting on the public side of the public/private divide. The other guise is as a go-between or broker between public and private interests. As ‘About ILSI’ continues, ‘By bringing together scientists from academia, government, industry and the public sector, ILSI is able to foster a balanced approach to solving health and environmental problems of common global concern.’ Here ILSI presents itself as the ‘third party’ bringing together private and public interests in a ‘global partnership’. The switch between two guises in the course of two paragraphs exemplifies the confusion about roles that ILSI depends on as its mode of working. The public interest guise is given verismo by the procedure of co-opting scientists, as prestigious as possible, onto scientific panels and boards. This mode of working is obviously facilitated if ILSI avoids both controversy and disclosure as afar as possible. As Addiction discovered, ILSI is thus reticent about the sources of support for particular projects. The desire to avoid controversy means that these days, tobacco companies are mainly off the seven-page ‘list of ILSI members worldwide’ which is now posted on ILSI's website (http://www.ilsi.org/about/Assembly_of_ Members.pdf), although Japan Tobacco is there in the form of the JT Food Business Division. The tobacco industry has become something of a pariah in the scientific community, and there is also the problem that the documents brought to light by the tobacco lawsuit settlements keep revealing connections which were intended to be confidential. However, it seems that distancing itself from tobacco is not enough to keep ILSI away from controversy. The global pharmaceutical firms are prominent on ILSI's list of members. In recent months, the conflict between these firms’ private interests and the interests of global public health have been the stuff of newspaper headlines; and also included on ILSI's list of members are some of the largest alcohol multinationals: Allied Domecq, Diageo, Heineken, Interbrew, Asahi, Kirin and Suntory. As readers of Addiction know, the potential conflict between private and public interests has also come to the fore in the alcohol field. As James brings out in his analysis of ILSI's role in the EU's FOSIE program, the alternative guise of ILSI as a ‘third party’ bringing together public and private interests is also problematic. This guise puts us in the world of ‘public–private partnerships’, a concept much touted on both sides of the Atlantic. The responsibilities of the private and public participants in such cooperation are inherently different; the public actor has a responsibility for the general public good. As an analysis by Schaefer & Loveridge (2001) points out, such cooperations have many forms; the important questions to ask about them are: what are the limits of the cooperation's authority, and where does the decision-making power (including any power of veto) lie? That the director of ILSI Europe coordinates the FOSIE program fits ILSI's self- presentation as a ‘third party’. But the management arrangements for FOSIE, as detailed by James, give private interests a substantial ability to steer the program. Public–private cooperation is not a new phenomenon, either in our fields or elsewhere. In any such cooperation, it is important to spell out in advance the questions of authority and the locus of decision-making. One principle for this is that private interests should never have a deciding voice on matters in the public interest. However, the collegial traditions of science and academia make this a difficult principle to apply in practice. Given these traditions of ‘senatorial courtesy’, anyone who has a seat at the table, in a cooperative enterprise, tends to have a de-facto veto. Any scientist participating in such public-private cooperation who considers him- or herself to be acting in the public interest thus needs not only to insist on clear rules on decision-making. The scientist must also be willing, from time to time, to break the consensus around the table and make trouble— to join the ‘awkward squad’, to use a current British term.