The U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and 17 other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are petitioning the World Health Organization (WHO) to cut its official ties to the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), an association of major industries they say is exerting improper and undue influence over important health policies. The WHO Executive Board is scheduled to reconsider ILSI's status at a January 23 to 28 meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

WHO is an agency of the United Nations that develops international policy and programs for improving global health. Its guidelines governing its relationship with NGOs requires that specific NGOs "be free from concerns which are primarily of a commercial or profit-making nature." (See www.who.int/civilsociety/relations/principles/en/)
ILSI does not meet that standard. Despite its innocuously sounding name, ILSI's members are large multinational corporations with major financial stakes in WHO decisions--decisions that influence health and environmental policies in the United States and around the globe.

"WHO and other public health agencies risk their scientific credibility and may be compromising public health by partnering with ILSI," the coalition of 18 health, environmental and labor organizations wrote in a December 22, 2005, letter to the WHO Executive Board. "We therefore recommend that WHO sever formal ties with ILS1." (A WHO Executive Board staff member replied to NRDC via email and said that she would not distribute the letter to the board).

At best, ILSI's participation in WHO's decision-making process represents a blatant conflict of interest, according to NRDC. At worst, its participation has biased WHO policies and jeopardized public health in dozens of countries.

ILSI represents several hundred corporations in the chemical, processed food, agro-chemical, and pharmaceutical industries. Its membership includes Atofina Chemicals, Bayer CropScience, Coca Cola, Dow Agrosciences/Dow Chemical, DuPont, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, General Mills, Glaxo Smith Kline, Hershey Foods, Kellogg, Kraft, McDonald's, Merck & Co. Monsanto, Nestle, Novartis, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Proctor and Gamble, and Syngenta. (For a complete list, go to www.ilsi.org.) 

Over the years, ILSI has participated in WHO activities despite its members' obvious special interest in the outcome. For example:

• ILSI, which includes leading processed foods companies, worked behind the scenes to co-fund a 1998 WHO-UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) report on carbohydrates and nutrition (see www.fao.org/docrep/W8079E/W8079E00.htm).
  The report concluded that there was no direct link between sugar consumption and obesity or any other lifestyle disease, and suggested there be no upper limit for sugar in the diet. That conclusion contrasted sharply with common sense, as well as a 1990 WHO report that found that sugar contributes to the risk of chronic disease (see www.mcspotlight.org/media/reports/who_rep.html#recommendations)
  and a 2003 WHO-FAO report recommending that people restrict sugar consumption sugar to less than 10 percent of their food energy intake (see www.who.int/hpr/NPH/docs/who_fao_expert_report.pdf).

ILSI also has tried to stave off stronger curbs on toxic pollutants by misrepresenting study results and sowing doubt about existing science. For example:

• Between 1983 and 1998, ILSI, whose membership includes tobacco company Altria's subsidiary Kraft Foods, repeatedly attempted to weaken WHO's position on the dangers of second-hand smoke. As documented by Derek Yach, a former senior WHO official, in the November 2001 American Journal of Public Health, ILSI tried to raise doubts about those risks by funding scientists who claimed there was still uncertainty. The relationship between ILSI and the tobacco industry is detailed in a February 2001 report by the WHO Tobacco Free Initiative (see http://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/ILSI.pdf ).
• In the United States, ILSI routinely hosts workshops for industry, academic and federal agency scientists that have been a very effective tool for influencing critical health and environmental policy decisions. When the EPA assessed a class of chemicals that includes perfluorochemicals used by DuPont to make Teflon, the EPA drafted its policy based largely on an ILSI review claiming that although the chemicals caused cancer in test rodents,  the way they caused cancer was irrelevant to humans, and therefore that the whole class of chemicals should be considered safe (see www.epa.gov/scipoly/sap/2003/december9/
  peroxisomeproliferatorsciencepolicypaper.pdf). An independent scientific panel rejected EPA's draft policy because it was not supported by the data. Ironically, late last year DuPont was slapped with the largest administrative fine in EPA's history to settle charges that it hid information for more than two decades showing that its Teflon-chemicals are a significant threat to human health. Lab animal tests linked the chemical with liver and testicular cancer, reduced weight of newborns, and immune system suppression.

The letter NRDC sent to the WHO Executive Board in late December was signed by the following organizations:

California Committee on Safety and Health; Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids; Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice; Environmental Health Fund; Environmental Working Group; Infant Feeding Action Coalition Canada; Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; International Federation of Building and Woodworkers; International Federation of Journalists; International Metalworkers' Federation; IUF-International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Association; Natural Resources Defense Council; Pesticide Action Network North America ; Physicians for Social Responsibility; The Breast Cancer Fund; Third World Network; United Steelworkers of America; and Women's Environment and Development Organization.

For more information, contact:

Kathy Mulvey
Corporate Accountability International
Boston, Mass.
Tel: 617/695-2525

Jennifer Sass, Ph.D.
Senior scientist, Health and Environment Program
Natural Resources Defense Council
Washington, D.C.
tel: 202/289-2362; email: jsass@nrdc.org

Thomas O. McGarity
University of Texas School of Law
Austin, Texas
Tel: 512/232-1384; email: tmcgarity@mail.law.utexas.edu

Elisabeth Sterken,
Infant Feeding Action Coalition (INFACT) Canada/IBFAN North America
Toronto, Ontario
Tel: 416 595-9819 (O); tel: 519-667-3045 (hm); email: esterken@infactcanada.ca

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