UCSD Scientist to Fight for Spot on EPA Panel

The San Diego scientist who was removed from an Environmental Protection Agency panel on second-hand cigarette smoke at the urging of the tobacco industry said Friday he will fight the decision.

Several organizations and individuals, including a former surgeon general, responded with outrage Friday to the dismissal of Dr. David M. Burns and vowed to lobby Congress for his reinstatement.

Burns, an associate clinical professor of medicine and pulmonary specialist at UC San Diego Medical Center, is one of the nation’s leading experts on the health effects of tobacco. He has been an outspoken anti-smoking advocate and a thorn in the tobacco industry’s side.

He had been asked by the EPA to serve on a panel reviewing the scientific accuracy of two EPA reports analyzing the effects of second-hand smoke on adults, children and people in the workplace.

But the tobacco industry, through the Tobacco Institute and U.S. Rep. Thomas J. Bliley (R-Va.), whose district’s largest private employer is Philip Morris, lobbied the EPA to have Burns removed, saying his “intense involvement with the anti-smoking movement” made him biased.

The head of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Donald Barnes, denied the agency had collapsed to industry pressure and that, technically, Burns wasn’t a member of the panel because the group doesn’t officially exist yet.

But in an Aug. 10 letter to Burns, the EPA said he was on the committee and asked him to review the reports, which he did. The panel is scheduled to meet in December. In response to Burns’ removal, Barnes said the EPA is looking for panel members who will be perceived as fair.

On Friday, Burns said that, although no formal grievance procedure exists, he intends to fight for his reinstatement and hopes that the scientific and medical communities will support him.

EPA “says the decision hasn’t been finalized, and I hope Barnes will reconsider his decision,” said Burns. “If they are concerned about the credibility of the panel . . . (then) the appropriate public policy decision is to reinstate me.”

Several groups said Friday that they too will fight for Burns.

“We’re outraged that EPA would remove an individual who is probably the most eminent authority in the world” on the health effects of second-hand smoke, said Matt Myers, staff director of the Coalition on Smoke or Health, a Washington-based group composed of the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Assn. and the American Lung Assn.

Myers said that, by dismissing Burns from the panel, the EPA is shortchanging the country. “If they remove Dr. Burns . . . then there is no way we as citizens of the U.S. (can) expect EPA to reach sound scientific conclusions.

“We simply can’t let a special-interest group eliminate the most qualified person in the country from being an aid to our government,” Myers said.

Equally adamant was Mark Pertschuk, director of the Berkeley-based Americans for Non-Smokers’ Rights, a national advocacy group that played a leading role in forcing airlines in the United States to abolish smoking on domestic flights.

“I’m searching for the right words to describe how unbelievably outrageous this is,” Pertschuk said. “This is the tobacco industry’s attempt to say the Earth is flat and there was no Holocaust.”

“This is not a borderline case,” he said. “It’s not like there are 10 people out there who are great at this (analyzing effects of involuntary smoking). It might start with two or three people, but you start at the top with Dr. Burns.”

Pertschuk said his group intends to “inform people in Congress of what has happened” in an effort force the EPA to reconsider its decision.

“We think there will be many people in the House and Senate who are going to outraged,” he said.

Promising to help Burns is Dr. Jesse Steinfeld, the U.S. surgeon general from 1969 to 1973. Steinfeld, who works with the San Diego County chapter of the American Cancer Society, said he feels strongly that Burns “ought to be on it, and I think it’s an error not to ask him to serve and a bigger error to take him off.”

Steinfeld, who knows Burns and his work, said Burns’ scientific knowledge and integrity are unquestioned. Steinfeld also said it isn’t the first time the tobacco industry has tried to use its political muscle in Washington to overpower scientific inquiries not to its liking.