John Bacon-shone Leading scientist Dr John Bacon-Shone is one of a handful of key advisers to the highest levels of the Hong Kong Government on policy and strategic issues. The 42-year-old expert in statistics was appointed a full-time member of the Central Policy Unit in July last year, on secondment from his job as director of the Social Sciences Research Centre of the University of Hong Kong.
His CV lists his work with scientific journals, conferences, consultancies and societies, including tobacco-funded and anti-smoking groups. In two interviews with the Post, Dr Bacon-Shone said he had never knowingly worked for the tobacco industry.
He said he did not know at the time that the tobacco industry was paying for him to attend symposiums on indoor air and passive smoking in Portugal, Canada and Thailand in 1990. He also emphatically rejected recent assertions by Philip Morris and one of its long-standing lawyers, John Rupp, that he (Dr Bacon-Shone) was always aware he was a paid consultant to the tobacco industry.
Dr Bacon-Shone said he had always remained true to his ethical and scientific obligations to develop honest science and to distribute it openly, irrespective of funding.
'To my knowledge I have never met anyone working for a tobacco company. To my knowledge, John Rupp was a lawyer for the funding source. I do not question where the funds come from. I ask 'is it ethical, is it advancing science and truth?' My conscience is clear. I have never done anything unethical.
'I feel very strongly I have never done anything I should feel ashamed about. I agree violently that smoking is a serious health risk, that the tobacco industry can't be trusted and has lied, but as a scientist I think that passive smoking has been the subject of a lot of bad science.' Dr Bacon-Shone said he had presented at a tobacco-sponsored conference in Lisbon a paper which questioned the findings of Japanese Professor Hirayama, who years earlier had found a high correlation between environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and lung cancer in non-smokers. Professor Hirayama's findings were devastating for the tobacco industry. Dr Bacon-Shone said he was not paid for presenting his paper, which he agrees would have been 'music to the ears' of the tobacco industry.
'It would be unfortunate if there was the implication that it was contrived. But the key point is: does what I wrote stand up? Yes, it does, so I have no regrets on writing the paper. My position is clear: the evidence that tobacco is a health hazard is overwhelming, but the work by Professor Hirayama and others overstated the risk of ETS and that's a scientific issue. That's why I was happy to write the study on Hirayama.