416 



Hon. Henry A. Waxnan -14- September 27, 1994 



tlons advisors tend to focus on public relations. By the 

 same token, it is not surprising that the minutes of Scien- 

 tific Advisory Board meetings from the same period discuss 

 almost exclusively matters of scientific research and the 

 award of research grants by TIRC, with virtually no refer- 

 ence to TIRC's public relations activities. (At its Septem- 

 ber 20, 1954 meeting, for example, the Scientific Advisory 

 Board discussed and adopted a Statement of Policy for TIRC 

 that closely resembles Item E in the Appendix, including 

 policies about scientific freedom and publication.) I have 

 no reason to believe that the public relations activities 

 reflected in these documents had any effect on TIRC's pro- 

 gram of funding scientific research. 



The Council has not been involved in such public 

 relations activities during my tenure or, to the best of my 

 knowledge, for many years prior to my association with the 

 Council. Today, the Council's contacts with the media and 

 the public are limited to advising them of the Council's 

 research-funding activities in a general way, and advising 

 the scientific community of its grantees' activities through 

 the issuance of its annual reports. It remains my strong 

 belief, based on my personal knowledge and my conversations 

 with others, that the Council as I know it, and as it has 

 existed for decades, has had as its principal function the 

 sponsorship of scientific research into questions of tobacco 

 use and health. 



I testified that the SAB is "really" the decision- 

 maker with respect to funding by the Council, but did not 

 explain precisely the Council's decisionmaking process. Tr. 

 at 84. It currently works as follows: 



1. When a full, formal application for a grant- 

 in-aid is received by the Council, it is assigned to 

 two SAB members (and, on occasion, an outside reviewer) 

 for review and evaluation. The full SAB then rates 

 each application on a numerical scale. The Council's 

 scientific staff then prepares a list of these appli- 

 cations in an order that reflects the SAB's numerical 

 ratings. 



2. As a technical matter, I have the final au- 

 thority to award grants-in-aid. As a practical matter, 

 however, I defer very heavily to the SAB's numerical 

 ratings, and those ratings are by far the predominant 



