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Row over Nottingham tobacco cash deepens

Mark Hunter Leeds

The decision by Nottingham University to accept a £3.8m ($5.3m) donation from British American Tobacco (BAT) has led directly to the loss of cancer research funding and prestigious research staff from the university.

The money, which is to be used to fund an international centre for corporate responsibility, has sparked a furore among antismoking campaigners and cancer researchers.

Last week the BMJ's editor, Richard Smith, resigned from his unpaid, part time post as professor of medical journalism at Nottingham after the result of a readers’ vote on the journal's website. Of the 1075 votes cast, 84% said that the university should return the money and 54% said that Dr Smith should resign if it refused to do so (19 May, p 1200).

Gordon McVie, director general of the Cancer Research Campaign, labelled the money "tainted tobacco cash" and predicted that it would lead to a "huge exodus" of staff and sponsorship.

Such an exodus seems to have begun already. The Cancer Research Campaign has decided that £1.5m—which was to be raised through an appeal to help build new research facilities in Nottingham—will now be donated to Newcastle University instead. The decision follows a poll of the campaign's regional supporters in which over 90% said that, in the light of BAT's donation, they no longer felt comfortable raising funds for Nottingham.

The university has also lost a team of cancer researchers led by Professor David Thurston, who has resigned from his post as professor of experimental cancer chemotherapy and director of the Gene Targeted Drug Design Research Group. Professor Thurston has relocated his whole team to the London School of Pharmacy. It is understood that Nottingham's decision to accept the funding was a factor in his departure.

Writing in the Guardian earlier this week, Dr Smith said: "It is absurd that a university run by academics, not surrealists, should take money from an industry that has killed 100m people and behaved more unethically than any other."

Students at the university have also protested at the decision to accept BAT's money. John Rause, the winner of Nottingham University’s student of the year award, handed back his prize in protest at the donation.

A spokesman for the university said that the decision to accept the money had been ratified by the governing council and the senate.
 
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