Shills for the big corporate crowd going after a shill for the woo-based alternamed industry.
more on 'Doctor' Gill's organization:
The Scaife Foundation and John M. Olin Foundation provided ACSH's first financial support in the 1970s.[4] In her address on the 25th Anniversary of ACSH, Dr. Whelan noted that their critics such as Phil Donahue and Barbara Walters accused them of being a "surrogate" of the petrochemical industry and a "shill" for the food industry.[4] To appease their critics, ACSH only accepted funding from private foundations for two years. However, as the media continued to indicate that ACSH was industry-supported, the Board decided on a fundraising policy through which "about 40% of ACSH [funding] comes from private foundations, about 40% from corporations, and the rest of the sale of ACSH publications."[4]
In the early 1990s, ACSH decided to stop reporting its funding.[32] Their 1991 report shows that many corporations contributed funds.[32] As of 2005, they had received $90,000 from ExxonMobil.[33] Whelan told John Tierney (journalist) of the New York Times in 2007 that "ACSH has a diverse funding base - we receive donations from private foundations and individuals and unrestricted (usually very small) grants from corporations. The fastest-growing segment of our funding base is individual consumers who are sick and tired of the almost daily baseless scares - and they write us checks to help support our work."[34] In 2010, Whelan told The New Yorker that about a third of the organization's two million dollar annual budget comes from industry.[35]
But in 2013, Mother Jones magazine received leaked internal financial documents from ACSH, which revealed that 58% of the organization's donations in the period from July 1, 2012, to December 20, 2012 came from corporations and large private foundations, many of which themselves had close ties to industries with financial stakes in the specific issues on which ACSH issues industry-favorable opinions.[2] In addition, the documents revealed that the organization had on numerous occasions directly solicited donations from industry sources on the basis of projected reports on the specific issues in which those companies and industry organizations had such a stake.[2] Similarly, in a 1992 internal memo by Whelan disclosed by Consumer Reports, Whelan directed her staff to “ask McNeil Specialty for $10,000 toward sweetener paper” and disclosed that her staff would seek “more CCC [Calorie Control Council] money ... to help us get new sweetener booklet out.”[36] McNeil Specialty Products (now McNeil Nutritionals) owns the U.S. marketing rights to Splenda, the branded name of the artificial sweetener sucralose; the Calorie Control Council is an industry trade association for producers of artificial sweeteners, fat substitutes, and low-calorie foods. The same memo instructs that staffers give “special attention" to "Mr. McDermott at Searle about meat money."[36] Thomas McDermott was shortly to become director of biotechnology communications for the agricultural biotechnology firm Monsanto; G.D. Searle was a Monsanto subsidiary, subsequently acquired by Pfizer.
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