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Roger Bate

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Roger Bate is an economist who has held a variety of positions in free market, libertarian, and conservative think tanks and lobby groups promoting anti-regulatory, pro-business causes. His current work focuses on U.S. and international aid policy, performance of aid organizations, and health policy in developing countries, particularly with regard to malaria control and the use of DDT. He also consulted for the tobacco industry, though the extent of this work is disputed. He is currently a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, and he on the board of directors of Africa Fighting Malaria. He also written a number of articles questioning the science of climate change.

Background

Bate holds a Ph.D., economics from the University of Cambridge and was previously educated at University College, London and Thames Valley University. He began his career as a research analyst for Warburg Securities and Charles Stanley & Co. between 1986 and 1989. He later worked for a range of think tanks and lobby groups, including the Institute of Economic Affairs and the American Enterprise Institute. Though his work has focused on scientific issues surrounding tobacco control, malaria control, and counterfeit drugs, he lacks formal scientific credentials.

Early career

Bate founded the Environmental Unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a conservative British think tank, in 1993. In 1994, he started the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), which has been described as "a clearinghouse for skeptical scientists and conservative opinion-molders … a go-to resource for anyone wishing to question the validity of proposed health and environmental regulations." While there is no solid evidence that ESEF was funded by the tobacco industry, the World Health Organization concluded that it "likely" was a product of the industry, and the organization bore a strong resemblance to The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, the Philip Morris front group run by Steven Milloy. In 1996, Roger Bate approached R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for a grant of £50,000 to fund a book on risk, containing a chapter on passive smoking, (i.e. "second hand smoke") but the grant request was denied and the money was never received. (The Tobacco Institute, was nonetheless, "involved in" the publication of the book, according to internal industry documents.) That same year he wrote the article "Is Nothing Worse Than Tobacco?," for Wall Street Journal, and later ESEF published What Risk? Science, Politics and Public Health, edited by Bate, which included a chapter on passive smoking. After the publication of this chapter, according to Bate, he undertook a brief period consulting for the Philip Morris corporation He then approached Philip Morris seeking funding for the project on DDT and malaria, but received no reply.

Genetic engineering

Bate is joint author, with Julian Morris of Fearing Food: Risk, Health and Environment. The IEA website describes the book in the following way : "In the latest ESEF book, Fearing Food, new agricultural and food technologies, including genetic engineering, are shown to be generally beneficial both to health and to the environment." (Fearing Food was published by Butterworth-Heinemann in September 1999). He was also a presenter on the BBC2 program Organic Food: The Modern Myth.

DDT

Since the late 1990s, Bate has been best known for his advocacy of DDT. Bate is co-director of Africa Fighting Malaria, a group promoting the use of DDT to control malaria. According to investigative journalist Adam Sarvana, he has been central to promoting "the myth that environmentalists, by preventing the use of the pesticide DDT … to kill mosquitoes in developing countries, have heartlessly caused millions of malaria deaths worldwide." Critics argue that rather than being primarily concerned with saving lives, Bate's principle motivation for promoting DDT is to advance a free market, anti-regulatory agenda while smearing the environmental movement. For example, an article in the NRDC's magazine quotes Bate as saying, "DDT may be today's target, but it's not going to be long before chemicals that the industry cares about are added to the POPs Convention and other chemicals regulations."

Aaron Swartz wrote in Extra! that "a funding pitch uncovered by blogger Eli Rabbett shows Bate’s thinking when he first started the project. 'The environmental movement has been successful in most of its campaigns as it has been ‘politically correct,’' he explained (Tobacco Archives, 09/98). What the anti-environmental movement needs is something with 'the correct blend of political correctness ( . . . oppressed blacks) and arguments (eco-imperialism undermining their future).' That something, Bate proposed, was DDT."

Counterfeit drugs

Bate's latest work focuses on the prevalence of counterfeit anti-malarials in Africa and strategies by which rich and poor nations can work together to stop the trade of counterfeits. The American Enterprise Institute published his book Making a Killing: The Deadly Implications of the Counterfeit Drug Trade in May 2008. In it he calls for stronger policing resources, harsher penalties for counterfeiters, widespread public education and consumer vigilance to deal with the proliferation of counterfeit drugs.

Bate's work on counterfeit drugs has been criticised on the basis that it represents an attack on generic drugs in the interests of the pharmaceutical companies that fund his work and that of the American Enterprise Institute. Bate distinguishes between approved generic drugs and what he calls "pseudo-generics". These are drugs approved as generic versions of proprietary drugs by bodies such as the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but which, according to Bate, have not been adequately tested for efficacy.

Funding

Bate's work is currently funded by the Legatum Institute, which is affiliated with Legatum Capital. He has also received funding from Novartis.

Positions held

References

  1. ^ Sarvana, Adam (May 28, 2009). "Bate and Switch: How a free-market magician manipulated two decades of environmental science". Natural Resources New Service. Retrieved 2009-06-02.
  2. http://ltdlimages.library.ucsf.edu/imagesz/z/v/p/zvp83c00/Szvp83c00.pdf#search=%22roger%20malaria%20bate%22
  3. ^ Roger Bate, "DDT Works," The Prospect Online, May 2008.
  4. Rachel Carson, Mass Murderer?: The creation of an anti-environmental myth. Aaron Swartz, Extra!, September/October, 2007.
  5. Rehabilitating Carson, John Quiggin & Tim Lambert, Prospect, May 2008.
  6. Bad Blood, Kim Larsen, OnEarth, Winter 2008.
  7. Swartz, Aaron (September/ October 2007). "Rachel Carson, Mass Murderer? The creation of an anti-environmental myth". Extra!. September/ October 2007. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library documents referred to in the quote are &
  8. PLoS ONE: Antimalarial Drug Quality in the Most Severely Malarious Parts of Africa – A Six Country Study
  9. Malaria | Resisting arrest | Economist.com
  10. "Essentialdrugs.org".
  11. "AEI - Bad Medicine in the Market".
  12. "AEI - Scholars - Roger Bate". American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved 2009-07-05.
  13. Bate R, Tren R, Hess K, Attaran A (2009). "Physical and chemical stability of expired fixed dose combination artemether-lumefantrine in uncontrolled tropical conditions". Malar. J. 8: 33. doi:10.1186/1475-2875-8-33. PMC 2649943. PMID 19243589.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

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