Advancement of Sound Science Center

The Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC), formerly The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, is an industry-funded lobby group and crisis management vehicle, and was created in 1993 by Phillip Morris and APCO in response to a 1992 United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report which identified secondhand smoke as a Group A (i.e. confirmed) human carcinogen. TASSC's stated objectives were to: 1) discredit the EPA report; 2) fight anti-smoking legislation; 3) proactively pass legislation favorable to the tobacco industry. Philip Morris hired APCO Worldwide, a communications consultancy with expertise in crisis management, handling sensitive political issues, lobbying, media relations, coalition building, opinion research, market entry, corporate social responsibility, and online communication. APCO's designed strategies for TASSC aimed at establishing TASSC as "a credible source for reporters when questioning the validity of scientific studies" and to "Encourage the public to question – from the grassroots up – the validity of scientific studies".

The PR firm known as APCO began life as a real-estate investment subsidiary for the legal partners in the law-firm Arnold & Porters. It was originally identified as A&P Co, which was converted into a specialist PR front to service Philip Morris, the major client of Arnold & Porters who serviced the cigarette company at the boardroom level. A&P then hired Margery Kraus to run the new company, and it expanded rapidly through its tobacco-funded activities, successively becoming APCo, APCO, then APCO & Associates, and finally APCO Worldwide.

Tobacco document archives include a section on Philip Morris which is entitled,

Goals and objectives:

The overall goals of the media plan are to:

The objectives of the media plan are to:

TASSC's original goal was to become a "publicly known, respected and highly visible organization" within months of its creation by using an "integrated program that combines a strategic, comprehensive media relations program.

The strategies developed by APCO Worldwide (specifically for Philip Morris) and applied through The Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC), were highly effective and continue to be successfully used today by many organisations seeking to counter published peer-reviewed mainstream scientific research which might be used in formulating public policies. APCO Worldwide focused on unsettling the general public's confidence in the validity of mainstream scientific research in a series of well-planned public education campaigns. They strategically targeted mainstream media with junk-science claims about scientific reports (for example, claims about health and environmental risks that required regulatory policies).

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