An Australian public relations company working for the pharmaceutical industry has been accused of running a secretive dirty tricks campaign to discredit an industry critic. Sydney-based Susan Andrews Communications Group, which helped promote arthritis pill Celebrex for Pfizer and Pharmacia, was named in last week's Medical Observer magazine as the source of leaked documents attempting to smear former Government drug adviser Professor David Henry.

Government needs the media on its side to keep public support in times of war. Journalist Phillip Knightley writes for the Public I, "In democracies like Britain and Australia, with a powerful press and a tradition of dissent, or like the United States, where freedom of expression is constitutionally guaranteed, the media cannot be coerced into supporting the war. They have to be seduced or intimidated into self-censorship.

Doctors Elisa Ong and Stanton A. Glantz have published a study documenting the tobacco industry's attack on so-called "junk science" to discredit the evidence that secondhand smoke -- among other environmental toxins -- causes disease. "Philip Morris used public relations firms and lawyers to develop a 'sound science' program in the United States and Europe that involved recruiting other industries and issues to obscure the tobacco industry's role," they write.