A confusing story from the Chronicle suggests that Philip Morris is getting out of the extramural grant business. But towards the end of the piece it gets nuanced….

How the decision will affect many academic research projects was unclear, but one antitobacco crusader, Stanton Glantz, a bioengineer at the University of California at San Francisco, pointed out that tobacco money was not going away.

He cited the $6-million Philip Morris grant won by Edythe D. London, the researcher at the university’s Los Angeles campus whose home was flooded by animal-rights extremists in October and who was the target of a firebomb attack this month. Her grant was not awarded through the external-research program, Mr. Glantz told the magazine.

The question about these grant dollars is of course the same as taking money from the big drug companies: are they paying for a specific result?

Jim