t's not just sins of omission. the influence of Houston industry on Houston medical research institutes also shows up in more direct ways. One Houston institute particularly indebted to industry, for instance, is the Mickey Leland National Urban Air Toxics Research Center. Although based at the Texas Medical Center, Mickey Leland is essentially a granting agency, which proposes and funds research projects all over the country. The bulk of its operating money comes from the federal budget, but its donor list for research funds reads like a petrochemical Who's Who of the Houston area. Its current and former executive director came directly from industry, as do four of its seven current board members.
Leland's director denies that the center avoids research that might step on industry's toes. Yet, in its twelve years of operation, Mickey Leland has funded only one health-effects study in Harris County. (The single exception is an asthma study of schoolchildren in northwest Houston, far from the petrochemical epicenter.) And, in one review of a Leland proposal obtained by OnEarth, an independent granting agency criticized Leland's application because the study featured too much local industry involvement.
Furthermore, some officials at the highest levels of Texas Medical Center research institutions have given their personal support to industry's air pollution agenda.
The Greater Houston Partnership, a powerful private institution that takes the lead on most matters relating to the city's business community, wields enormous influence in city affairs. Formerly the Houston Chamber of Commerce, the partnership has far more clout in the city than most chambers of commerce. Its board of directors includes Shell Oil's top U.S. executive and more than a dozen other representatives of energy concerns.
The partnership has not been friendly to local or federal efforts that would cut Houston's air pollution. In 1997, when EPA proposed a new air quality standard that would reduce fine-particle pollution, the partnership opposed it. The partnership has also been trying to block the implementation of a state plan for reducing ozone pollution, arguing that the plan is technically unfeasible and too costly.
In this context, it is particularly striking that among the members of the partnership's executive committee are John Mendelsohn, president of M.D. Anderson, and Ralph Feigin, president of Baylor College of Medicine. Both are medical doctors. The heads of three medical center hospitals also sit on the partnership's board of directors.
Mendelsohn, a nationally respected cancer researcher, is best known these days for his membership on the board of Enron. The board allowed the company to suspend its code of ethics in order to create its controversial financial partnerships. Mendelsohn also served on the board's audit committee, which oversaw the company's relationship with its auditing company, Arthur Andersen. Enron and its chief executive, Kenneth Lay, were generous contributors to M.D. Anderson.
Asked whether he sees any conflict between his position at M.D. Anderson and his participation in the Greater Houston Partnership, Mendelsohn declined to comment. Feigin issued a written statement that denied a conflict of interest. "Everyone in the community plays a role in clean air, from individual citizens to business within Houston and beyond the city limits," the statement added.
Jim Blackburn disagrees. "I think if they're on the executive committee, they have an obligation to dissent from decisions that are medically insupportable," he says. "In my opinion, it's unconscionable."
