Tracey Brown

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Tracey Brown is the director of the pro-GM lobby group Sense about Science. As an associate of the libertarian and anti-environmental LM network, her writing has been published by Living Marxism, Spiked and the Institute of Ideas.

Working in PR

Before becoming the director of Sense about Science, Brown was a senior analyst in the "Risk Analysis Unit" of the PR company, Regester Larkin. "Tracey is responsible for developing tailored forecasting and risk issue analysis for our clients," her biographical note at the PR firm stated. Regester Larkin specialises in "reputation risk management" and "crisis management, including countering campaigns by environmental, health and development NGOs. Regester Larkin's clients are nearly all pharmaceutical, oil, or biotechnology companies, including BioIndustry Association, Shell Chemicals, TOTAL, Bayer, Pfizer, Aventis CropScience, and gas company BG Group. On her Sense About Science biographical note, Brown's stint with Regester Larkin is cryptically referred to as being "a year in a more commercial environment to set up a risk research unit."

Brown worked as a Research Associate in the Sociology Department at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where Frank Furedi is a professor. Furedi is the leading influence in the libertarian LM group. Brown went on to co-author 'Complaining Britain,' Society Vol.36 No.4 with Furedi. Her biographical note states that while at the University of Kent she "was responsible for a European Commission project to set up social research centres in Russia. Her own research specialism is the sociology of law."

Backing GM

In October 2002 Tracey Brown attended a meeting about the design of the UK government's official Public Debate on genetically modified (GM) crops and food. She was invited as part of a group of eight 'social scientists familiar with the GM debate and public engagement processes' who were brought together for advice. In fact, 'public engagement processes' are not part of Brown's area of specialism which is the sociology of law.

Brown appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme in December 2002 and said:

"Time and time again now we see a pull-back from a willingness to judge evidence, from a willingness to put forward policy based on evidence, and a desire to try to push the discussion in different directions but without ever taking responsibility for the consequences in terms of progress. There's a vacuum" (12 Dec, 2003).

In reality, there is a considerable body of evidence showing harm from GM foods, and it might be expected that Brown, if she did not know about it before, may have learned about it at the meeting on the Public Debate (see Genetically Modified (GM) Foods - Renewed Threat to Europe).

Global Futures

Brown's contact details at Sense about Science were given in October 2002 as:Email tbrown AT senseaboutscience.org, Telephone 01795 537322. The phone number was also that of the now defunct Global Futures "a charitable foundation sponsoring research and publications on new social trends". The only publication on the charity's web-site was one by Frank Furedi. (Furedi under the alias Frank Richards, was the chief theoretician of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) - a faction that evolved into the publishers of the magazine Living Marxism (later LM).) Brown worked with Furedi for a number of years and with Global Futures between its inception in 2002 and its demise in 2005.

According to the Charity Commission, the administrative contact for Global Futures was Ellen Raphael who, at the time Sense about Science was established, also worked for Regester Larkin alongside former Monsanto PR man Harry Swan. (Raphael also studied in Frank Furedi's department at the University of Kent, Canterbury.) Raphael has subsequently joined Brown at Sense about Science as Assistant Director. One of Global Futures' two trustees was Phil Mullan (aka Phil Murphy). Mullan, a central member of the RCP and a regular contributor to LM, is also the registrant of the Spiked website which was set up 3 years ago by the man who headed the RCP, LM's ex-editor Mick Hume. Global Futures' other trustee was Michael Fitzpatrick (aka Mike Freeman), another RCP/LM stalwart. Fitzpatrick is also a trustee of Sense about Science.

Tracey Brown and Frank Furedi have worked with both LM and Spiked and have also both worked with the Institute of Ideas, which has published a book co-authored by Brown: Compensation Crazy. The Insitute of Ideas was established by Claire Fox, LM's co-publisher. Like Spiked it arose from the ashes of LM.

Advising Big Tobacco

An internal memo of 1998 in the Tobacco Documents Library (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/) from Stephen Walzer of BAT Industries (British American Tobacco) discusses a letter that BAT has received from Brown in her role at Global Futures, offering to help BAT in fighting the litigation launched against tobacco companies by people harmed by smoking. Walzer describes Brown as "a lecturer at the University of Kent who also works for Global Futures". Walzer writes that Brown is offering

to put together a work programme covering the sociology of litigation and 'the expansion of tortious duties'. By this she means the trend which we all recognise from the United States for people to be unwilling to take the consequences of their own actions. There is considerable sympathy for the position of the tobacco companies, and I believe that a co-operation with Global Futures will be helpful.

Walzer explains that Brown was proposing

a study into the decline under the defence under English law that the plaintiff consents to risk, and it is also the intention to expand the study in the context of European Directives and the European Court of Justice. There is already a study being completed in relation to the US...

Walzer adds that "there is a cost attached to this work" and that "sponsorship would be welcome".

The letter from Brown making the proposal is also available in the Tobacco Documents Library.

In another letter retrieved from the Tobacco Documents Library written to an unknown recipient of 1999, Brown, again in her role at Global Futures, supplies her recipient (presumably someone in the tobacco industry) with press cuttings of the writings of Frank Furedi, Tony Eaton and Simon Wessely. Brown suggests that these will provide useful background material for a seminar called Litigating Britain. The aim of the seminar, Brown writes, is "to allow a full and frank discussion about developments in compensation claiming, between people who have a professional interest in the issue."

It is possible to trace a direct line of thought between Brown's offer to Big Tobacco and Sense About Science's work promoting nuclear power and genetically modified crops, which, like tobacco, are risky products requiring careful management of information of perception before people will accept them. Brown's proposed strategy regarding tobacco can be defined as:

• creating a climate of opinion that accepts risky technologies under the banner of personal freedom and responsibility; and in the process
• creating a climate of opinion that it is an abnegation of personal responsibility for people to sue corporations by whose products they’ve been harmed.

Innogen

Tracey Brown is on the Stakeholder Platform of the Innogen Centre- the ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics - along with a number of other GM proponents, including Dr Andrew Cockburn of Monsanto, Phil Dale of the John Innes Centre and John Hillman of the Scottish Crop Research Institute.

Other Affiliations

Brown's biographical note on the Sense About Science website states that she has a number of other "voluntary roles", including being a member of the "awards panels for the Energy Institute and Women in Science, and BioVision Environmental Chair. She sits on the Royal College of Pathologists Campaign Board."

External links

Contributed to Institute of Ideas book Compensation Crazy.