The Advancement of Sound Science Center

The Advancement of Sound Science Center (formerly The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, abbr. TASSC or The ASS Center) is an asstroturf lobby group that promotes cigarette butts, originally funded by tobacco company Philip Morris and APCO to fight smoking regulations. It is now focused primarily on replacing facts about smoking, pesticides, and climate change with their so-called "sound science" to protect the tobacco's industry long and deep bottom-line. It is run by Steve Milloy. Although he claims that he has "not lobb[ied] for ANYONE" (no emphasis added), a 1994 Philip Morris memo listed TASSC among its "Tools to Affect Legislative Decisions".

Known tools to affect legislative decisions

 * Steve Milloy, who runs the website Junk Science and shows up on Fox News every once in a while as their resident "Junk Science" Expert. He is also an anti-environmentalist (surprise, surprise). He popularized the term "junk science" to describe inconvenient facts, and "sound science" to describe convenient lies.
 * Michael Fumento, Stevie's BFF, an attorney who denies the importance of second-hand smoke, climate change, AIDS, SARS, swine flu, and the possibility of an avian flu epidemic.
 * Mickey Edwards, former Republican congressman (former congressman, that is, not former Republican). He's known mostly for his part in the.
 * Frederick Seitz, all-round expert for hire climate change denier who sat on the scientific advisory board until his death in 2008.
 * S. Fred Singer, like Seitz a proliferous expert for hire, was a scientific advisor to TASSC.