[2] He held a series of technical and senior managerial posts including Chief epidemiologist in WHO's Tobacco Control Program (1992–95), Manager of WHO's Program on Substance Abuse (1996–98), Director of the Epidemiology and Burden of Disease Unit (1999–2001) and Senior Science Advisor to the Director-General (2002).
Murray, and co-founded the Peto-Lopez method with Sir Richard Peto, to estimate tobacco-attributable mortality from vital statistics.
[5] He was a member of the Wellcome Trust Population and Public Health Funding Committee (2007–10), the WHO Expert Committee on Non-communicable Disease Surveillance (2009–11), the United States National Academy of Sciences Panel on Divergent Trends in Longevity (2008–11), the Scientific Board of the Oxford Health Alliance Grand Challenges in Non-Communicable Disease (2006–09), and was former Chair of the Health and Medical Research Council of Queensland.
An independent investigation found that on the balance of probabilities that Lopez groped Frederes in a lift and making unwanted advances such as attempting kiss her and blocking her from exiting his hotel room.
He says, "I firmly and absolutely deny ever having touched or intimidated her in the manner which she alleges: none of the actions she described happened then, or on any other occasion."