INTERNAL tobacco company memos, posted on the Internet last week, provide the
clearest picture yet of the companies鈥� concerted efforts to deny the risks posed
by passive smoking鈥攖he main scientific battleground for the industry since
the 1970s.
These efforts are detailed in some of the 39 000 documents central to the
state of Minnesota鈥檚 lawsuit to recover the costs of treating people made ill by smoking
(This Week, 18 April, p 5). They reveal the extraordinary effort the
firms put into the problem of passive smoking鈥攆orming advisory groups,
funding studies, picking holes in the work of unfriendly researchers, and
barring others from attending industry-sponsored seminars.
In 1980, according to a memo from a Brown & Williamson scientist,
representatives from that company, R. J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, all members
of the industry鈥檚 Advisory Group on Environmental Tobacco Smoke, met to discuss
a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine (vol 302, p
720). This concluded that people exposed to tobacco smoke in the workplace
suffered impaired lung function. 鈥淢ost of the meeting expressed the opinion that
[the paper] was not an unbiased scientific attempt to establish the effect of
cigarette smoke,鈥� the memo says.
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To counter this paper鈥檚 message, industry scientists proposed funding
research to measure chemicals and particles that people were exposed to indoors,
with an eye to showing that most did not come from tobacco smoke. Other projects
funded included a study of spouses of smokers, designed to find 鈥渃onfounders鈥� in
their lifestyles that could account for health effects attributed to smoke.
In 1982, Donald Hoel, a tobacco company lawyer, wrote to Thomas Osdene,
director of the Philip Morris USA Research Center, about a proposed seminar on
the effects of passive smoking, to be led by Ragnar Rylander of Gothenburg
University in Sweden. 鈥淎lthough Dr Rylander does not have a specific list of
invitees in mind at this time, he was very receptive to suggestions,鈥� Hoel鈥檚
letter notes. 鈥淗e would not invite Garfinkel, Hirayama, etc.鈥� Lawrence
Garfinkel of the American Cancer Society in New York and Takeshi Hirayama of the
Institute of Preventive Oncology in Tokyo had both published epidemiological
research documenting the dangers of passive smoking.
Rylander would write up the seminar鈥檚 proceedings and try to get them
published, the letter goes on. 鈥淸This] would be valuable in view of the
anticipated chapter in the 1982 Surgeon General鈥檚 Report dealing with lung
cancer and passive smoking.鈥� Rylander could not be reached for comment before
快猫短视频 went to press.
By 1988, companies had opened a Center for Indoor Air Research in Baltimore,
with a budget of $4.5 million a year. Among its projects was one
鈥渋ntended to show the technical ineptness of the instrumentation used by
Repace鈥�. James Repace, then with the US government鈥檚 Environmental Protection
Agency in Washington DC, was developing techniques to investigate the exposure
of nonsmokers to particulates in cigarette smoke.
鈥淭hese revelations are no surprise to me,鈥� says Repace. 鈥淚t was very clear
right from the beginning that the industry was trying to discredit my work.鈥�
Minutes from a 1991 meeting of the environmental smoke group reveal that some
in the industry eventually concluded that the companies鈥� poor public image was
losing them the debate. 鈥淭he Philip Morris approach is that the industry鈥檚
position on the science is correct, but that it is better to have someone else
say it because the industry itself cannot win a causation argument.鈥�