Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me
The following is an excerpt from a 2007 paper called The Cigarette Controversy.“In 1994, heads of the major U.S. tobacco companies testified before
Congress that the evidence that cigarette smoking caused diseases such
as cancer and heart disease was inconclusive, that cigarettes were not
addictive, and that they did not market to children. Less than 1 month
after this testimony, a box containing confidential documents from the
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation was delivered to the
University of California at San Francisco. What was revealed in these
documents was evidence that the tobacco industry had for decades known
and accepted the fact that cigarettes caused premature death, considered
tobacco to be addictive, and that their programs to support scientific
research on smoking and health had been a sham.
In 1999, the federal government filed its own suit against the
tobacco industry for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations (RICO) Act. In August 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys
Kessler concluded that “…the tobacco companies conspired to violate the
substantive provisions of RICO…and…in fact violated those substantive
provisions”. The question of when tobacco companies knew or should have
known about the serious health consequences of smoking goes to the very
question of whether or not there was a real cigarette controversy.
Evidence linking smoking and cancer appeared in the 1920s . Between
1920 and 1940, a chemist named Angel Honorio Roffo published several
articles showing that cancers could be experimentally induced by
exposure to tars from burned tobacco. Roffo et al. further showed that
cancer could be induced by using nicotine-free tobacco, which means that
tar, with or without nicotine, was carcinogenic. Research implicating
smoking as a cause of cancer began to mount during the 1950s, with
several landmark publications in leading medical journals. The first
official U.S. government statement on smoking and health was issued by
the Surgeon General Leroy Burney in a televised press conference in
1957, wherein he reported that the scientific evidence supported
cigarette smoking as a causative factor in the etiology of lung cancer.
By 1960, Joseph Garland, Editor of the New England Journal, wrote, “No
responsible observer can deny this association, and the evidence is now
sufficiently strong to suggest a causative role”.
In their public statements, tobacco companies held that cigarettes
had not been proven to be injurious to health. For example, a November
1953 press release issued by the American Tobacco Company stated, “…no
one has yet proved that lung cancer in any human being is directly
traceable to tobacco or its products in any form”. In a New York Times
story based on this press release, the headline states that Mr. Hahn
(President of the American Tobacco Company) characterizes the evidence
of a link between cigarette smoking and an increase in the incidence of
lung cancer as “Loose Talk”. In 1954, Philip Morris Vice President
George Weissman announced that if the company had any thought or
knowledge that in any way we were selling a product harmful to
consumers, that they would stop business immediately. Senior scientists
and executives at tobacco companies, however, knew about the potential
cancer risk of smoking as early as the 1940s, and most accepted the fact
that smoking caused cancer by the late 1950s.
A 1962 report by the R.J. Reynolds scientist Dr. Alan Rodgman
characterized the amount of evidence accumulated to indict cigarette
smoking as a health risk as “overwhelming,” whereas the evidence
challenging such an indictment was “scant”.
In her decision regarding the allegation that the tobacco companies
had violated RICO, Judge Kessler observed that the trial record amply
showed a conspiracy to make false, deceptive, and misleading public
statements about cigarettes and smoking from at least January 1954, when
the Frank Statement was published, up to the present. The “Frank
Statement to Cigarette Smokers” was a jointly sponsored advocacy
advertisement published by tobacco manufacturers in January 1954. The
advertisement appeared in 448 newspapers in 258 cities, reaching over 43
million Americans. The advertisement questioned research findings
implicating smoking as a cause of cancer, promised consumers that their
cigarettes were safe, and pledged to support impartial research to
investigate allegations that smoking was harmful to human health.
The tobacco documents reveal how the tobacco industry worked together
since the early 1950s to create a pro-cigarette public relations
campaign to mislead the public about the dangers of smoking to advance
their collective interest to market cigarettes.
In 1955, Dr. Clarence Little, the first Scientific Director of the
Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), appeared on the Edward R.
Murrow show and was asked, “Dr. Little have any cancer-causing agents
been identified in cigarettes?” Dr. Little replied, “No. None whatever,
either in cigarettes or in any product of smoking, as such.” Dr. Little
was also asked, “Suppose the tremendous amount of research going on were
to reveal that there is a cancer causing agent in cigarettes, what
then?” Dr. Little replied, “It would be made public immediately and just
as broadly as we could make it, and then efforts would be taken to
attempt to remove that substance or substances”.
From 1964 onward, the Tobacco Institute (TI) frequently made
reference to the fact that qualified scientists challenged the evidence
that smoking caused disease. Yet, many of these so-called independent
scientists were recruited and had their research programs supported by
the tobacco industry. For example, in 1970, the TI sponsored the “Truth”
public service campaign that informed the public that there was a
scientific controversy about whether smoking caused disease. The “Truth”
campaign encouraged people to contact the TI to get a copy of a “White
Paper” that included quotes from scientists challenging the evidence
that smoking caused the disease. Lawyer-controlled “special project
accounts” were used to recruit and support scientists who were willing
to make statements and/or conduct research that would be favourable to
the industry’s view that causes other than smoking were responsible for
lung cancer and other diseases.
Internal documents from the industry acknowledge that TIRC/CTR was
largely a public relations asset for them rather than a real research
endeavour to address the smoking and health controversy. A 1970 letter
from Helmut Wakeham, then Vice President of the Corporate Research and
Development at Philip Morris, to the President of the TI summed up this
view: “nobody believes we are interested in the truth on this subject;
and the fact that a multi-billion dollar industry has put up 30 million
dollars for this over a ten-year period cannot be impressive to a public
which at the same time is told we spend upwards of 300 million dollars
in one year on advertising”.
The tobacco company conspiracy to manufacture a false controversy
about smoking and health is summarized in a 1972 TI memorandum, which
defined the strategy as consisting of three parts: (a) “creating doubt
about the health charge without actually denying it”; (b) “advocating
the public’s right to smoke, without actually urging them to take up the
practice”; and (c) “encouraging objective scientific research as the
only way to resolve the question of the health hazard”. In her analysis
of the purpose of the industry’s jointly funded “research”
organizations, Judge Kessler observed that they had helped the industry
achieve its goals because they “sponsored and funded research that
attacked scientific studies demonstrating harmful effects of smoking
cigarettes but did not itself conduct research addressing the
fundamental questions regarding the adverse health effects of smoking”.
The internal industry documents show how tobacco companies
deliberately confused the public debate about smoking and health by
creating and supporting research organizations that were never really
interested in discovering the truth about whether smoking was a cause of
disease.
In October 1999, Philip Morris Tobacco Company announced to the
public on its web site that, “There is an overwhelming medical and
scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart
disease, emphysema and other serious disease in smokers”. However, when
shareholders proposed a resolution asking the company to produce a
report on how it intended to correct the defects that resulted in its
products causing disease, the company responded that the shareholder’s
resolution had “… mischaracterizes the Company’s web site as
constituting a public admission that cigarettes cause illness. It does
not.”. Today, all of the major tobacco companies have web sites
acknowledging that smoking is a cause of disease. However, the current
web site statement of R.J. Reynolds on the health effects of smoking
continues to insist that smoking “causes disease in some individuals”
only “in combination with other factors”. In the courtroom, the
companies continue to challenge allegations about nicotine addiction and
smoking causing illness. The tobacco companies have not yet been able
to bring themselves to accept responsibility for their past illegal
acts.
It does not seem that the tobacco industry has changed since the 1998
Master Settlement Agreement but instead has found alternative ways to
support research and create controversy about the health risks of
smoking. For example, in the 2006 US election, the tobacco industry
spent over US$100 million dollars opposing state-initiated proposals to
limit smoking in public places and raise cigarette taxes. It is not
sufficient for the tobacco industry to merely concede the obvious point
that smoking is a cause of disease when it is evident that decades of
misinformation has resulted in a public that is massively ignorant about
the risks of smoking low-tar cigarettes, nicotine addiction, and
secondhand smoke exposure. Moreover, claims by tobacco companies that
they are involved in sponsoring programs to help smokers to quit and
discourage youth from taking up smoking must be seriously questioned in
light of recent findings that show that these programs have no
beneficial effect and may potentially be iatrogenic. There remains a
need for public education efforts to correct consumer misperceptions
about the risks of smoking along with government oversight to ensure
that industry is not permitted to use its vast marketing resources to
continue to mislead the public. Universities should also consider
adopting policies that prohibit their faculty from accepting funding
from tobacco companies. The implication of Judge Kessler’s ruling is
clear: the tobacco companies cannot and should not be trusted.”
The similarities between this and the campaign of misinformation
regarding climate change cannot be missed. Any organisation who accepts
money from the tobacco industry – the Heartland Institute, the Institute
of Public Affairs, the Liberal Party – must be regarded with suspicion.
Surprisingly enough, or not, these same organisations receive huge
funding from mining companies and they are all against action on climate
change. Any ‘scientist’ who associates themselves with the Heartland
Institute will be tainted by their lack of ethics and obvious vested
interest.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
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