Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 14, 1995 TAG: 9507140122
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
The Journal of the American Medical Association cited internal documents of the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., telling how the company took elaborate steps to prevent outsiders from discovering its research into the dangers of smoking.
The documents also show how Brown & Williamson tried to guard against the use of language that might hurt the company in a liability lawsuit, a team of five authors reported in the July 19 issue of the journal.
The report was unveiled a week early at a news conference at the AMA's Chicago headquarters, where the lead researcher, Stanton A. Glantz, expressed hope that the articles would put new pressure on the tobacco industry.
``I think they will help policy makers, they will help the courts, they will help regular people understand the nature of the game the cigarette companies have been playing and make it much harder for them to get away with it in the future,'' said Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco.
Much of the information already had been disclosed in media reports and congressional hearings in the past year, but AMA President Lonnie R. Bristow said the articles ``compile for the first time in one place what the tobacco industry knew and when did they know it.''
In a statement, B&W accused the AMA of selectively presenting company documents to advance its anti-smoking agenda. It also said its lawyers acted appropriately in defending the company's position in case of liability lawsuits.
In an accompanying editorial, AMA officials said: ``The evidence is unequivocal - the U.S. public has been duped by the tobacco industry.''
The editorial said politicians and researchers should reject funding from the tobacco industry, the government should ban the export of tobacco, and doctors and the public should support lawsuits to recover damages from the tobacco industry.
The AMA's efforts are the strongest yet by the country's largest organization of doctors, which Glantz pointed out ``at one time in history had an awful record on tobacco, in the '60s and even into the '70s.''
Critics have said the AMA was slow to issue strong warnings about smoking and sponsored a research project on smoking that got about $18 million in tobacco industry money.
``They accepted money and they offered credibility to the industry,'' said Howard Wolinsky, a medical reporter with the Chicago Sun-Times who co-wrote ``The Serpent on the Staff,'' a book on the AMA's politics.
The JAMA authors juxtapose the documents with what was known and said publicly at the time.
In 1964, the Surgeon General said smoking can cause lung cancer. The tobacco industry responded publicly that more study was needed. But a B&W lawyer wrote in 1963 that it was likely smoke would be linked to cancer, and a B&W researcher reported in 1965 that company scientists were sure smoke is cancer-causing.
In 1994, B&W Chairman Thomas Sandefur told a congressional committee: ``I do not believe that nicotine is addictive.'' But in 1963, research sent to B&W executives described nicotine as addictive and a B&W lawyer wrote in a memo, ``We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug effective in the release of stress mechanisms.''
The Kentucky-based tobacco company, which makes Lucky Strike and other cigarettes, has fought to keep the papers secret, claiming they were stolen in 1989. The documents include internal memos from B&W and other tobacco companies as well as reports on research done for the companies.
About half the documents reviewed by the authors were sent anonymously to Glantz in May 1994. Most of the rest were obtained from B&W by Congress.
by CNB