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ABC to Air Final Patrick Swayze Interview in One Hour Special 

Barbara Walters appeared on "Nightline" tonight with portions of her January interview with Patrick Swayze -- what turned out to be his last TV interview. At the end of her report, Cynthia McFadden announced the interview will air as a one-hour special. The Barbara Walters Special "Last Dance" airs tomorrow night at 10pmET/PT. Swayze died today at his California ranch after a 20-month battle with pancreatic cancer.

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Publicist: Patrick Swayze dies at 57 

Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into moviegoers' hearts with "Dirty Dancing" and then broke them with "Ghost," died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

"Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months," said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. Swayze died in Los Angeles, Wolf said, but declined to give further details.

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American Legacy Foundation(R) Remembers Senator Edward M. Kennedy: A Crusader for Public Health 

Senator Edward M. Kennedy was a towering figure in the United States Senate for more than 40 years, fighting for many important issues, but top among them were public health and social justice.

Senator Kennedy fully understood the public health epidemic of tobacco use and fought at every opportunity to protect Americans from this devastating epidemic, which is the nation's number-one preventable cause of death.

Despite his own health struggles this year, Senator Kennedy shepherded the Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act through the United States Senate, which after nearly a decade of work, gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco. His commitment to advancing this legislation was unyielding, even as he battled cancer himself.

Senator Kennedy was also instrumental in the passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act. This historic piece of legislation, which increased the federal tobacco tax, will have direct life saving benefits, since as the price of cigarettes increases, the number of smokers decreases.

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Statement by John R. Seffrin, PhD, CEO of the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network on the death of United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy  

"We are truly saddened by the passing of a giant in the area of health care policy -- our friend, U.S. Senator and recipient of the American Cancer Society's highest award, Medal of Honor and the National Distinguished Advocacy Award, Edward "Ted" Kennedy. Senator Kennedy was a passionate advocate for cancer patients and their families, not just in his home state of Massachusetts, but nationwide.

"Truly one of the great champions in this battle to fight cancer, Senator Kennedy has led a passionate effort against this disease during his more than 45 years in the U.S. Senate, championing health care-related causes from equal access to health care to increased funding for cancer research and screening for early detection.

"Known as the 'Lion of the Senate,' Senator Kennedy has fought to bring all the resources of the nation to bear in fighting cancer and other diseases, renewing the war on cancer by introducing a bill to overhaul the 1971 National Cancer Act. Senator Kennedy helped to reign in the tobacco industry with legislation that gives FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products, which was signed into law in June. Senator Kennedy also championed the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program with an increase in the tobacco tax.

"Senator Kennedy was personally touched by this disease long before his own diagnosis, watching his son, Ted Kennedy, Jr. battle bone cancer as a teen, and daughter Kara Kennedy Allen battle lung cancer in 2003.

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Campaign Mourns the Death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy 

The incomparable legacy of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in the protection of America's public health is a lasting tribute to his memory. Senator Kennedy was among the first in Congress to fully comprehend the devastating effects of tobacco use in the U.S. He was in the vanguard of supporters of FDA regulation of tobacco at a time when it was political anathema to even suggest government regulation of an industry which had always been protected by powerful friends in Congress. But Ted Kennedy knew it was the right thing to do.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the authority to regulate tobacco had to be expressly granted by Congress, Senator Kennedy took action. He worked unstintingly, in many cases reaching across the aisle, to craft legislation to empower the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. He wrote and spoke eloquently about the need to stop the tobacco companies from targeting children. He reminded his colleagues about the terrible toll of tobacco addiction and disease on America's families. And slowly but surely, his message began to break through.

In 2004, despite White House opposition, Senator Kennedy succeeded in getting the Senate to pass the FDA tobacco legislation but the House leadership was able to kill the bill in a conference committee. Where lesser men would have given up the fight, Senator Kennedy only strengthened his resolve to pass the tobacco bill. He never lost hope. He said he'd get it done, and five years later, he did.

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Hewitt on '60 Minutes' finest, darkest moments 

When asked what he considered the finest hour for "60 Minutes," Don Hewitt would mention Morley Safer's award-winning, 1983 report on Lenell Geter. . . .

Hewitt's darkest hour came in 1995 when he failed to resist CBS management's decision to shelve a Mike Wallace interview with whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, the former vice president of research and development at Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. who agreed to go on camera with incriminating charges against his former employer regarding the dangers of its products.

Wigand had signed a confidentiality agreement with the tobacco company that prohibited him from revealing inside information. Any attempt by CBS to induce Wigand to break the contract, the network was advised by its lawyers, could lead to a multibillion-dollar lawsuit that would put the network in jeopardy.

Hewitt, who stated publicly that "we've got a story we think is solid," nevertheless sided with the network's decision not to broadcast the interview -- a stance for which he was criticized by many fellow journalists

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'60 Minutes' creator Don Hewitt dies  

Television pioneer and longtime CBS executive Don Hewitt, the creator of "60 Minutes," has died, the network said Wednesday. He was 86. . . .

Hewitt has publicly said that the lowest point for "60 Minutes" was the Jeffrey Wigand story -- an interview with the highest-ranking tobacco executive to become a whistleblower. The interview was held back by CBS management out of fear of a $10 billion lawsuit that could bankrupt the company, according to the network statement.

"The initial spiking of the interview, in which Wigand revealed tobacco executives knew and covered up the fact that tobacco caused disease, led to an unusual '60 Minutes' segment," CBS' statement said. "A portion of it, with Wigand disguised, was broadcast, followed by an unprecedented rebuke of management read on the air by Mike Wallace." The interview was aired in its entirety a few months later, in February 1997. A movie about the incident, "The Insider" was made the following year.

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• Don Hewitt: Helping invent the wheel of TV news  

The ticking stopwatch. Hidden cameras. Ambush journalism. In 36 years, "60 Minutes" has reflected and shaped popular pop culture. Its correspondents, from Mike Wallace to Ed Bradley, are instantly recognizable. It inspired a Saturday Night Live parody starring Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd. In the late '90s, two PBS documentaries, "Smoke in the Eye" (1996) and "Inside the Tobacco Deal" (1998), were made about a "60 Minutes" episode that was delayed and ultimately aired in a watered-down way that left no one happy except perhaps the lawyers who were involved. A 1999 feature film called "The Insider" and starring Russell Crowe further popularized the same episode.

That segment, which has become the show's most infamous, got its start in 1994 when Wallace and producer Lowell Bergman proposed featuring a biochemist named Jeffrey Wigand, a former executive at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company. Wigand was willing to say on air that his former employers had deceived the public by ignoring evidence of the health hazards of their cigarettes.

Ultimately, Laurence Tisch, then the chairman of the network, and his lawyers did not allow Wigand's segment to be aired. That decision was made as Tisch was attempting to sell CBS to Westinghouse, and it was feared that an expensive lawsuit brought by the tobacco companies would decrease his company's value. The debate over the decision and Hewitt's role in accepting it will probably never end.

As Hewitt described it to me in 2004, he had no choice. "The only way I could have got that broadcast on the air would have been to go out and hire a bunch of guerrillas and take the transmitter at gunpoint," he says.

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Sidney Zion, Writer Who Crusaded to Reduce Doctors' Hours, Dies at 75 

Sidney Zion, a journalist and author who turned his daughter's death at New York Hospital in 1984 into a crusade that led to national reforms in the training, workload and supervision of young doctors, died on Sunday afternoon at Calvary Hospital in Brooklyn. He was 75 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was bladder cancer, said his son Adam Zion.

A confidant of writers and power brokers in New York, Mr. Zion was a federal prosecutor and criminal lawyer early in a many-sided career that included jobs as a legal reporter for The New York Times and columnist for The Daily News and The New York Post. He helped found a magazine and wrote a novel, a book on gangsters, a volume of essays and a biography of the lawyer Roy Cohn.

Rumpled and Runyonesque, a habitué of Gallagher's, Elaine's, Sardi's and other celebrity watering holes, Mr. Zion was a loud, cigar-smoking, storytelling die-hard New York Giants fan who railed against what he called fitness fascists, passionately defended Israel and counted horse-players, mobsters, actors and politicians among his friends.

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• Obituary | Michael Russell  

Russell built on the belief that it was tar, not nicotine, that killed smokers

By the 1960s, the emerging evidence of the danger of cigarette smoking was clear, but there was very little understanding of why people smoked. Cigarette smoking was generally thought of as a habit, with pharmacological factors receiving little or no attention.

Michael Russell, who has died at the age of 77 from a heart attack, was the man who did most to revolutionise our understanding. His research led to the 1988 report of the US surgeon general, Nicotine Addiction, which finally brought recognition that cigarette smoking is a classic drug dependence.

Russell was a psychiatrist in training at the Maudsley hospital, in south London, when he chose the topic of cigarette smoking for his research thesis in 1967. Based on his review of what was then fragmentary research literature, he concluded in a 1971 paper that the drug nicotine was the motivating force underlying smoking behaviour. He made the study of the interacting pharmacological and psychological determinants of tobacco dependence his life's work. . . .

But Russell is probably best known in the cessation field for a non-pharmacological intervention. In 1979 he published a trial examining the effectiveness of brief advice to quit smoking given by GPs in the course of routine consultations. The one-year success rate was 5%, compared with less than 1% in controls. A successful trial of nicotine chewing gum combined with brief advice in primary care followed. Russell moved towards the concept of an integrated district smoking cessation service, in which routine delivery of advice and pharmacological therapy in primary care was combined with intensive clinic support. That vision has now been realised in the NHS.

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Corrections 

An obituary on Tuesday about the tobacco executive and arts administrator George Weissman gave an incorrect name for the school from which he received his business degree. At the time of his graduation in 1953, it was the business school of the City College of New York -- not Baruch College of the City University of New York, which later became its name.

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• George Weissman, Leader at Philip Morris and in Arts, Dies at 90  

George Weissman, who helped transform Philip Morris from a midlevel tobacco company to a diversified conglomerate known for contributions to the arts, and who then led Lincoln Center for nearly a decade, died on July 24 in Greenwich, Conn. He was 90.

The cause was complications of a recent fall at his home in Rye, N.Y., his son Paul said.

Mr. Weissman began his corporate ascent in the movie and public relations businesses, and one of his early tasks as a young marketing executive at Philip Morris -- which became part of the Altria group in 2003 -- was to help develop the very effective masculine mythology of Marlboro cigarettes. . . .

Mr. Weissman also pushed Philip Morris to become a major donor to arts groups, particularly experimental undertakings like the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He said in an interview with The New York Times in 1990 that the arts initiative began with a traveling exhibition of modern art in 1965.

"We wanted to demonstrate to our own employees that we were an open-minded company seeking creativity in all aspects of our business," Mr. Weissman said. "And we were determined to do this by sponsoring things that made a difference, that were really dangerous." . . .

When Mr. Weissman became chairman and chief executive of Philip Morris in 1978, he told Fortune magazine that he saw himself as the quintessential Marlboro man.

"I'm no cowboy and I don't ride horseback," he said, "but I like to think I have the freedom the Marlboro man exemplifies. He's the man who doesn't punch a clock. He's not computerized. He's a free spirit." . . .

Under his leadership, Philip Morris employed blacks in prominent executive positions, resulting in boycotts in some places in the South. . . .

Mr. Weissman joined other business leaders in signing petitions against the Vietnam War. When the Nixon administration's "enemies list" . . .

Mr. Weissman told Forbes in 1980 that he felt Philip Morris had a "Masada complex,"

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I'm no cowboy and I don't ride horseback, but I like to think I have the freedom the Marlboro man exemplifies. He's the man who doesn't punch a clock. He's not computerized. He's a free spirit.
George Weissman, who helped transform Philip Morris from a midlevel tobacco company to a diversified conglomerate known for contributions to the arts, and who then led Lincoln Center for nearly a decade.

We wanted to demonstrate to our own employees that we were an open-minded company seeking creativity in all aspects of our business. And we were determined to do this by sponsoring things that made a difference, that were really dangerous.
Former Philip Morris exec George Weissman, on the company's extensive arts donations.

Thanks, Tobacco: You Killed My Mom 

we have completed this very emotional project to honor her memory, and to help us as we continue through the grieving process. Finally, we are aware that much of the anti-smoking media is not so real to life--it doesn't show the suffering, what the families go through, and the pain that cigarettes actually cause. This documentary is "non-Hollywood". We have omitted certain things that one might find offensive, including her IV, vomiting, bodily functions, and her actual death itself, which was obviously painful. Instead, we have brought many different segments together, which still conveys our overall message: DON'T SMOKE!

In a letter dated September 24, 2006, from Mom: "Try not to worry about my health. I go for a CAT-SCAN on October 4th. I should have the results about a week later. The appointments are taking a long time, so I must not be in such dire shape, or they would rush them. I'm glad you never really had the desire to smoke. What do your lungs look like after all of those years of second-hand smoke? I can't wait to see you and Patti more often. Gotta go for now. Love Forever, Mom"

To conclude, one can compare smoking cigarettes to a slow-motion car accident. At any time, you can get out of the car before it crashes. It is your choice. Furthermore, you may be driving your own car, but please remember that you take passengers along for the ride.

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• Watching his mother's life go up in smoke  

Aaron Gray chronicled his mother's death from lung cancer in a heartbreaking short film that can be seen on YouTube titled, "Thanks Tobacco: You Killed My Mom." . . .

And he remembers hiding her cigarettes. Breaking them in half. Doing whatever a child could do to try and make things better. But it wasn't until his mother died of lung cancer at age 56 that he could do something to make a difference.

He told her story.

"If I didn't do this, she'd just be another nameless grave," said Gray, 37, of Redondo Beach. "I wanted to do something to make her life matter." . . .

Charlotte Patricia Gray was born Aug. 21, 1950, and took up smoking cigarettes in 1963 at age 13 - long before the public knew about the dangers of smoking. A single mom, she tried numerous times to quit but couldn't beat the addiction.

"She had tried hypnosis. She had tried acupuncture, the patch, Nicorette gum, candy. She had tried going cold turkey," said Gray. In October 2006, she was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. A month later, she suffered a stroke that put her in the hospital, where she died four months later.

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Howard Engle, Tobacco Plaintiff, Dies  

Dr. Howard A. Engle, a Miami Beach pediatrician and a lifelong smoker who was the lead plaintiff in a landmark class-action suit against the tobacco industry, died at home on Wednesday. He was 89.

The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said his son, David Engle. Dr. Engle had smoked multiple packs of cigarettes daily since he was in college, his son said, and though he tried many times to quit, he never succeeded. He continued to smoke until his death. . . .

Among Dr. Engle's patients were the nine children of Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, whose practice, until the 1990s, was largely concerned with medical malpractice. But in 1991, they brought a class-action suit against tobacco companies on behalf of flight attendants who said they were harmed by secondhand smoke. (The case was settled in 1997 when the tobacco companies agreed to spend $300 million to study tobacco-related diseases.)

Mr. Rosenblatt said that Dr. Engle took a keen interest in the flight attendants' case, and that when the second class-action suit came along, they discussed that as well. Mr. Rosenblatt was interested in having Dr. Engle join the case because he was a prominent physician; because Dr. Engle was a smoker who wished to publicize the addictive nature of smoking, he agreed to become the lead plaintiff.

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