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Patty Young of Dallas was a flight attendant for 36 years with American Airlines. In the 1980s, her testimony before Congress helped persuade lawmakers to ban smoking on flights, and she helped spearhead a major class-action lawsuit on the part of flight attendants. She spoke last month with assistant editorial page editor Michael Landauer:
You were a leader in the fight to get smoking banned on flights, and you have made the anti-smoking crusade your life's work. Looking back, was there one moment when you decided you were going to commit yourself to this fight?
The moment that my fight started was at the very start of my career in the summer of 1966 when nonsmoking flight attendants - we were called stewardesses then - told me that they were told by their doctors that they had the lungs of smokers. I often became extremely sick with severe headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, blocked ears and constant coughing - often with flulike symptoms. I grew up in a home where my mother and father smoked - sadly, they have both died from lung cancer - and I was never sick like I was as a new flight attendant. . . .
If someone wanted to get involved, where should they target their energy?
People should refuse to go to places that allow smoking and also get involved in making their cities smoke-free by calling city hall and insisting on change. They should realize that when they go to places that allow smoking, they are putting themselves and their loved ones in grave danger for sickness and disease.
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Scientists say they have found nicotine receptors on kidney cells that may link nicotine to accelerated kidney damage in cigarette smokers.
Their research -- presented at the American Heart Association's 60th Annual Fall Conference of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research -- also identifies nicotine as the component of cigarette smoke that damages the kidneys.
"There are many substances in cigarette smoke and nicotine is one of the more investigated ones," said Edgar A. Jaimes, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine in Florida. "Initially, it was believed that the nicotine component of cigarette smoke was only responsible for the addictive effects of smoking. However, now we are finding out that nicotine can have significant biological effects in other tissues."
Cigarette smoke could be a cause of breast cancer after all, University of Florida researchers recently reported in a cellular cancer journal called Oncogene.
Breast cancer is one of the few cancers in which a link to smoking has never been clearly established, and researchers believe their findings could be important in helping to understand why more than 220,000 cases of the disease are diagnosed each year in the United States.
The Florida study differs in one key aspect from previous studies that have not found a clear link between smoking and breast cancer: The researchers used condensate from actual tobacco smoke, in which normal breast cells were exposed to the full range of the 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke and not just a few of its known toxins, and injected it into laboratory mice. . . .
Narayan's study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, based in Miami.
FAMRI's Fourth Scientific Symposium, held at the Wyndham Miami Beach Resort in Florida, May 11-13, was dedicated to the protection of children from the effects of second hand tobacco smoke exposure. The 2005 sessions created a forum for the grantees to collaborate with other scientists in the field on the findings emerging from the prior years of funding and to learn about the historical perspective on the health effects of second hand tobacco smoke from the champions of a smoke free environment-the Trustees (click here). In addition, attendees had opportunity to learn about the progress of FAMRI's Centers of Excellence and discuss issues relating to children.
Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong will lead a national effort to help eradicate children's exposure to secondhand smoke.
The children's hospital will helm a national center that will orchestrate new research about parental smoking habits and children's daily exposure to secondhand smoke. The center also will develop educational programs that will help pediatricians nationwide encourage parents and caregivers to quit smoking.
Dr. Jonathan D. Klein, a pediatrician at Golisano Children's Hospital and an associate professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, will organize the development of research and programs among UR, the American Academy of Pediatrics and six other sites, including Harvard Medical School and Dartmouth and New York universities.
The center was given $8.3 million over five years from the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute
The Florida Supreme Court has cleared the way for more than 3,000 flight attendants to seek compensatory damages against tobacco companies for claims that they suffered respiratory illnesses from secondhand cigarette smoke aboard U.S. airline flights.
The ruling leaves in place a crucial decision by the state's 3rd District Court of Appeal that each litigant does not have to reprove strict liability by the tobacco companies for introducing a dangerous product onto the market. All the flight attendants must show, the panel said, was that they were exposed to secondhand smoke and that the exposure led to their health problems.
On Nov. 28, the Florida Supreme Court refused to hear the companies' appeal of a judgment in favor of Lynn French, a former flight attendant who said she suffered health problems while working aboard planes during the days when travelers could still smoke.
"[The Supreme Court's decision] now gives us the green light to move these cases forward after these years of delay, and it establishes what the issues are that remain to be litigated," said Miami solo practitioner Joel Perwin, who authored an answer brief opposing consideration by the state's high court.
The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University will study the health effects of secondhand smoke using a grant from the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute.
FAMRI's By-Laws provide that Flight Attendants involved in the class-action lawsuit are to be the majority of the Board of Trustees. The following are the Trustees' stories as advocates combating second hand tobacco smoke in airline cabins:
Bland Lane . . . Lani Blissard . . . Leisa Sudderth . . . Patty Young
Try your cases and if you lose, then come back to us and appeal. That's basically what the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Miami on Wednesday told several big cigarette makers that were seeking to overturn a lower court ruling preventing them from reopening key issues relating to the hazards of secondhand cigarette smoke.
Last month, lawyers for cigarette makers argued before the 3rd DCA that Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Robert Kaye had misinterpreted a settlement agreement signed by the companies and a class of flight attendants who had sued the companies for damage to their health from secondhand smoke aboard airplanes. The cigarette makers contended that Kaye's ruling "contradicted the plain language of the agreement."
They asked the three-judge panel to rule that the flight attendants bear the burden of proving strict liability, breach of implied warranty and negligence when they finally begin to try their cases in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.
Lawyers for the flight attendants told the appellate court it did not have jurisdiction over such matters because the claims were still pending in circuit court. They also contended that if the defendants want to challenge Kaye's interpretation of the settlement agreement, they should do it after the verdicts in the secondhand smoke cases -- but not before the cases are tried.
The appellate court agreed with the flight attendants' attorneys, dismissing the appeal without prejudice and inviting lawyers for Big Tobacco to come back "at the conclusion of the case."
The next chapter in the saga of more than 3,000 flight attendants who claim that secondhand smoke made them sick is about to unfold in a state appeals court.
That's where lawyers for Big Tobacco are scheduled today to seek to overturn a ruling issued in October by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Robert Kaye that essentially says that when the flight attendants' cases go to trial, their lawyers will not have to rehash all of the issues relating to strict liability, negligence and breach of warranty.
Kaye ruled that those issues were resolved by a 1997 settlement agreement that required the flight attendants to take their cases to court individually. He ruled that the only issues that remained to be tried were what specifically caused the flight attendants' illnesses and what damages they should be awarded as a result.
Lawyers for the tobacco industry will argue before the 3rd District Court of Appeal that the judge misinterpreted that settlement agreement by limiting the issues to be tried and that his ruling "contradicts the plain language of the agreement" in violation of Florida law.
Lawyers for the flight attendants, meanwhile, accuse Big Tobacco of trying to unravel the deal and argue that should they be forced to rehash those issues that are common to all of the flight attendants at each of their individual trials, it would take 200 years to get all of the secondhand-smoke cases to trial.
Swissair flight attendants will be allowed to slap sex pests and can retaliate against other unruly passengers by tying them up in their seats. . .
The number of instances of aggressive or unruly travelers rose to 502 cases in 1999 from 286 cases in 1996 while the total number of Swissair passengers rose to 14 million from 9 million.
The spokesman said that about one-third of these incidents were related to alcohol consumption and another third to the ban on smoking on board. [This graph only]
Four flight attendants representing a private foundation are meeting with lawyers this week to discuss how to spend $300 million from a 1997 settlement with tobacco companies.
The foundation is being tight-lipped about its plans for its portion of the $349 million that nonsmoking flight attendants and their lawyers accepted to settle their lawsuit against the nation's tobacco companies. The attendants said secondhand smoke they inhaled during flights gave them lung cancer and other diseases.
The fledgling Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute is one of the state's richest foundations. Because it is private, it can conduct most of its business behind closed doors.
That secrecy has hidden most details of a rift between Norma Broin, the flight attendant who started the case, and lawyers Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, who represented the flight attendants and received $49 million for their fees and costs.
Hundreds more nonsmoking flight attendants who blame secondhand smoke in airliners for their respiratory and other illnesses met a deadline Thursday for filing personal injury lawsuits,
The last-minute filings brought the nationwide total to an estimated 2,200, according to Miles McGrane, an attorney with one of six Miami firms coordinating the litigation.