Jump to full article: Art Bin Magazine (se), 2003-05-29
Author: Karl-Erik Tallmo
Intro: The TIRC sponsored scientists who wrote the "right" kind of articles. Up to 1961 there had been 197 such articles published by TIRC funded scientists, according to the head of research at the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co, Alan Rodgman, who wrote about this in a confidential internal memo 1962.[86]
The psychologist H.J. Eysenck admitted in his autobiography that he had accepted money from the tobacco industry.[87] In the British Medical Journal he published an article in 1960, presenting his ideas about lung cancer and that this disease was not due to smoking - but to personality.[88]
In 1969 The New York Times refused to publish tobacco ads, unless they included a health warning together with figures showing nicotine content etc. This made the American Tobacco Company quite irate, and on September 4th they published a whole-page ad titled "Why we're dropping the New York Times", where they explained why they wouldn't buy ad space anymore:
Sure there are statistics associating lung cancer and cigarettes. There are statistics associating lung cancer with divorce, and even with lack of sleep. But no scientist has produced clinical or biological proof that cigarettes cause the diseases they are accused of causing. After 15 years of trying, nobody has induced lung cancer in animals with cigarette smoke.[89]
A number of lab studies had been done however, and within the business they discussed confidentially how difficult it would be to bring about some kind of safe tobacco "because known carcinogens are produced from such a wide variety of organic materials during the process of pyrolysis."[90]
Jump to full article » |