Jump to full article: Dow Jones via IWon, 2005-01-06
Author: Brian Blackstone, Dow Jones Newswires,
Intro: The U.S. government's $280 billion racketeering suit against the tobacco industry resumed Thursday after a three-week break, with testimony from a former Philip Morris scientist turned whistleblower.
Victor DeNoble, who worked at Philip Morris from 1980 to 1984, testified that the company kept a lid on research he conducted into nicotine's addictiveness.
Philip Morris lawyer Pat Schwarzschild, meanwhile, challenged DeNoble's credibility and competence and noted that he hasn't done any nicotine research in two decades.
One of the "pillars" of the government's case is that cigarette makers falsely denied that smoking is addictive in the 1960s through 1990s and hid research that showed it. . . .
Schwarzschild challenged that DeNoble's work on self-administration wasn't groundbreaking and that scientists outside the industry did such research in the 1970s.
"You weren't the first to show that rats would self-administer nicotine," she said. . . .
The publication Daily Variety reported in November that DeNoble's story will be told in a film titled "Addiction Inc." to begin shooting this spring.
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