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KMID : 1231220130040010010
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Journal of the Korean Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco
2013 Volume.4 No. 1 p.10 ~ p.19
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Distortion of the Facts by Transnational Tobacco Companies and Role of Contract Scientists Hired by Them
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Park Sang-Pyo
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Abstract
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Transnational tobacco companies have tried to hide the facts on adverse health effects and addictiveness of the tobacco products by bribing the media and scientists. We need to know the details to understand tobacco company’s misconducts. We searched tobacco company internal documents in Legacy Tobacco Documents and PubMed. Many researchers from Germany, US, and Argentine studied causal association between tobacco and lung cancer since 1930’s. Transnational tobacco companies (TNTCs) have tried to hide the facts that tobacco use was the cause of lung cancer by threatening the media with the threat of stopping advertisement and succeeded withdrawing the article on the tobacco’s effect on lung cancer. Moreover, they acquired the research results on lung cancer and tobacco, and used these evidence to distort the scientific evidences and avoid regulation on tobacco. Since 1950’s many studies showed tobacco was a cause of lung cancer and TNTCs made an organization, hired scientists and continued to use the tactic of ’making it controversial’. Even though TNTC knew that tobacco use was addictive and secondhand smoking could cause lung cancer among non-smokers, as internal documents of the TNTCs confirmed, they did not admit those facts and continued to make it controversial by hiring scientists. Some scientists made a contract with a TNTCs or the organization made by them, worked as a ’contract scientists’ to support TNTCs. We should understand and let the public know the TNTC’s tactics of making sound scientific facts controversial and many scientists have been hired by TNTC trying to mislead the public and policy makers into wrong direction. We need to keep an eye on the activities of TNTC’s and related scientists.
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KEYWORD
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Transnational cigarette companies, Contract science, Smoking, Health, Nicotine addiction, Second-hand smoke, Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)
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