Tobacco researchers say smoking harms.Most scientists funded by the tobacco industry's Council for Tobacco Research (CTR See click-through rate. ) believe cigarette smoking "causes a wide range of serious, often fatal, diseases," according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a survey reported in the July AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH The American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) is a peer reviewed monthly journal of the American Public Health Association (APHA). The Journal also regularly publishes authoritative editorials and commentaries and serves as a forum for the analysis of health policy. . This conflicts with the industry's description of the scientific community "as divided on the question, and [it] indicates the industry does not accept the opinions even of scientists whose research it funds," write Ronald M. Davis, director of the Centers for Disease Control's office on smoking and health, in Rockville, Md., and his colleagues at Roswell Park Cancer Institute The Roswell Park Cancer Institute is a cancer research and treatment center located in Buffalo, New York. Founded in 1898 by Dr. Roswell Park, it was the first dedicated medical facility for cancer treatment and research in the United States. in Buffalo, N.Y. Davis and his co-workers mailed questionnaires to all 179 U.S. researchers funded by the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of City-based CTR in 1989. Seventy-seven completed the surveys, or 46 percent of those for whom the team obtained correct addresses. No major differences (in credentials, affiliation or research focus) distinguished those who did respond from those who didn't. Among the respondents, 94 percent agreed that passive smoking was "harmful to the nonsmoker," 91 percent attributed most lung cancers to smoking, and all but one researcher described smoking as addictive. Respondents also ranked smoking prevention and smoking cessation smoking cessation Public health Temporary or permanent halting of habitual cigarette smoking; withdrawal therapies–eg, hypnosis, psychotherapy, group counseling, exposing smokers to Pts with terminal lung CA and nicotine chewing gum are often ineffective. as deserving the highest research priority. "None of CTR's active research projects relate to these topics," write Davis and his co-workers. CTR awards peer-reviewed grants and assures recipients they will receive full scientific independence. However, Davis and his co-authors argue, CTR's "misuse" of this science as "a public relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most vehicle" should raise major ethical questions among grantees who believe smoking is harmful -- such as whether they should continue to indirectly further the tobacco industry's aims by accepting its money. "I find no possible moral compromise in pursuing scientific inquiry and tapping all available sources of funding," counters Thomas Lauria of the Tobacco Institute in Washington, D.C. As of 1988, he notes, CTR spent more than $150 million on independent research. |
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