Public Policy Involvement Is The Duty Of All Scientists

Does science have a role to play in affecting public policy decisions? Of course it does! To think otherwise is naive and suggests that science should have no utility. Many scientific findings have important public policy implications. It is not the duty of the scientist to make policy decisions. However, it is the scientist’s duty to make sure that the information necessary for intelligent public policy-making is available to those who do. In June, when we released to the public, our data about the effects of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), we acknowledged we were doing so because the information was relevant to the debate regarding a clean indoor air bill then under consideration and since passed overwhelmingly by the New York State Legislature. Findings related to the dangers of exposure to tobacco smoke or, in the case of my study, to the ubiquity of such exposure, had considerable bearing on the debate in New York and, generally, have considerable significance for public health. As such, these findings should be made available as widely as possible, andespecially to legislators deciding public health issues. Frank Resnik, chairman of Philip Morris, suggests that information pertaining to the danger of a substance should be made available to the public only after it has been “indisputably” proved to cause disease. Since nothing in science is indisputable, such a Standard is unrealistic and dangerous. On the contrary, a scientist has an obligation to share findings that haves significance to public health. Resnik’s response to our study and those of other investigators showing a link between tobacco smoke exposure and disease is not surprising given his clear motive— profit at any cost. The tobacco industry has always assailed scientific evidence of the dangers posed by cigarette smoke. Despite thousands of peer-reviewed articles and confirmation by every independent medical and scientific body in the world that has considered the question, the industry to this day denies that smoking causes cancer. Resnik’s attacks on research and scientists are a continuation of a strategy the tobacco industry has pursued since science began showing that smoking is cause of disease. The judge in a tobacco product liability suit has characterized this strategy as “a sophisticated conspiracy .... to refute, undermine, and neutralize information coming from the scientific and medical community.” In the 1950s, when researchers first established that smoking causes cancer, Resnik's predecessors at Philip Morris and other cigarette companies declared the findings biased and promised the public that cigarettes were safe. Sworn testimony and internal documents uncovered in. the course of tobacco liability litigation show that the industry’s own laboratories had already confirmed the findings in independent experiments, results of which were withheld from publication. While publicly professing a desire to clear up the health question,” officials of the industry-supported Council for Tobacco Research (CTR; later the Tobacco Institute) state in internal memos that confusion is its purpose. A 1965 report from within the CTR describes not a program of support for independent research--the council’s official mission—but rather an effort to provide the industry with “its own scientific experts who may also serve as scientific spokesmen” for the industry. These tactics continue today. The Buffalo News recently printed a letter to the editor from Larry C. Hol comb of Holcomb Environmental Services, a consulting firm, attacking our study. In the letter Holcomb neglected to mention his status as a paid consultant to the tobacco industry. In 1972, a vice president of the Tobacco InstiWte described its policy this way: “Creating doubt about the health charge without denying it, advocationg the public’s right to smoke without actually urging them to take up the practice, and encouraging objective scientific research as the only way to resolve the question of the health hazard.” A 1981 Philip Morris memo supporting a proposed Tobacco Institute public relations campaign to reinforce the smoker, his choice to smoke, and the custom of smoking suggested that this would be accomplished only by “attacking bad research” and “by attacking researchers themselves where vulnerable.” In 1981. the Tobacco Institute bought full-page newspaper ads announcing that findings from an extensive Japanese study reporting an elevated cancer rate among women married to smokers had been discredited by a smaller-scale study that was published by Lawrence Garfinkel, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society. The ads were withdrawn after Garfinkel described them as misrepresenting his findings. In 1985, RJ. Reynolds Tobacco Co. created its “Of Cigarettes and Science” advertising campaign, which gave the impression that a 10-year government-funded study, the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial, had failed to find an association between cigarette smoking and heart disease. In 1 986, a complaint was filed by the Federal Trade Commission describing the ads as “false, deceptive, and misleading.” The most recent tobacco industry response to the concerns associated with environmental tobacco smoke is a new entity, the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR). Charter members of CIAR include Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Lorillard Corp. Its true purpose, like that of the Tobacco Institute, is to foster confusion, this time about the public health significance of ETS. While there is a clear need for more research on this topic, the importance of ETS as a threat to public health is established. The 1986 Surgeon General’s Report, which was compiled and reviewed bymore than 100 scientists from around the world, concludes: “Involuntary smoking is a cause of disease, including lung cancer, in healthy nonsmokers.” This is one of many peer-reviewed findings Resnik and his colleagues choose to ignore. In the 40 years that the tobacco industry has pursued its calculated policy of attacking and misrepresenting the work of thousands of scientists, it has reaped billions in profits, and millions of Americans have died needlessly from smoking. In characterizing the tobacco industry’s response to the abundance of scientific evidence linking smoking and disease, Alan Blum, former editor of the New York State Journal of Medicine, said, “The definition of infinity is the number of studies that it will take for the tobacco industry to admit that exposure to tobacco smoke causes a significant risk to human health.” Further research and dialogue will not resolve the false debate fostered by those who profit by selling tobacco. Making public the truth " about .tobacco, however, will enable Americans to make informed choices about personal behavior and public policy. It is time that Resnik and his fellow cigarette merchants apply to themselves the same standards of scientific evidence and integrity that they so boldly urge upon scientists. Very simply, Resnik should stop selling tobacco until he can prove “indisputably” that it is not harmful. K. Michael Cummings is a career research scientist in the Department cf Cancer Control and Epidemiology at Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo, N.Y.

Public Policy Involvement Is The Duty Of All Scientists

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