You may recall pictures of Tobacco Company executives standing before Congress--all swearing that smoking tobacco did not cause lung cancer (and multiple other deadly diseases). You may not recall that it was not until 2006 that judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the tobacco industry had "devised and executed a scheme to defraud consumers and potential consumers" about the health risks that their "own internal documents proved they had known about since the 1950s." For example, the 1978 minutes of the British American Tobacco Company concluded that the tobacco-cancer link "has long ceased to be an area for scientific controversy." In 1957 the U.S. Public Health Service concluded that smoking was "the principal etiological factor in the increased incidence of lung cancer." In 1959 the American Cancer Society issued a formal statement that "cigarette smoking is the major causative factor in lung cancer." In 1962, the Royal College of Physicians of London said that "cigarette smoking is a cause of cancer and bronchitis and probably contributes to . . . coronary heart disease. "Furthermore, scientists working for the tobacco industry had also concluded that nicotine was addictive. Nevertheless, tobacco manufacturers continued to publicly deny this into the late 1990s."
How and why could the tobacco industry deny the consensus of scientific opinion? For one thing, not every single scientist in the entire world agreed with the consensus. Therefore, the tobacco industry determined to cultivate scientists and scientific research with as much zealousness as they cultivated tobacco. Tobacco companies entered into a joint venture called the Tobacco Industry Research Council in the early 1950s; the industry hired men like Frederick Seitz, Martin J. Cline, and Stanley Prusiner to refute the consensus that smoking caused cancer.
"From 1979 to 1985, Fred Seitz directed a program for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company that distributed $45 million to scientists around the country for biomedical research that could generate evidence and cultivate experts to be used in court to defend the 'product.'" The industry hired Seitz because he had credibility: He'd helped create the atomic bomb, been president of Rockefeller University, and president of the National Academy of Sciences. If Seitz directed a team of scientists who said there was DOUBT about smoking causing cancer, Big Tobacco could destroy science with scientists.
The industry's purpose was not to objectively study the facts. It was, they said in internal documents, to develop "an extensive body of scientifically, well-grounded data useful in defending the industry against attacks." Shareholders were told that they should fund such research "on the basis of the support it provides for defending the tobacco industry against fundamental attacks on its business." Additionally, in 1955 big tobacco started funding fellowship programs at medical schools. Only two of seventy-nine medical schools declined to participate. By the mid 1980s, the tobacco industry had already ingratiated itself to the tune of over $100 million dollars in sponsoring research on behalf of the "public good."
"From 1979 to 1985, Fred Seitz directed a program for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company that distributed $45 million to scientists around the country for biomedical research that could generate evidence and cultivate experts to be used in court to defend the 'product.'" The industry hired Seitz because he had credibility: He'd helped create the atomic bomb, been president of Rockefeller University, and president of the National Academy of Sciences. If Seitz directed a team of scientists who said there was DOUBT about smoking causing cancer, Big Tobacco could destroy science with scientists.
The industry's purpose was not to objectively study the facts. It was, they said in internal documents, to develop "an extensive body of scientifically, well-grounded data useful in defending the industry against attacks." Shareholders were told that they should fund such research "on the basis of the support it provides for defending the tobacco industry against fundamental attacks on its business." Additionally, in 1955 big tobacco started funding fellowship programs at medical schools. Only two of seventy-nine medical schools declined to participate. By the mid 1980s, the tobacco industry had already ingratiated itself to the tune of over $100 million dollars in sponsoring research on behalf of the "public good."
As mentioned above, internal tobacco company documents prove that they already knew that science had concluded that smoking was both addictive and the main cause of lung cancer. This is what caused them to be under "attack." If their own scientists, the American Cancer Society scientists, the U.S. Public Health scientists, and Royal College of Physicians of London scientists had not reached a scientific consensus that smoking caused cancer, they would not need to manipulate science to refute science. This is why they wanted to create scientific research "useful in defending the industry against attacks."
Tobacco had been their product. Now doubt became their product.
"Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public," wrote one tobacco executive in 1969.
To market doubt, presidents of America's largest tobacco companies hired John Hill, CEO and founder of one of America's largest public relations firms. John Hill told them that theirs was a life or death struggle to see that "scientific doubts must remain."
Doubt became the foundation for the other tobacco strategy to stymie scientific conclusions: Balance & Fairness.
As long as there was doubt, Tobacco executives could always demand that "their" side of the story be given equal time according to the federal fairness standard in broadcasting and news media. They would insist that there was a real "scientific controversy." There was real doubt as to the connection between smoking and cancer and they should be allowed to promulgate their version of the facts. If there had been a lack of scientific consensus, appealing to balance, fairness and equal media space would have made sense. However, there was no more a legitimate debate about smoking and cancer than there was about flat-earthers and the heliocentric theory of the solar system, or about alchemy and chemistry.
Thus, with their $100 million dollar investment in cultivating scientists and medical schools, and with their multi-million dollar public relation campaign, tobacco companies could always produce an industry sponsored scientist for a jury or for a congressional hearing.
For instance, UCLA professor Martin J. Cline was deposed in the Norma R. Broin [a non-smoking flight attendant who contracted lung cancer @ age 32] et al. v. Philip Morris in 1997. (As a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of R. J. Reynolds, he proved quite helpful to Big Tobacco).
"When asked point blank in the Norma Broin case, 'Does cigarette smoking cause lung cancer?' attorney for Philip Morris objected to the 'form of the question.' When asked 'Does direct cigarette smoking cause lung cancer?' the attorneys objected on the grounds that the question was 'irrelevant and immaterial.' When finally instructed to answer, Cline was evasive.
Cline: 'Well, if by 'cause' you mean a population base or epidemiologic risk factor, then cigarette smoking is related to certain types of lung cancer. If you mean: In a particular individual is the cigarette smoking the cause of his or her cancer? Then . . . it is difficult to say 'yes' or 'no.' There is no evidence.'
"When asked if a three-pack-a-day habit might be a contributory factor to the lung cancer of someone who'd smoked for twenty years, Cline again answered no, you 'could not say [that] with certainty . . . I can envision many scenarios where it [smoking] had nothing to do with it.' When asked if he was paid for the research he did on behalf of the tobacco industry, he acknowledged that the tobacco industry had supplied $300,000 per year over ten years--$3 million-- but it wasn't 'pay' it was a 'gift.'"
By design, science is always provisional; there always will be some residual doubt about its conclusions simply because the human brain is not omniscient. The tobacco industry would exploit this doubt. The industry line was that the link between smoking and lung cancer were "scientifically unproven claims."
However, scientists had reached a consensus conclusion. Such consensus positions are about as certain as science can be. But certainty, of the type that Dr. Cline referred to, can never be claimed so long as science is by its very nature provisional. Consensus conclusions by scientists have been wrong. Prior to Galileo, there was a consensus among medieval scientists that the earth was the center of the solar system. Consensus is not identical with unanimity. There will always be scientists like Seitz or Cline who will disagree with the consensus conclusion. It is an abuse of methodological, scientific doubt to insist that scientific consensus has not been reached unless all scientists agree.
In a later blog about global warming, ozone, and strategic defense we will discover some of the reasons scientists like Seitz worked for the tobacco industry to create doubt. We will also see some of the same scientists employed by the tobacco companies using the same tactics to create doubt about man made global warming.
How could brilliant scientists like Fred Seitz mislead the public for decades about the causal link between smoking and cancer? Was it just a Tobacco paycheck? Or something more subtle? Like a visceral hatred of governmental regulation, the desire to let the invisible hand of the free market hold sway without the government interfering with private enterprise?
(The quotations above come from Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, "Merchants of Doubt," (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 1-35.
How could brilliant scientists like Fred Seitz mislead the public for decades about the causal link between smoking and cancer? Was it just a Tobacco paycheck? Or something more subtle? Like a visceral hatred of governmental regulation, the desire to let the invisible hand of the free market hold sway without the government interfering with private enterprise?
(The quotations above come from Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, "Merchants of Doubt," (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 1-35.
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