Public Relations Statements About Tirc: Creating A False Controversy

The tobacco industry often referred to TIRC in its public relations statements. TIRC was used to reinforce the claim that there was a "controversy" regarding the health effects of smoking and that more research was needed. For example, a document titled "Cigarette Smoking and Health: What Are the Facts?" {1903.02}, written after the Royal College of Physicians report was issued (3), disputes the claim that there is "mounting evidence" against smoking and notes that TIRC is attempting to learn the answers to the smoking and health debate, since "medical science has not found the basic causes of lung cancer." The paper does not mention the increased risk of lung cancer among smokers and emphasizes the fact that most people who smoke do not get lung cancer, as though that somehow implies that smoking is not an important cause

of the disease. It diverts attention from any possible role cigarettes may play in the causation of lung cancer by noting that a wide variety of possible causes of lung disease are under study, including "viruses, previous lung ailments, air pollutants, heredity, stress and strain, and other factors." By pointing to the efforts made by TIRC and its Scientific Advisory Board in developing an understanding of the lung cancer problem, the paper, in effect, keeps alive the "controversy" about the dangers of smoking.

The "What Are the Facts" document begins by listing ten common questions about the dangers of smoking and then answering them with the tobacco industry's standard claim that the dangers had not been proven. For example:

Is there "mounting evidence" to link cigarette smoking with lung cancer?

The "evidence" is not medical in the usual sense, because clinical and experimental research does not bear out the anti-cigarette theory. There is no scientific cause-and-effect proof. Only statistical studies provide the "evidence." The curious thing is that most of what has been written against cigarette smoking in recent years is based on a relatively few statistical reports. The "mounting evidence" impression is mainly the result of mounting publicity, rather than scientific findings [emphasis in original]. {1903.02, p. 3}

The statement is grossly misleading. The answer to the question is (and was, of course) "yes," but neither "yes" nor "no" is offered. Instead, the answer seeks to sow doubt and confusion. The reader is led through a maze of different types of evidence mixed up with prejudicial but high-sounding language about medicine, science, clinical work, and experimental work, leaving the false impression that the association of cigarettes and lung cancer must be flimsy.

In the spring of 1962, the Royal College of Physicians issued the first major report reviewing the data on cigarettes and disease (3). Since "What Are the Facts" quotes from this report, it was available to the author. The report meticulously reviewed the literature and carefully evaluated all alternative explanations for the increase in lung cancer. Its conclusion, "Cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer and bronchitis," was the only reasonable one considering all the data available in 1962, and nothing that has been learned since then about smoking and disease has brought this conclusion into doubt. On the contrary, subsequent data have confirmed it many times over.

The "What Are the Facts" memo explains how the industry is responding to the scientific evidence linking its products to cancer and heart disease. Specifically, it describes the research being funded through TIRC.

The tobacco industry recognizes that it has a special responsibility to help find the true facts about tobacco and health. Since 1954, it has been supporting a program of independent research through the Tobacco Industry Research Committee.

... These grants are made "with no strings attached" to encourage scientific study into the complex question of tobacco use and health. Scientific Director of the T.I.R.C. is Dr. Clarence Cook Little, world-renowned cancer researcher and for 16 years managing director of what is now the American Cancer Society.

The entire grants-in-aid program is administered by a Scientific Advisory Board of nine noted doctors, scientists, and educators. ... They determine the research policy and award the grants for research. {1903.02, pp. 3–4}

"What Are the Facts?" also claims that much of the TIRC-supported research has raised uncertainty about the health dangers of smoking and suggests that other things are to blame, so as to deflect attention away from tobacco.

[TIRC research] emphasizes that many clinical and experimental factors still need to be identified, investigated, and evaluated regarding the origin of lung cancer and other diseases. Actually, the number of suspects under study in lung cancer has broadened and now includes viruses, previous lung ailments, air pollutants, heredity, stress and strain, and other factors. {1903.02, p. 4}

Another document summarizes the TIRC's "Position of Tobacco and Health Issue":

While these [TIRC-funded] research studies have increased our factual knowledge, they have at the same time continued to make clear and to emphasize the great and critical gaps in that knowledge. They have confirmed the soundness of the position held and expressed by the T.I.R.C.

This position is that there does not exist the essential experimental and clinical knowledge with which science can even define or identify the multiple factors or influences that may contribute to the origin and progress of these diseases.

... As the tobacco industry continues its support of the search for truth and knowledge, it must recognize, as is always the case in true scientific research, there can be no promise of a quick answer . The important thing is to keep on adding to knowledge until the accumulative facts provide the basis for a sound conclusion [emphasis added]. {1903.03, pp. 2, 3}

These statements make it clear that the tobacco industry believed that TIRC-supported research was accomplishing one of its goals of perpetuating controversy about the adverse effects of tobacco.

A document entitled "10 Assertions about Smoking and Health vs. the True Facts," dated October 3, 1967, advises tobacco industry employees on how to respond to data on the adverse health effects of tobacco. In a foreword to the document, E. P. Finch, president of B&W, states:

Keeping accurately informed on the smoking and health controversy is an increasing problem. Many assertions are being made which tend to condemn smoking and the tobacco industry. Headlines carry these assertions as "news." Unfortunately, the other side is sometimes overlooked.

And there is another side to the controversy! The following section states and gives factual replies to 10 of the most common assertions. {1903.01, p. 1}

The responses to the assertions rely heavily on CTR regular and special projects for support, demonstrating how the projects were used to criticize data on the adverse effects of tobacco. To counter the assertion "All doctors are convinced that smoking is dangerous," the document suggests the following response:

Doctors are by no means unanimous in condemning smoking. ... For example, some of the country's most eminent men of medicine and science—from such renowned institutions as Bellevue Hospital, Columbia University Medical School, Yale University Medical School, and New York Medical College—have testified before the U.S. Congress that the charges against tobacco remain unproved. {1903.01, p. 4}

A document entitled "Those Who Expressed Doubt before United States Congress of Smoking-Disease Relationship" contains excerpts of official testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce and the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce in 1965. It states:

Over 30 of this country' most eminent men of medicine and science have submitted their views before the United States Congress that the charges against tobacco remain unproved. They gave detailed evidence as to why they are unwilling to accept statistical evidence as scientific proof of a causal relationship between cigarette smoking and human disease. {1903.07, p. 1}

Five of the thirty scientists (Joseph H. Ogura, M.D., professor of otolaryngology at Washington University in St. Louis; Theodor D. Sterling, Ph.D., professor of biostatistics at the University of Cincinnati; Hiram Langston, M.D., chief of surgery at the Chicago State Tuberculosis Sanitorium; R. H. Rigdon, M.D., professor of pathology at the University of Texas, Galveston; and Henry I. Russek, M.D., former director of cardiovascular research at the US Public Health Service Hospital in Staten

Island, New York) later received funding through CTR's Special Projects Division, which was administered by tobacco industry lawyers and was used to produce scientific data that would be useful to the industry (see chapter 8).