The Council For Tobacco Research

The same memo {2205.01} that discussed the "tar derby" also discussed another public relations strategy adopted by the tobacco industry during the 1950s—the sponsorship of supposedly independent scientific research. (The memo, written in 1976 by Ernest Pepples, describes the industry's response to the "cigarette/health controversy" over time. As stated above, other aspects of this memo are discussed in detail in chapter 7.) This strategy allowed the tobacco industry to claim that there was a "controversy" over the effects of smoking and that more research was needed to resolve the debate.

Pepples notes that, besides producing filter and low-tar cigarettes, the industry reacted to the evidence linking its products to various diseases by supporting scientific research. The purpose of this research was "to refute unfavorable findings or at a minimum to keep the scientific question open" {2205.01, p. 1}. In addition, Pepples states:

The significant expenditures on the question of smoking and health have allowed the industry to take a respectable stand along the following lines—After millions of dollars and over twenty years of research, the question about smoking and health is still open" [emphasis added]. {2205.01, p. 1–2}

The Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), formed jointly by US tobacco companies in 1954, was the primary institution that helped the industry promote this message. (TIRC was renamed the Council for Tobacco Research-U.S.A. [CTR] in 1964. We will therefore refer to this organization as TIRC when discussing periods from 1954 to 1964 and as CTR when discussing periods after 1964.) By 1985 CTR's annual budget reached $11,278,000.

The industry stated publicly that it was forming TIRC in response to scientific reports suggesting a link between smoking and lung cancer, and that the purpose of TIRC was to fund independent scientific research to determine whether these reports were true. However, the documents show that TIRC was actually formed for public relations purposes, to convince the public that the hazards of smoking had not been definitively proven.

The formation of TIRC is described in detail in a series of internal memos from the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton, Inc. (H&K), which was hired by the tobacco companies in 1953 to help them devise a public relations campaign (12). The H&K memos state that late in 1953 the president of American Tobacco, Paul M. Hahn, sent telegrams to the presidents of the other major tobacco companies, inviting them to meet in New York to develop a campaign to counter the negative publicity surrounding cigarettes. The meeting was convened on December 15, 1953, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and was attended by the presidents of American Tobacco Company, Benson & Hedges, Brown and Williamson, P. Lorillard, Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, and U.S. Tobacco, as well as the chief executives of Hill and Knowlton. The president of Liggett & Myers was invited to the meeting but did not attend (12). (Liggett & Myers did join TIRC on March 5, 1964, but resigned four years later, on January 8, 1968 {1920.01, p. 23}.)

Following the meeting, H&K submitted a proposal regarding the tobacco industry's public relations campaign (12). H&K recommended that the tobacco companies jointly form a research committee that would sponsor independent scientific research on the health effects of smoking. In addition, an announcement describing the formation of the research committee should be distributed widely as news and placed as an advertisement in newspapers and magazines nationwide. The tobacco industry followed Hill and Knowlton's advice. On January 4, 1954, the industry announced formation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC) in an advertisement titled "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers" (figure 2.1). This advertisement appeared in 448 newspapers in 258 cities, reaching an estimated circulation of 43,245,000 (12). The advertisement states,

Recent reports on experiments with mice [conducted by Wynder, Graham, and Croninger (2), who found that painting mice with tobacco tar caused cancer] have given wide publicity to a theory that cigarette smoking is in some way linked with lung cancer in human beings. ... Many people have asked

Figure 2.1. The tobacco industry ran this advertisement in January 1954 announcing the creation of
the Tobacco Industry Research Committee in response to growing public concern that smoking causes cancer.

us what we are doing to meet the public's concern aroused by the recent reports. Here is the answer:

This statement is being issued because we believe the people are entitled to know where we stand on this matter and what we intend to do about it. {1901.01}

The "Frank Statement" advertisement also clearly expresses the tobacco industry's concern for the health of its customers:

We accept an interest in people's health as a basic responsibility, paramount to every other consideration in our business [emphasis added]. {1901.01}

The documents demonstrate that in subsequent years the tobacco industry did not meet the goal it established for itself in 1954.

Tirc's Organization And Policy

A document on TIRC's general organization and policy {1903.03} states that TIRC is independent of the industry and that its purpose is to fund research into the health effects of tobacco. Although this document was prepared for internal use by B&W staff, it contains the same statements about the role of TIRC that were made publicly at the time—possibly because it was written by a member of B&W's public relations department.

The Tobacco Industry Research Committee is the sponsoring agency of a research program into questions of tobacco use and health. It was organized in early 1954 by representatives of tobacco manufacturers, growers and warehousemen.

Shortly after organization, the T.I.R.C. invited doctors and scientists who were well known for their work in cancer and other diseases to serve on a Scientific Advisory Board to administer a grants-in-aid program. This Board currently consists of nine scientists who maintain their respective institutional affiliations.

Grants by the Board through 1962 have been made to nearly 140 scientists in over 90 hospitals, universities, and research institutions from funds that now total $6,250,000 appropriated by the T.I.R.C. {1903.03, p. 1}

The document then discusses the role of TIRC's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), which was always described as being an independent group of scientists that had complete control over awarding funding.

The Scientific Advisory Board has full responsibility for research policy and programming. As a Board it does not directly engage in research for the T.I.R.C. and the T.I.R.C. itself does not operate any research facility.

Grants-in-aid for research are made by the Board to independent scientists who are assured complete scientific freedom in conducting their research. They alone are responsible for reporting or publishing their findings in the accepted scientific manner—through medical and scientific journals and societies. From the outset, the Tobacco Industry Research Committee has made clear that the object of its research program is to encourage scientific study for facts about tobacco use and health. Its position is that research will help provide the knowledge about lung cancer and heart disease for a full evaluation of all factors being studied in connection with these diseases [emphasis added]. {1903.03, p. 1}

Table 2.1 lists the members of TIRC's and CTR's advisory boards from 1964 through 1994. In general, the members of the SAB were well-respected academic researchers whose presence lent credibility to CTR. TIRC and CTR also had a scientific director who was responsible for outlining a research program and allocating research funds to best advance this program {1920.01, p. 34}. However, as described in chapter 8, the SAB and the scientific director did not always make the final decisions about which projects could be funded by CTR. Tobacco industry lawyers were responsible for many of the funding decisions. Nevertheless, in all the public statements that the industry has released over the years, it has staunchly maintained that TIRC, and later CTR, was an independent organization devoted to determining the health effects of tobacco. As we show later in this section and in chapter 8, however, the industry privately admitted that the main purpose of TIRC was public relations: to keep the "controversy" over smoking and health alive.

The document on TIRC's organization and policy also describes its position on the health effects of tobacco—namely, that the links between smoking and disease had not been proven and that more research was needed to determine the role of tobacco in various diseases.

During the past year, the Tobacco Industry Research Committee has continued and extended its support of research.

While these 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. ...

(Table continued on next page)

(Table continued on next page)

The smoking of tobacco continues to be one of the subjects requiring study in the lung cancer problem, as do many other agents and influences in modern living. Science does not yet know enough about any suspected factors to judge whether they may operate alone, whether they may operate in conjunction with others, or whether they may affect or be affected by factors of whose existence science is not yet aware. Indeed, it is not known whether these factors actually are "causative" in any real sense.

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. {1903.03, pp. 1–3}

The Role of Hill and Knowlton

As described earlier, the Hill and Knowlton public relations firm was integral in the formation of TIRC. In fact, from 1954 to 1958, the tobacco industry's public relations activities were carried out at TIRC with the help of H&K staff (12). In 1958 several states began to propose tobacco regulations, and the industry decided that it needed a more vocal lobbying group than TIRC. The Tobacco Institute was formed in 1958 to take over the industry's lobbying and public relations needs (12). However, Hill and Knowlton continued to provide public relations guidance for both TIRC and the Tobacco Institute. This role of H&K is described

in a memo from John V. Blalock (B&W public relations) to J. W. Burgard (B&W marketing){1902.05}. The memo begins:

This organization [Hill and Knowlton] serves as the Public Relations Counsel to The Tobacco Institute and the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. It is so intimately involved in the affairs of both that a proper separation of functions, as well as a strict definition of operations, is virtually impossible in this brief summary.

However, aside from performing the usual P.R. functions ... Hill and Knowlton can be described as "straddling both T.I. and T.I.R.C. and acting as a buffer for each." {1902.05, p. 1}

The document then explains what he means by "buffer":

Hill and Knowlton decides whether questions from outside individuals or organizations are to be directed to The Tobacco Institute or to the T.I.R.C. {1902.05, p. 1}

Blalock also mentions the substantial overlap of staffs between H&K, the Tobacco Institute, and TIRC. Two of H&K's staff members worked full-time on the Tobacco Institute account; in addition, William T. Hoyt of H&K was the executive director of TIRC as well as the executive secretary for TIRC's Scientific Advisory Board. "Without question, he [Hoyt] is the administrative head of T.I.R.C." {1902.05, p. 2}. The close relationship between H&K, the Tobacco Institute, and TIRC supports the hypothesis that all three were acting as arms of the tobacco industry's public relations efforts.

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).

The Evolving Role Of CTR

Although CTR was originally formed as a public relations instrument, its role and importance to the tobacco industry evolved over the years. This evolution is described in an April 4, 1978, memo from Ernest Pepples to J. E. Edens, chairman and CEO of B&W.

Originally, CTR was organized as a public relations effort. The industry told the world CTR would look at the diseases which were being associated with smoking. There was even a suggestion by our political spokesmen that if a harmful element turned up[,] the industry would try to root it out. The research of CTR also discharged a legal responsibility. The manufacturer has a duty to know its product. The Scientific Advisory Board composed of highly reputable independent scientists constitutes a place where the present state of the art is constantly being updated. Theoretically SAB is showing us the way in a highly complex field. There is another political need for research. Recently it has been suggested that CTR or industry research should enable us to give quick responses to new developments in the propaganda of the avid anti-smoking groups. For example, CTR or someone should be able to rebut the suggestion that smokers suffer from a peculiar disease, as widely alleged in the press some few months ago. ... Finally the industry research effort has included special projects designed to find scientists and medical doctors who might serve as industry witnesses in lawsuits or in a legislative forum. All of these matters and more should be considered in asking what kind of research the industry should do [emphasis added]. {2010.02, p. 2}

Pepples's description of CTR is remarkable in several respects. First, he confirms that CTR was formed for public relations purposes. In addition, he notes that CTR has served as a political and legal shield for the industry over the years. Finally, he states outright that CTR's "special projects" were designed to develop research data and scientists that could be used to defend the industry in court and legislative efforts (see chapter 8). All these statements contrast sharply with CTR's publicly stated goal of determining the truth regarding the health effects of smoking.

Similar views on the importance of CTR were expressed by Bill Shinn of Shook, Hardy, and Bacon, a law firm that represents tobacco companies. Shinn's comments are summarized by Pepples in a memo to C. I. McCarty, B&W's chairman and chief operating officer {2010.03}. The

memo is marked "privileged" and is dated September 29, 1978. In it Pepples notes that, according to Shinn, CTR is valuable to the industry because it provides legal protection as well as political and public relations advantages.

Bill [Shinn] mentions two aspects of particular value in CTR: (1) the direct legal protection derived by Brown & Williamson and (2) the political and public relations advantage accruing to the industry. {2010.03}

With regard to legal protection, Pepples mentions the Monroe case against Kool cigarettes, evidently an unreported case or one that was dismissed or settled. He notes that B&W was asked in this case to describe what it had done to keep abreast of the science concerning its product.

Our reply tells about the ten imminent [sic ] scientists who serve on the SAB in an advisory capacity at CTR and it tells about the grants which CTR has made over 10 years. Stated another way, our answer says CTR is our window on the world of smoking and health research. This avoids the research dilemma presented to a responsible manufacturer of cigarettes, which on the one hand needs to know the state of the art and on the other hand cannot afford the risk of having in-house work turn sour [emphasis added]. {2010.03}

Pepples then discusses a problem faced by Liggett. Liggett had filed a report written by an outside lab in support of a patent application, and the report had stated that tumorigenicity was reduced when a particular catalyst was added to the tobacco blend. A newspaper in Charlotte, North Carolina, in a front-page story based on the patent application, declared that Liggett had admitted to laboratory proof of a causal relationship between cigarettes and cancer. Pepples states,

The point here is the value of having CTR doing work in a nondirected and independent fashion as contrasted with work either in-house or under B&W contract which, if it goes wrong, can become the smoking pistol in a lawsuit [emphasis added]. {2010.03}

In other words, CTR gave the tobacco industry not only an opportunity to develop the scientific information it needed to protect its interests but also some insulation against liability for results that could prove to be legally embarrassing. When the work supported the industry's position, it could be trumpeted; when it supported the case against smoking—as in Gary Friedman's work on smoking and heart disease (13), discussed in chapter 8—the industry could walk away from it.

The documents show a marked contrast between what the tobacco industry was saying publicly and what it was saying privately about the

purpose of TIRC, and later CTR. Publicly, the industry maintained, and continues to maintain, that the primary purpose of TIRC and CTR has been to fund independent research to determine whether smoking is truly hazardous to health. Privately, however, lawyers for B&W stated that CTR's primary purpose was to allow the tobacco industry to argue that there was a "controversy" about tobacco's effects and that more research was needed to resolve the "controversy." Furthermore, CTR provided legal and political protection for the industry. Beginning in 1966, CTR began to fund "special projects," which were awarded not by CTR's Scientific Advisory Board but by tobacco industry lawyers. This special project funding was not disclosed to the public. As we show in chapter 8, CTR's special projects were used to develop scientific evidence that the tobacco industry could use selectively to defend itself in court, for public relations purposes, and to influence public policy. Developing data for defense is not in itself problematic, of course. But questions do arise when the research is done in secret, so that only favorable results need be shown; when the fact of industry support for what does get published is concealed from the public; and when the attorney-client privilege is invoked in spite of claims that all relevant information will be made public.