IN a move designed to discourage researchers taking money from the tobacco industry, the American Thoracic Society has decided that its scientific journals will not publish papers reporting work funded by the industry.
The tobacco industry has a long record of trying to win respectability through scientific research, says Alfred Munzer, a past president of the American Lung Association, which is the thoracic society鈥檚 parent organisation.
鈥淔rom my own personal standpoint as a physician, I think there is only a hair鈥檚 breadth difference between the tobacco industry and the drug cartels. That difference is legality,鈥� he says.
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The society publishes the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology. Papers underwritten by the tobacco industry account for 鈥渙nly a few articles a year out of several hundred鈥�, says Munzer. He hopes other journals will adopt a similar policy, making it increasingly difficult for industry-funded researchers to get their work published.
Walker Merriman, vice-president of the Tobacco Institute, the industry鈥檚 trade group, says the move is wrong-headed. The decision sets a precedent that could lead to a ban on any research funded by a range of industries, he says. If money from the tobacco industry taints research, surely grants from the drinks industry must do the same, says Merriman. Another logical step would be to ban nutrition research funded by the food industry. 鈥淭he list can be endless,鈥� he says.
Munzer says that journals already turn down papers 鈥� if the research violates ethical codes, for example. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not obliged to publish everything that is submitted, and we don鈥檛.鈥�
The tobacco industry鈥檚 money is funnelled through the Council for Tobacco Research in New York, which handed out more than $19.5 million in grants in 1994. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very clean money,鈥� says Merriman, who points out that scientists who receive these grants do not have to submit their papers to the tobacco council before submitting them to a scientific journal.
But Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, says tobacco-funded research has no place in a journal aimed at fostering public health. 鈥淭here is no disputing the fact that the tobacco industry is major contributor in the US and around the world to lung disease and respiratory illness.鈥�