WHEN you鈥檙e in a hole, stop digging.
This advice seems to be guiding the actions of the people who run the tobacco
industry. Neither they nor their lawyers are saying anything about the 39 000
industry documents that were spectacularly thrust into the public domain on 22
April by one American congressman determined to shine a torch on the industry鈥檚
business practises.
The documents have been posted on the Internet. Read them
(http://www.house.gov/commerce/TobaccoDocs/documents.html):
they provide a fascinating account of how companies like Philip Morris, fearful of growing
public concern about passive smoking, plotted and schemed to win the hearts and
minds of journalists and policy makers. It is a tale of unnamed scientists
acting as industry moles called 鈥渨hitecoats鈥� and of research projects codenamed
Newton, Pavlov and Descartes; of smokescreens and subtle diversions, rather than
blunt pro-industry propaganda.
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And it is a tale of big egos and preposterous ambitions: one document from
1991 recommends the setting up an industry-backed scientific institute powerful
enough to 鈥渟upersede the WHO and its agencies as the principal advisors to the
European Community鈥�.
But as we wade through all this material, it is imperative to ask how much of
it is accurate and true. We won鈥檛 know for sure until the industry starts
talking. So it falls to the people who have forced these documents into the open
to finish the job and make sure this happens. Otherwise the reputations of the
innocent could suffer.
The situation is already urgent. This week we report on some astonishing
claims made in some of the documents, the most extraordinary of which is that
Philip Morris鈥檚 lawyers had a mole working at The Lancet as
鈥渁n editor鈥� in 1990 (see p 4).
Here we must point out that New 杏吧原创 and The Lancet
are both published by companies owned by Reed-Elsevier, the Anglo-Dutch
publishing group. But anyone who knows The Lancet鈥檚 editorial stance on
tobacco will find it hard to believe it was subject to such infiltration.
The Lancet has asked its ombudsman to investigate. Philip Morris should do
the decent thing and tell the journal what it needs to know about the
document.
One thing that is clear is that the tobacco industry鈥檚 wider goal
involved more than getting scientists to write articles favourable to the
industry鈥檚 position on passive smoking. It also used scientists to gather
information about unpublished research and committee work that might damage its
interests.
Claims like the one about The Lancet should not be allowed to slip
by or be left unchallenged. Here, the probity of a world-famous medical journal
is at stake. When tomorrow鈥檚 academics write the definitive history of the lung
cancer epidemic and the role of the tobacco industry, these documents will be
vital. It would be depressing if we were prepared to pass them on to future
generations without applying pressure on those who wrote them to tell their
story.
After all, people don鈥檛 live forever. Not even tobacco chiefs and their
lawyers.