Tobacco Documents Online

Dollars for tobacco research mount; new foundation enters USDA, CTR support studies; Canadian firms boost aid U. S. Dept. of Agriculture last month awarded 15 re- search contracts totaling $831,314 to the University of Ken- tucky Research Foundation at Lexington for continuing studies on cigarette smoking and health. Most of these Agricultural Research Service contracts will fund medical school research on bioassay methods of identifying cigarette smoke components and their biological effects on experimental animals. In addition, scientists from U.K.'s chemistry and agronomy departments will study effects of cultural methods on chemical composition of to- bacco leaf and physiological processes in the tobacco plant by which certain natural chemicals develop. ARS repre- sentative at U.K. is Dr. Donald Burdick. In Los Angeles, Calif., Council for Tobacco.Research- U.S.A. has made three grants to University of Southern California medical school members. Dr. Oscar J. Balchum will investigate various factors involved in emphysema and bronchitis; Dr. John A. Bevan will study blood vessel con- striction by nicotine, while Dr. Murray B. Gardner will probe causes of cancer. These projects are included in 23 new and 41 renewal grants announced last month by CAR, which gave almost $2 million to research in 1968. In Montreal, Canada, the tobacco industry's ad hoc com- mittee has awarded two grants of $300,000 each for major research projects. One will establish an "interdisciplinary respiratory research laboratory" at McGill University. The other, shared with U. S. industry over a three-year span, will support investigations of links between smoking and stress by Dr. Hans Selye at the University of Montreal. This triples the amount the Canadian industry group has spent on medical research. Between 1954 and 1959 the ad hoc committee gave $300,000 to the National Cancer Institute of Canada, which finished spending it last year. Individual Canadian companies, however, have funded smaller research projects. For example, Imperial Tobacco has paid out 521,000 so far on Winnipeg studies of effects of smoking on pregnancy. Dr. Wynder to direct new American Health Foundation Dr. Ernest L. Wynder, author of Tobacco and Tobacco Smoke, and the book's co-author, Dr. Dietrich Hoffmann, are leaving Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research next month. Dr. Wynder has been named medical director of the American Health Foundation in New York City, and Dr. Hoffmann will join him at the Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit organization that operates in the field of preventive medicine. It has some big plans -some that will affect tobacco research. Currently work of the Foundation includes a study on R E R D Y N I G effects of cigarette smoking on blood coagulation. But the AHF has hopes of attracting most of the other work in smoking and health currently performed at Sloan-Kettering to its expanded laboratory, which is now in the planning stage. Much of this work is performed by Sloan-Kettering under grants from the National Institutes of Health. At the same time, a major study of heart attack patients in seven hospitals that involves a long intensive questionnaire will help the Foundation formulate various factors that may relate to heart attacks. The questionnaire will be administered to victims of first heart attacks at six month intervals and will be related to onset of second heart attacks. The non-profit organization, which has a board of trus- tees headed up by David J. Mahoney of Norton-Simon, hopes to attract major support from industry. Among the' most extensive projects now on the AHF books are plans for a completely computerized health care clinic. For $50 an individual can receive a complete physical examination with most basic data taken by technicians and recorded by com- puter. Final analysis and a consultation with each patient is administered by one of five doctors who will be associated with the clinic. Among goals of the group is ability to predict likelihood of heart disease and other problems that could possibly be eliminated through preventive medicine. Several major companies appear interested in making use of the proposed clinic for complete examinations of all personnel. At the same time, comprehensive records from the exami- nations, recorded and computerized, will be used for research purposes by AHF. Ongoing research poses interesting questions First International Symposium on Twin Studies, held in Rome early this month by Swedish and American researchers, concluded that. while there is evidence of a link between smoking and lung cancer in men, there is nothing to show that smoking causes lung cancer in women. At the same time, various studies revealed no relationship between smok- ing and heart disease. Information came from the Swedish and American twin registries maintained by the Karolinska Institute and the National Institute of Public Health in Stockholm; and the National Research Council in Washington, D. C. Brigitta Floderus of the Karolinska Institute investigated lung cancer in twins and also a broader sampling of Swedes. Of 20,000 persons queried, 32 male smokers and one male non-smoker were lung cancer patients. There were 13 cases of lung cancer in female smokers and 15 in non-smoking women. A study of 486 pairs of twins found three cases of lung cancer, all among smokers. "When you are talking about lung cancer, I think it is F A C L I E S e ~~ ~® ngo U1. FRANKLIN • KENTUCKY • •42134 • U.S.A. DIE: A L E t'.S iPt DARK AN D BURLEY TOBACCOS A 54 hi P L E S T 0 R I •T I ~ A G E ~y.~lcr®rrt~-~"~ Tobacco Reporter t.-