Tobacco Documents Online

t To: PHILIP MORRIS U. S. A. INTER-OFFICE CORRESPONDENCE RICHMOND, VIRGINIA . Dr. T. S. Osdene From: . ,R. Fagan Date: March 26, 1980 Subject: . Progress Report of the Epidemiology Division of the American Health Foundation 1.) The date of the report is missing. I can't identify it any further than to give its complete title - "Metabolic Epidemiology of Cigarette Smoking: Implications for the Less-Hazardous Cigarette and!CV Disease. 2.) The legends on the axes of the Figures are confusing. In Figures 1, 2A/B, 4A/B the ordinate is labelled'nanogram per milliliter. On Figure 3A/B the ordinate is labelled! nanogram per-cent while Figure 5 shows the ordinate as nanogram per deciliter. Yet the numbers are all the same. Surely the amount per milliliter shouldbe much smaller than the amount per deciliter. 3.) Imposing a: linear relation on all the Figures seems a bit naive. The function looks far more complex than linear. The scatter of the points is so great that the assumption of linearity seems unwarranted. I'd like~ to see whalt happens if one imposes a quadratic function on the data. 4.) As stated in a number of places in the Report, nicotine is the "highly suspect agent in the onset of myocardial in- farction."' I doubt whether this is true. If nicotine is involved in cardiovascular disease it may be responsible for th~e lowered threshold to ventricular fibrillation. Th~is type of arythmia is frequently the cause of sudden death in cardio- vascular disease. 5.) On page 9, statement 1-a ha:s the following phrase - "TPM:NIC ratio will alter physical nicotine availability."' It would be very interesting to see whether that is true. 6.), I heartily agree with the last paragraph on page 9 - "A $ large, well-defined population must be employed to address O these questions in a scientifically valid manner." O Mr N CD Ca RF/cla V W N

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