Tobacco Documents Online

~ ~1A 1617 0 I - IAN(ES J. 1C1 LP,4TRICK : -_-- 2~ ~~~ ~~ ~ -. ~~ i Becawc~f ~L I r, G9 ~~ CarL ~--Ir Stu ~ 31tar~--,vi Teb. 5, it may be .._.-zacalled, the American Cancer - Society staged a remarkable ~ puess conference at the 1Va1- dorf Astoria in New York. With all the trappings of pub- licity men at Kork, a land- mark studv was unveiled: For [ 'the first time, it was an- ' nounced, lung cancer had been induced in dogs subjected to ! intensive cigarette smoking. _ /! Whatever became of that landma-rk? Almost unnoticed by the general press - al- though the story is arousing t much tali; in trade journals C ar,d in scientific circles - a sho:kin~ contretemps has de- ve'.oped. It' is twginnir:g to ap- pear that the landmark may not be such a landmark after ~ • alt I By way of background, it should be said that this study wa,c tbe greatest single study ever made to establish a caus- al relationship, in a laborato- ,ry, behreen cigarette smoking L and luu:g cancer. The investi- gation was conducted jointly by Dr. Oscar Aucrbach, a pathologist • at the Veterans Adminis`iration Hospital in East Orange; N.J., and Dr. E. Ct+yler Hammond, a Cancer I I Society 'vice president for sta- tistical research. Their investigation, condu6. ed over.a period of three and a half years, was financed joint- ly by the Cancer Society and by U.S. taxpayers through a federal grant. Ninety-seven male beagle dogs provided the source material. of scientific invest igation ." Twelve doas died during the The tobacco industry under- study. Two of' them, it! was announced, were found to:have lung cancer. At the end of'~ 875 days, all the surviving animals were k-illed and examined. Ten additional cases of lung cancer reportediy were discoveredi Now, in the noru:aUcourse of events, a scientific study of this importance would have been published by formal pres- entation before a: scientific body, followed by publication, with full stati'stical' evidence and photographs of slides, in a major medical journal. This is how such things are done; and when the Cancer Society by- passed such established proce+ dures, in order to plunge into front-page headlines by the press conference route, a num- ber of eyebrows were raisedl Nevertheless, the society an- -nounced that; the complete. study, with all supporting evi- dence, would indeed: be pub- lished "in the very near fu- ture." Such publicat'ion, said Board Chairman 11'illiam B. Lewis,,R°ould show "the metic- ulous work that went into this latest scier.tific exporiment which we believe meets the highest traditions and protocol standably was eacrer to getits hands on the d:ta. On Feb, 27, Joseph F. Cullrnan 111, chair- man of the executive commit- tee of the Tobacco lnstitute, proposed that the relcva.nt ma- terial be submitted at once to a pane] o: distinguished scien- tists. On hSarch.13; Lewis refused such: a professional review. In a follow-up letter onlDlarch 20,, Cullman persisted. On April 17, Lewis again re= fused. "We do not intend' to ask that these two~ eminent men submit their findin,s to any selected committee . Their work will be judaed in the traditional manner of American science . . ." That'is to say, the stt:dy rrouldibe judged' upon its formal publi- cation. 1't:ith this excliange of'. correspondence, the s t o r y dnopp-lJ out of the news. . What is not g e n e r a 1'ly known,, outside the immediatee community of interest, is that the society submitted the Auerbach-llammond s t u d y first to the prestigious New England'. Journal of Medicine - which rejecte& it out of hand, reportedly because its editors were offended by the society's publicity-seeking con- ference in February. The man- uscript then was offered to the Jburnal of~ the American h•fedi- cal 1`issociation,, whose editor.s, recognizing, the importance or the study, turned it over to a special reviev:ing panel of 132 authorities in-ihe field. And this is the shocking fact: The panel unanimoasly recommended that the manu- script be rejected. One of the objections, it is said~ was th<.t the photographie slides sub- mitted •as pr.oof'of the cancers were of such poor quali'.y that malib ancy could not be deter- mined. All this happened in July. Weeks and u•eehs have passed, but thc study still has not bceni submitted' to the judgment of the scientif'ic community. It is not unreasonable to ask, again, whatever became of that landmark?