Cigarette Company Paid for Lung Cancer Study

Filed under: Health, United States — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on March 27, 2008 @ 5:00 pm CET

”In October 2006, Dr. Claudia Henschke of Weill Cornell Medical College jolted the cancer world with a study saying that 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through widespread use of CT scans.” Good news, of course. Lung cancer not as terrible as many thought. The only minor problem? It now seems that the research was - partially - paid for by a cigarette company.

Small print at the end of the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, noted that it had been financed in part by a little-known charity called the Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention & Treatment. A review of tax records by The New York Times shows that the foundation was underwritten almost entirely by $3.6 million in grants from the parent company of the Liggett Group, maker of Liggett Select, Eve, Grand Prix, Quest and Pyramid cigarette brands.

The foundation got four grants from the Vector Group, Liggett’s parent, from 2000 to 2003.

Cigarette money is seen as blood money by cancer advocates and experts. Many universities do not accept grands from cigarette companies anymore.

Prominent cancer researchers and journal editors, told of the foundation by The Times, said they were stunned to learn of Dr. Henschke’s association with Liggett. Cigarette makers are so reviled among cancer advocates and researchers that any association with the industry can taint researchers and bar their work from being published.

“If you’re using blood money, you need to tell people you’re using blood money,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. The society gave Dr. Henschke more than $100,000 in grants from 2004 to 2007, money it would not have provided had it known of Liggett’s grants, Dr. Brawley said.

The reaction of the Dr’s involved? “It seems clear that you are trying to suggest that Cornell was trying to conceal this gift, which is entirely false. The gift was announced publicly, the advocacy and public health community knew about it, it is quite easy to look it up on the Internet, its board has independent Cornell faculty on it, and it was fully disclosed to grant funding organizations.” O, and now the foundation no longer accepts grants from tobacco companies.

But:

Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine and the author of a book about conflicts of interest, said he believed that Weill Cornell had created the foundation to hide its receipt of money from a cigarette company. “You have to ask yourself the question, ‘Why did the tobacco company want to support her research?’ ” Dr. Kassirer said. “They want to show that lung cancer is not so bad as everybody thinks because screening can save people; and that’s outrageous.”

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1 Claudia

March 27, 2008 @ 5:35 pm CET

If true it’s great, but the data is suspect until repeated by an unbiased source. The data we have now is that 90% of lung cancers happen to smokers, that lung cancer has only a 20% survival rate 5 years in, and that smokers have a 1 in 12 (!!!!!) chance of eventually dying from lung cancer.

Again, if the data is true, it’s fantastic news, but I’ll wait to hear from another source.

2 ngkong

March 28, 2008 @ 9:49 am CET

anyway i have stopped smoking for 2 years now…

3 C Stanley

March 28, 2008 @ 11:28 am CET

I can see several sides to the issue of conflict of interest here. Certainly as Claudia points out, this conclusion is suspect until verified (but really that’s part of the scientific process anyway, that a conclusion should be independently verified before it gains acceptance.)

And on the one hand, it’s not good if tobacco companies cherry pick which research to fund, which will attempt to make things look more favorable about the smoking/cancer links. But on the other hand, if tobacco companies are giving money for the general purpose of research and then scientists are determining which studies should be funded, it seems like a win-win to me. Obviously the cigarette companies are motivated by the PR boost they will get for appearing to care about the cancers associated with their products- they want to do a public mea culpa, basically. If that can be done in a way that doesn’t taint the science, then why not?

I’m not clear on the details of this particular case, whether or not there were appropriate safeguards against the conflict of interest having some bearing on the type of study done or the results of it, but as a general principle I think this should be worked out. There should be no way for the companies to know what studies they’re funds are going toward, but on the other side there should be transparency of reporting for published studies which drew funds from these sources. That way the cigarette companies couldn’t influence the process of study selection or publication of any studies which would be more damaging to them.