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Excerpts from: International Experts Slam Tobacco Industry Second Hand Tobacco Smoke Study
For Information Contact Professor Banzhaf (202) 659 43 10

"Marry a Smoker, Get Less Cancer," says Industry sponsored study.
Former U.S. Surgeon General Julius Richmond, M.D., to Chair Panel of Experts

Several of the world's top scientists in Miami attending the Second Annual Symposium of the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute (FAMRI) will be holding a press conference to debunk an about to be published tobacco industry study that claims that second hand tobacco smoke does not cause heart disease and lung cancer.

Scheduled to be published in Friday's British Medical Journal, the study was paid for by the tobaccos industry's Center for Indoor Air Research. The 46 State Attorneys General closed the Center under allegations of fraud as part of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco industry. Julius Richmond, M.D., U.S. Surgeon General from 1977-1981 and Chair of FAMRI's Medical Advisory Board, will Chair the press Conference. "This study is just the latest in a long string of studies designed to deny the evidence and confuse the public," said Richmond. "The first study linking second hand tobacco smoke and lung caner was published 22 years ago when I was Surgeon General and the evidence has only become stronger since then."

Another speaker Michael Cummings, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Cancer Prevention, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Roswell Park and an expert in the 1959 data set analyzed in the study said, "this data set is simply not appropriate in answering the question of whether second hand tobacco smoke caused any disease whatsoever. The key to any Epidemiology study is comparing people who are exposed to second hand tobacco smoke to people who are not exposed. Using marriage to a smoker in 1959 as a measure to exposure to second hand tobacco smoke over a 40 year period makes no sense."

James Repace, an expert on measuring exposure to second hand tobacco smoke added, "it was simply impossible to find people not exposed to second hand tobacco smoke in 1959. The lack of an unexposed control group assured a negative conclusion in this study regardless of the true effect of second hand tobacco smoke on cancer and heart disease.'

Lisa Bero, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Health Policy at the University of California, San Francisco, and an expert on the influence of financial ties on research outcomes observed, "this may be another example of where the financial disclosure at the end of the paper does not fully describe the extent of involvement of the tobacco industry in the study." Bero's earlier research on the Center for Indoor Air Research showed that most of the studies they funded on second hand tobacco smoke were not selected by scientists but rather selected and controlled by its executives and lawyers. In contrast to research funded by non-tobacco sources the research the Center funded almost always concluded that second hand tobacco smoke was not harmful."

Stanton Glantz, Ph.D., and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco reiterated that every independent organized scientific body in the world that has considered the effects of second hand tobacco smoke has concluded that it causes cancer, heart disease, sudden infant death and variety of other diseases in non smokers. "The
fact that it is possible to see negative effects on the heart, blood and blood vessels with just thirty minutes of exposure to second hand tobacco smoke proves that these effects are both real and immediate."

Patricia Young, a flight attendant and Trustees of FAMRI will relate the real life effects of second hand tobacco smoke in human terms on herself and friends and colleagues.