More misleading science from the tobacco industry

doi:10.1136/bmjusa.03070002

BMJ, doi: 10.1136/bmjusa.03070002, (Published 30 July 2003)

Editorial

More misleading science from the tobacco industry

Delaying clean air laws through disinformation

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

From BMJ USA 2003;July:352

The article by Enstrom and Kabat (p 369) is the latest in along series of publications funded by the tobacco industry thatreport little or no relationship between environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and disease.¹ The current study has an aura of legitimacy because it is drawn from the American Cancer Society(ACS) Cancer Prevention Study I (CPS-I), a landmark prospectivestudy of the hazards of active smoking,² and because the analysesare based on nearly 40 years of data. Despite these apparentstrengths, the study by Enstrom and Kabat is uninformativeand its conclusions are exaggerated.

Indeed, the negative conclusions were entirely predictable fromthe outset because of the flawed way in which exposure to ETSwas classified. CPS-I collected no information on ETS exposureother than the smoking status of the spouse. The study beganin 1959, an era in which secondhand smoke was . . . [Full text of this article]

Michael J Thun, vice president, epidemiology and surveillance research

American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA. mthun@cancer.org)