German heart specialist received research grant from tobacco industry foundation

The work of several leading German medical scientists has been sponsored by the International Philip Morris Research Foundation. Johannes Spatz, public health specialist and antitobacco activist in Berlin, made the discovery in a search of the internet archive of the tobacco company Philip Morris.

An official question by the Green Party in the Berlin Senate has publicly highlighted that the cardiologist Eckart Fleck, from the Berlin Heart Centre, had received a grant of €937 000 (£744 000; $1.28m) in 2003 to sponsor his work, analysis of the development of atherosclerosis, with the help of magnetic resonance imaging and histochemistry.

Professor Fleck …