sample="quota" bates="TIMN0119282" isource="ti" decade="19xx" class="ui" date="19000000" Final -- Media Briefing -- H. Kornegay We appreciate your coming here this morning to obtain some background information on a controversy that is important to your readers, viewers or listeners. About two-fifths of the adult population today are cigarette smokers. During the past 20 years the health implications of this custom have attracted increasing attention in the medical and scientific community. During the past 17 years the tobacco industry has become the leading source of financial support for scientific research relating to smoking and health questions. During the past nine years, this question has been the subject of public policy decisions by governments at every level from the city councils to the Presidents of the United States. Here and there we've seen elements of emotionalism, prohibitionism, even fanaticism that have given us more clouding than enlightenment of the scientific and medical issues. I'd like to come back to this line of thought in a few minutes. First, let me note a thing or two about this briefing. Whatever we have to say today, is on the record. We want any of you to interrupt at any point with a question or any remark you want to make. The formal part of this briefing will not go beyond 60 minutes, and a drink and some lunch will be waiting for us. Before going further, I want to introduce to you the medical director of the Tobacco Institute, Dr. Gilbert Huebner. He has been in his present position less than a year, but before he joined the Institute , as a surgeon , he saw a great deal of the problems of health from the inside out, so to speak. Dr. Huebner left the Caylor-Nickel Clinic in Indiana, where he was staff surgeon, to come to us in Washington. He's a Harvard graduate, and took his doctorate at Cornell University Medical College. He is a veteran of very distinguished Army medical service, including posts as chief of surgery and commanding officer of a station hospital in France. He was resident in general surgery at Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco for four years. Dr. Huebner is a diplomate of the American Board of Surgery and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He will give you some of the highlights of the medical and scientific basis for our view that we do not yet have the answers in this controversy about smoking and health. Dr. Huebner? *** Thank you, Doctor. You've given in a few minutes some of the high spots in the medical and scientific area which demonstrate that we simply are not dealing with a closed case. This is by no means a situation in which the tobacco people are clutching at slim reeds, either. Far from it. We've given you a document which shows the lack of acceptance by some of the foremost scientists and physicians of the theory that tobacco causes disease in this country and elsewhere. Every one of those statements is in the public domain and each of them is a very carefully considered expression of scientific views. There is another document in your background material, which gives you a timetable of the various kinds of federal action in this controversy starting back in 1962. There isn't any point in my reciting them in detail to you, but there are some interesting patterns worth noting. When you look at it, you will see that the first major event was the report of the Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health to the Surgeon General back in '64. Right there we began to see the conflicting reaction within the government that continues right down to this day. HEW published the report and endorsed it. FTC within a week accepted it without qualification and used it as the basis to propose a required health warning in cigarette advertising. The Trade Commission has continued to press for this warning ever since. Parenthetically, I would say it remains to be seen whether the industry's recent decision to show the package warning in its advertising will suit the Commission. What can the media do to advance scientific progress and protect citizens? Primarily, they can tell people that there is another side to the cigarettes controversy. But first they must be willing to listen to the other side. You are doing that today very admirably. We are trying to outline the facts which convince us not that our product is above scientific suspicion, not that it has been scientifically exonerated--but simply that it is in every sense still on trial. The cigarette industry has two commitments in light of that fact--to foster research as we cited earlier, as the only way to resolve this controversy--and to attempt to make our position clear to the public. This gathering today is an example of the latter, and we deeply appreciate your attention to our story. None of it, as I have suggested it in my remarks, would make much sense without a glimpse of the medical and scientific considerations on which we rest our case. It's by no means as simple as the neat summaries out of the front of the Surgeon General's reports that came over the wire services or the networks from Washington, D. C. We find it very difficult to capture public attention long enough to provide the details and the technical points that can counteract the headlines made by the adversaries of cigarettes. I'd like to wind up the formal part of this briefing by showing you a case history of one of these anti-cigarette headline stunts that turned out eventually to be meaningless. The example I'm going to discuss in the famous "smoking dogs" experiment that was announced a year ago February by the American Cancer Society. What they did was to try to create an illusion which reality gradually shattered. A good deal of the reality was unearthed by newspaper and television reporters. Left: February 5, 1970 Waldorf Astoria... The story began on February fifth last year at the Waldorf-Astoria Right: Swords Hotel in New York, where the American Cancer Society staged a news conference for two of tis researchers, Doctors Hammond and Auerbach. The Society announced what it claimed was the major link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. In their publicity release--and this is an exact quote-- the 3. Right: "Scientists have produced..." Cancer Society said: For the first time, scientists have produced lung cancer in a significantly large experimental animal as a result of heavy cigarette smoking. End quote. They went on to say that lung cancer was found--quote--in 12 of the heavy smoker dogs. End quote. It was a pretty sensational study. The next day the newspapers across 4. Left: February 6, 1970 San Francisco Chronicle Right: Smoking Dogs Show... the country really played it up. The San Francisco Chronicle ran this headline: (Pause) 5. Left: February 6, 1970 Chicago Tribune Right: Dogs Inhale... The Chicago Tribune played it this way: (Pause) 6. Left: The Washington Post Right: Cigarettes Produce... Here was the Washington Post story: (Pause) 7. Left: Reader's Digest Right: Last Gasp...The Reader's Digest ran this headline: (Pause) 8. Left: Time Story & Cover Right: Newsweek Story and Cover And it was a major story for the news weeklies, too. (Pause) 9. Left: February 6, 1970, New York Times Right: 12 Dogs Develop... It was Page One in the New York Times, and the gist of all the stories was that Doctors Hammond and Auerbach found that twelve of their experimental dogs had developed lung cancer. This was after they inhaled cigarette smoke for more than two years through holes cut in their windpipes. Scientists had been trying for decades to produce lung cancer in animals with inhaled smoke, and never had been able to do it. So that was the story everybody read, and it was repeated in various media 10. Left: April 30, 1970 over the next several months. On April 30, for example, Doctor Auerbach again gave the gist of the findings on a television news broadcast: (Film) 11. Right: Film on Left: For many years... (Auerbach: For many years we've been working on the effects of cigarette smoke on the bronchial 12. Left: We have observed... tubes of human beings. We have observed over this period of time 13. Left: Now we have... changes which lead to lung cancer. Now we have done the same thing to dogs that human beings have done to 14. Left: Namely, put... themselves. Namely, put cigarette smoke down into their bronchial tubes, and we have observed a series 15. Left: These dogs... of changes leading to lung cancer. These dogs have developed lung cancer exactly like those of human beings.) 60. Left: Swords In our own minds we put together 61. Left 10 months delay all these inconsistencies, the 62. Left: Unpublished... long delay in publication, the obvious reverse with which the data have been received by patho- 63. Left: Accepted in 9 days... logists and other reviewers, the strange, almost suspicious circumstances under which it was 64. Left: Refuse Independent Review finally published, and the fact that the Cancer Society still refuses to permit the data to be looked at by independent 65. Left: Swords scientists. And the Tobacco Institute contends the whole report is very far from accurate and that it is likely that none-repeat none of the dogs developed lung cancer. Yet this is what was hailed by the American Cancer Society as a scientific breakthrough--the only alleged breakthrough evidence in prestigious reports both in the U. S. and in England. And the Surgeon General of the United States, who never examined the experiment itself as far as I know, warmly endorsed the original press release version. 66. All black Many people still believe that Doctors Hammond and Auerbach are reputable scientists. They've spent a lot of time and money doing this experiment, and it's extremely difficult to suggest that their whole project was a waste. My own feeling is that the doctors did contribute to a publicity stunt, and then became the unhappy victim of it. The editor of 67. Left: "When you receive... Archives herself commented that when you receive grants and when research money is tight, you have to go along a little bit with your sponsors. She went on to say that she was sure that the hubbub in the lay press was not the wish of the investigators. 68. Left: Lots of beagles Right: Swords Now, we've taken a substantial amount of your time to provide what we consider a broad perspective on this issue of health and smoking. We've tried to show how many different elements are involved, and why a simplistic answer is not logical or justified. Yet the Cancer Society and many others are trying to take this simple approach in this controversy. I guess the moral is that when any institution makes sensational assertions they have to be looked at very carefully. 69. All black In this particular case, the press and TV reporters did a superb job of digging away at the publicity story until they found the reality underneath it. For that we're appreciative. We're hopeful the press will continue this probing role in the controversy. And now, Doctor Huebner and I will try to answer any questions. I know this has been a heavy dose this morning, and there are probably a lot of things you might want to talk about that we haven't gotten into, so feel free to speak up. *** If there aren't any more questions right now, we'll go ahead and have a drink and some lunch, and there'll be no more speech-making. I hope that we close this session with your having a bit more comprehensive understanding of this controversy--maybe a little better impression of the corporate responsibility of the fine companies which we represent. I am no expert on corporate responsibility, but I am certainly proud of the industry's research effort; of the fact that it seeks open dialogue with the public on the smoking-health question; that it recognized, way back in the 60's, its obligation not to promote its products among young people and ceased doing so that it extended this policy by volunteering two years ago to discontinue its broadcast advertising which was reaching so many youngsters, to the annoyance of their parents; that it volunteered to put the "tar"-nicotine scores in its advertising which you now see every day, and that soon you will be seeing the Surgeon General's opinion in every ad as a further industry step. Well, thank you for coming. Now let's see about some lunch.