Tobacco industry manipulated data, experiments on cigarette safety
Smoking cessation products, including nicotine patches and gum, are among the most common over the counter medications.
Smoking cessation products, including nicotine patches and gum, are among the most common over the counter medications. The decision to quit cigarettes should not rely on safety data provided by the tobacco industry, according to new research from the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF). Companies' data are the products of flawed experiments and manipulative reporting, the study has found.
As part of a legal settlement, the tobacco industry was required to disclose several documents to the public. Among them were laboratory studies from 2002 on the safety of cigarette additives such as menthol, which the UCSF researchers reviewed independently, as published in the journal PLoS Medicine.
"When we conducted our own analysis by studying additives per cigarette - following Philip Morris' original protocol - we found that 15 carcinogenic chemicals increased by 20 percent or more," said researcher Stanton Glantz, PhD, who added the original experiments conducted on rats included too few animals to derive any significant data.
Furthermore, research that was published in 2002 in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology was tainted by the fact that members of the editorial board had financial ties to the tobacco industry, the UCSF study said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 20 people with smoking-related illnesses for every one person who dies as a result of tobacco use.
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