Passive-smoking study faces review
Did the tobacco industry skew results of survey?

Nature Vol 446, p242, 15 March 2007

Rex Dalton

Officials at the University of California are in the throes of a debate on whether to ban research grants from tobacco companies. The discussion has now sparked an independent review of a controversial 2003 report that contested the dangers of second-hand smoke...

The new review concerns a study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that said spouses of smokers were no more likely to die of lung cancer and heart disease than were spouses of non-smokers (J. E. Enstrom and G. C. Kabat Br. Med. J. 326, 1057; 2003). The study, led by epidemiologist James Enstrom of the University of California, Los Angeles, looked at 118,000 subjects from a study set up by the American Cancer Society beginning in 1959.

But top scientists at the cancer society say they repeatedly warned Enstrom of possible deficiencies in his analysis - particularly a 25-year gap in which exposure to second-hand smoke could not be verified...

In August 2006, a US federal judge cited the BMJ study as a prime example of how nine tobacco companies engaged in criminal racketeering and fraud to hide the dangers of tobacco smoke. The tobacco companies dispute the judge’s decision, which they are appealing. Enstrom and his co-author Geoffrey Kabat, formerly of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, stoutly defend the research against its critics....



Source: Nature