Trial Focuses on History of Smoking-Cancer Link
A medical historian testifying in the government’s $280-billion tobacco industry trial conceded Monday that doubts about the link between smoking and cancer persisted into the 1960s, but he stood by his description of the industry as “rogue” and “deviant.”
Allan Brandt, an expert testifying on behalf of the Justice Department, acknowledged that some prominent researchers were still reluctant to pinpoint smoking as a definite culprit in causing cancer, even after a 1959 Surgeon General report said it had been implicated in the disease.
“There was a group of skeptics,” Brandt said.
The government charges that cigarette makers lied and tried to confuse the public about the dangers of smoking as part of a 50-year industry conspiracy.
In written testimony, Brandt said the world medical profession had reached a consensus by the 1950s that smoking caused lung cancer.
But the tobacco industry, in the face of mounting evidence, manufactured controversy over the subject and mobilized skeptics of the smoking-cancer link, Brandt said.
Brandt is the second government witness in the racketeering suit being heard by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington. The trial is expected to take as long as six months.
Launched in a 1999 suit, the case targets Altria Group Inc. and its Philip Morris USA unit; Loews Corp.’s Lorillard Tobacco unit, which has a tracking stock, Carolina Group; Vector Group Ltd.’s Liggett Group; Reynolds American Inc.’s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco unit; and British American Tobacco unit British American Tobacco Investments Ltd.
Under cross-examination Monday, Brandt acknowledged that even though epidemiological studies linked smoking and cancer in the 1950s, some scientists still wanted further evidence from laboratory experiments.
“There was a real controversy. There were people independent of the tobacco industry who were involved in that controversy,” Brown & Williamson lawyer David Bernick said, citing a series of statements from researchers at the time.
Brown & Williamson, formerly a unit of British American Tobacco, was acquired by Reynolds earlier this year.
Bernick also cited articles Brandt had written referring to cigarette makers as a “deviant” and “rogue” industry, in an effort to portray him as a biased, anti-smoking advocate.
Brandt was unapologetic. “I would use those terms to describe the behavior of the industry,” he said.
Earlier in the day, a federal appeals court heard arguments from lawyers for the Justice Department and subsidiaries of BAT over whether the company should be forced to turn over a key, potentially incriminating document that the Justice Department has long sought.
The document, a 1990 memorandum written by an outside lawyer named Andrew Foyle, advised a BAT subsidiary in Australia on its document retention policy. The company has argued that the memo is a protected attorney-client communication.
In June, Kessler ordered BAT to provide the memo, saying the company had engaged in “inexcusable conduct” in its two-year struggle to withhold the memo.
Justice Department lawyers contend that it shows BAT efforts to destroy documents that could be used to incriminate the company in smoker lawsuits.
