"A delicate diplomatic situation": tobacco industry efforts to gain control of the Framingham Study.

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
Janine K CataldoRuth E Malone

Abstract

The Framingham Heart Study (henceforth Framingham) is among the gold standards for epidemiological research. Being a prospective cohort study of 5,000+ men and women, it provided early findings about the causes of coronary heart disease (CHD), following a cohort over the course of 24 years. After US government funding ended, the tobacco industry funded Council for Tobacco Research (CTR) provided continued funding for analyses related to smoking. This study sought to understand the tobacco industry's motivation and activities in funding Framingham. We analyzed previously undisclosed tobacco industry documents, conducting iterative searches of the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/), and assembled a historical case study. CTR funded Framingham to obtain full access to Framingham data. CTR planned for long-time industry consultant Carl Seltzer to reanalyze them to suggest that tobacco-related morbidity and mortality primarily resulted from "constitutional" factors, such as age or ethnicity. Once data were obtained, CTR terminated funding for the Framingham principal investigator, who disagreed with Seltzer. Seltzer's critical analyses of subsequently published work by the Framingham team created conf...Continue Reading

References

May 1, 1975·The American Journal of the Medical Sciences·C C Seltzer
Jun 1, 1980·Circulation·W B KannelD L McGee
Sep 1, 1980·American Heart Journal·C C Seltzer
Jan 1, 1995·Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
Sep 18, 1996·JAMA : the Journal of the American Medical Association·L H Pastor
May 1, 1997·Journal of Clinical Epidemiology·C C Seltzer
Sep 12, 2000·Tobacco Control·R E Malone, E D Balbach
Dec 14, 2002·BMJ : British Medical Journal·Mi-Kyung Hong, Lisa A Bero
Nov 5, 2003·The American Journal of Bioethics : AJOB·Sheldon Krimsky
Jul 21, 2005·American Journal of Public Health·Annamaria BabaLisa A Bero
Feb 28, 2009·Accountability in Research·Jenny WhiteLisa A Bero

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Citations

Jan 29, 2016·Nature·Stephan Lewandowsky, Dorothy Bishop
May 1, 2019·Western Journal of Nursing Research·Janine K Cataldo

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