BIG TOBACCO PAID FOR DEBUNKING

Courts: Scientists were paid to write letters and manuscripts discrediting
studies linking secondhand smoke to lung cancer.

St. Paul, Minn. - The tobacco industry paid 13 scientists more than
$156,000 for writing letters and manuscripts to discredit studies linking
secondhand smoke to lung cancer, including a 1993 Environmental Protection
Agency report, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Tuesday.

"It's a systematic effort to pollute the scientific literature. It's not a
legitimate scientific debate," said Dr. Stanton Glantz, a professor of
medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of the
1996 book "The Cigarette Papers."

"What we have is massive evidence of a propaganda machine being run by
lawyers, directed by lawyers, most of them external to the industry," said
Jim Repace, a former senior policy analyst for the EPA.

The Tobacco Institute paid $10,000 to Nathan Mantel, a biostatistician at
American University in Washington, for a letter printed in a 1993 issue of
the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Pioneer Press said.

The letter criticized a study linking secondhand smoke to cancers in
nonsmokers that JAMA published in 1992. A small note at the bottom said,
"Support for the analyses contained in this letter came from the Tobacco
Institute. The views expressed are Mr. Mantel's and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Tobacco Institute or the American University."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski