American Medical Association:
hypocrisy rampant
An interesting revelation came out of the Florida flight attendants' class action suit against the U.S. tobacco companies this week when testimony was given about a 10-year contract between the American Medical Association and the Tobacco Institute, a research arm of the tobacco industry.
A report from Associated Press (St. Petersburg Times, Aug. 16, 97) describes a deal in which the Tobacco Institute paid $2 million per year to the American Medical Association for research into smoking. The contract was cancelled when the research funded by the money did not clear cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer.
The contract ended in 1971.
The headline from St. Petersburg Times: "Ex-tobacco official defends AMA contract."
We wonder, in these selectively censorious times, whether AMA will be called upon to "explain" or "defend" the contract. It isn't likely to happen in the Florida lawsuits, where the tobacco companies are required to do all the explaining. In fact, we doubt it will happen at all.
Why? It would be far too embarrassing, and would tend to imply that the Emperor, in the form of the U.S. health establishment, has no clothes.
Consider that tobacco companies are under fire for advertising practices dating back to the '50s because of what they allegedly knew about smoking and health. Today, in a form of scholarly censorship that shouldn't exist (but should apply equally to the anti-tobacco movement if it does), the AMA encourages medical journals not to publish research funded by the tobacco industry.
Given that position, what was the AMA doing, years after the Surgeon General released its report on smoking and health, accepting money from tobacco interests? Why was it alright for them to accept money then, but wrong for others to publish tobacco company funded research now?
Does the AMA ask scholarly journals not to publish studies funded by other industries -- or is tobacco the only blackballed source of research money? If the research money from one industry is considered compromising, why isn't all research money from private industry
considered suspect? Why doesn't the same rationale apply to avowed anti-smoker interests that fund research? How many companies have contracts with the AMA now, and why isn't this considered compromising?
These are important questions. But don't expect any answers from the AMA.
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