British American Tobacco Worked to Discredit Cancer Link
Internal company papers from British American Tobacco reveal that
Britain's largest tobacco company spent millions on research to
challenge the link between smoking and lung cancer, the Observer
reported May 30.
According to the documents, BAT funded university research that
supported the "genetic predisposition" theory, which argued
that certain individuals are born more susceptible to lung cancer
than others.
The theory suggested that only one in 10 smokers had a "heightened
risk" from smoking. Scientists funded by the tobacco industry
also said that they were three years away from developing a testing
kit that would enable smokers to determine whether they had a heightened
genetic risk of developing cancer.
Many experts questioned the research, arguing that it ignored other
smoking-related diseases, such as emphysema.
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