http://www.fleshandstone.net/dailyscan/taintedstudies.html
Weill Cornell Medical College researchers Claudia Henschke and David
Yankelevitz published numerous articles about CT scans and lung cancer
in major medical journals without revealing their $3.6 million grant
from Vector, the parent company of the Liggett Group, a major
cigarette manufacturer.
In an April editorial, "Smoke, then Fire: Lung Cancer Screening
Studies Under Further Scrutiny" The Oncologist journal summarizes the
unraveling of a hidden agenda by a cigarette manufacturer: Make it
appear that CT screening can prevent death from lung cancer.
Lung cancer screening articles by Weill Cornell Medical College
researchers Claudia Henschke and David Yankelevitz have appeared in
the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the Journal
of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The Oncologist and
elsewhere.The source of their funding was not revealed to the journals
until stories appeared in The Cancer Letter and the New York Times.
In The Oncologist's words:
"Henschke and Yankelevitz financed some of their lung cancer screening
work with a $3.6 million grant from Vector, the parent company of the
Liggett Group, a major cigarette manufacturer. The tobacco money was
filtered through a nonprofit foundation, the Foundation for Lung
Cancer Early Detection, Prevention & Treatment, that was hastily
established in late 2000. Henschke, Yankelevitz, Antonio Gotto (dean
of Weill Cornell Medical College and a noted cardiology researcher),
and Arthur Mahon (chair of the Weill Cornell Board of Overseers) are
the foundation's officers and directors. The foundation's sup****t was
acknowledged in a few articles published by these authors, but the
origin of the money was not obvious to the journals, as recently
observed by Jeffrey Drazen, the editor-in-chief of the NEJM [6].
Goldberg further do***ents that the authors subsequently accepted
grant sup****t from the American Cancer Society and other sources that
specifically prohibit projects that receive funding from tobacco
companies. In fact, the authors neither acknowledged this funding from
Vector nor their foundation in the paper published by The Oncologist
[7].
Thus, smoke revealed the underlying fire. Clearly, tobacco companies
can exploit the Henschke-Yankelevitz message that CT screening can
prevent death from lung cancer. The subliminal message follows: "All a
tobacco smoker has to do is get a CT every few years." Disclosure of
the real source of their funding would not only have been relevant, it
could likely have prevented publication of these controversial results
in any major journal. Had the editors of The Oncologist known about
this, we would not have accepted the article, and we state
unequivocally that this Journal will not knowingly publish articles
from authors sup****ted by tobacco money, whether that money is
laundered through a foundation or given directly to the investigators.
Our disclosure forms that must be submitted prior to publication of
any new article with or without CME will so state."
Henschke and Yankelevitz also failed to re****t their financial
interest, in the form of held patents, for CT software used to
evaluate lung screening films and for a needle used to biopsy lung
nodules when submitting a separate article for publication in The
Oncologist. According to an article in The Oncologist's February
issue, "They asserted that, because this technology was never
explicitly mentioned in their article, they had no obligation to
disclose these interests."
http://www.fleshandstone.net/dailyscan/taintedstudies.html
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