The Council for Tobacco Research




When the scientists started their studies on tobacco in general and its connection with cancer in particular the sales on tobacco products dropped immediately. People were alarmed, they did not want to poison their bodies and many of them gave up smoking. Tobacco industry panicked because the profits were quickly moving to zero. In 1954, tobacco giant, Philip Morris created the Council for Tobacco Research.

This organization was established to show that people can get cancer and in particular lung cancer from other sources, not only smoking. It became a shield for tobacco industry although there have been more money invested in advertising than in actual scientific research. This campaign was called the “costliest, longest-running and most successful PR”.

Instead of finding good scientists on the first place, cigarette makers came to John Hill, the founder of a huge PR company, Hill and Knowlton who created a wonderful but expensive campaign plan that has been on for more than 50 years and tobacco giants are still using it.

According to Hill’s plan the Tobacco Institute Research Committee (TIRC) was founded. It immediately ran an advertisement in more than 400 newspapers all over the U.S. with “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers”. In this article tobacco companies apologized to the smokers and admitted their “special responsibility” to the public, promising to learn more about the effect of tobacco on people’s health.

However, these were false illusions given to public to stop talks about harmful influence of tobacco, in fact, as long as TIRC existed it cared only about tobacco industry interests.

The first director of the Committee became Dr. Clarence Cook Little who used to be a managing director of American Society for the Control of Cancer, the predecessor of American Cancer Society. This was a good maneuver to cover people’s eyes on the work of the TIRC. Dr. Little believed in genetic susceptibility to cancer and denied outside influence like smoking.

The effect was immediate: 65% of all the newspapers supported the position of the Tobacco Institute saying, “The case for and against tobacco consumption as a cause of cancer may be settled by the Tobacco Industry’s Research Committee”. Dr. Little appeared everywhere claiming there were no cancer causing products found in cigarettes. When he was asked in a courtroom in 1960 to describe the TIRC research under testimony, the director admitted there has been no study on tobacco smoke because its harmful effect on human’s organism has not been proven and such a study would only be a waste of time and money. As for animal studies, Little said they were not true because tobacco can affect animals in a different way than humans.

Ten years after its creation, in 1964, TIRC was renamed to the Council of Tobacco Research (CTR). At this time came out the first U.S. Surgeon General’s report that proved the connection of tobacco smoking and cancer. The tobacco industry invested $20 million in CTR and hired 120 sceintists to work on the studies.

In 1996 a secret division, Special Projects, was established to created the data that could protect tobacco companies in court.

CTR worked had to find a way of breaking smoking-lung cancer link, but it did not have much success. The scientists asked whether hand-writing had something to do with lung cancer, or both smoking and lung cancer are caused by the same third party as psychological identity, genetic susceptibility, religion, or hard world situation like war time. When they failed with these, CTR made research on acceptable tobacco amount that will not cause cancer, so called “tobacco threashold”.

After unsuccessful battle, CTR turned away from the diseases closely related to tobacco smoking. Instead, all of its grands are connected to something absolutely distant from smoking or cancer: cell biology, immunology, pharmacology, development biology, etc.

In 1999 the Council for Tobacco Research closed its doors. Although it existed for a long time and proved itself as a powerful PR project, many PR professionals consider it an embarassment. No matter how hard their day may be, they can always say, “At least I don’t work for Tobacco Institute”.

Thomas Neal

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Posted on April 8, 2009 
Filed Under Tobacco History, Tobacco Research

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