Act I, Scene 1: Six Thousand Secret Mice
"We must admit that the threat to our industry is serious and very
real... I believe we are now starting on a sound programme of investigation
that in a few years will make it possible to see the situation and judge
the future more clearly."
Sir Charles Ellis, British
researcher, 1962 BAT international scientific conference, 1102.01, p.28.
At a conference in the English seaport town of Southampton in 1962, B&W's
top scientific officials met with their counterparts from British-American
Tobacco Co. affiliates around the world to decide what to do about the health
issue, which had grown more and more troublesome. The mood was optimistic.
In contrast to the PR-oriented TIRC, the BAT companies decided to embark
on a secret research campaign to either disprove that smoking causes lung
cancer or to isolate the problem-causing elements of cigarette smoke and
remove them using filters, additives or other means.
They built a brand new laboratory called Harrogate. They planned to carry
out one of the largest biological research programs in history, using 6,000
mice. The experiments had code names. Project Janus included dozens of experiments
on smoking and cancer and went on for 13 years. Project Hippo dealt with
the effects of nicotine and was carried out at a private lab called Battelle.
The conferees were already well aware that, as BAT researcher Sir Charles
Ellis pointed out, "smoking is a habit of addiction" (minutes
of the Southampton meeting, 1102.01, p. 7).
This
Document is really
where the trouble begins, and it's full of fascinating moments. For more
on the secret mice, look at p. 11. The group discussion which begins on
p. 29 has lots of great material, such as p. 47, where one of the executives
complains about how hard it is being interviewed about the health problem
on TV.
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