Act I, Scene 3: Beginning to Cover Up
"SUBMISSION BATTELLE OR GRIFFITH DEVELOPMENTS TO
SURGEON GENERAL UNDESIRABLE"
Cable from Addison Yeaman,
7/3/63, 1802.03
While privately optimistic about the future, Yeaman and others at BAT decided
not to let United States Surgeon General Luther Terry know what they already
knew about the addictiveness of nicotine from the Project Hippo studies,
or about other health information that was trickling in.
This decision had far-reaching ramifications. An advisory committee was
then laying the groundwork for the 1964 Surgeon General's Report, which
would state unequivocally that smoking causes lung cancer. The Surgeon General
was forced to conclude, however, that there was too little information available
to decide whether nicotine was addictive - something the industry was already
assuming to be a fact. For decades, the cigarette makers remained in the
scientific vanguard on how nicotine works on the human body. However, not
until 1988 did the Surgeon General proclaim that nicotine is addictive.
The Yeaman cable is terse, but it speaks for itself: They had the studies,
and they decided to withold them. The longer reply to which Yeaman refers
is the 7/17/63
memo 1802.05 cited earlier.
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