<nettime> Even more news about Swedish tobacco scientist

[Karl-Erik Tallmo <ketallmo {AT} nisus.se>]

Hello all!

Today the world news almost exploded with material about the Swedish
scientist Ragnar Rylander, and his secret work for the tobacco industry.

An article published Thursday in The Lancet, titled "The whole truth 
and nothing but the truth? The research that Philip Morris did not 
want you to see", written by Pascal Diethelm, Jean-Charles Rielle and 
Martin McKee, reveals to some extent new information about Philip 
Morris secret lab (INBIFO) in Cologne in Germany, where Rylander was 
coordinator and supervisor. The researchers knew about the dangers of 
passive smoking and so-called sidestream smoke at least from 1982 and 
wrote about it in approx. 800 confidential reports, but did not 
publish anything about this until 1994.

After only a few hours there were 35 links about this at Google news, 
among them:

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5334328
http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=948659&tw=wn_wire_story
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Health/Tobacco-giant-accused-of-passive-smoke-coverup/2004/11/11/1100131138779.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0411110243nov11,1,2838696.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4000417.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1348111,00.html
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=6776973
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1508&ncid=751&e=11&u=/afp/20041110/hl_afp/health_disease_cancer
http://www.healthtalk.ca/smoking_risks_11112004_3993.php
http://www.elitestv.com/pub/2004/Nov/EEN4193996221dbf.html
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/508239/
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11352112%255E1702,00.html
http://abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1241893.htm
http://www.healthcentral.com/news/NewsFullText.cfm?id=1505205
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=16231

The Lancet editor Richard Horton publishes the article beforehand on 
the web because of its urgency:

"Given the continuing debate about the way governments should respond 
to calls for a ban on smoking in public places, we have published 
this work early online to inform that discussion as a matter of 
urgency," Richard Horton says.

This happens only little more than a week after Geneva University 
distanced itself from professor Rylander and even wishes to warn the 
entire scientific community against Rylander's research results, not 
just a few studies but the totality of his works over 30 years.

The Lancet article itself is at: 
http://image.thelancet.com/extras/03art7306web.pdf


Karl-Erik Tallmo


__________________________________________________________________

   KARL-ERIK TALLMO, Swedish writer, artist and journalist.
   Contributor to Nordic dailies and magazines for the last 25
   years. Tallmo has written three books. He has participated as
   an expert in governmental investigations on new media and been
   a member of advisory boards, e.g. at the Royal Library, the
   Swedish IT Commission, and the Swedish Research Council.
   ARCHIVE: http://www.nisus.se/archive/artiklar.html
   MAGAZINE: http://art-bin.com
  __________________________________________________________________


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