Tobacco manufacturers' defence against plaintiffs' claims of cancer causation: throwing mud at the wall and hoping some of it will stick. (25/75)

BACKGROUND: In the late 1990s and the early part of this decade, the major US cigarette manufacturers admitted, to varying degrees, that smoking causes cancer and other diseases. OBJECTIVE: To examine how tobacco manufacturers have defended themselves against charges that their products caused cancer in plaintiffs in 34 personal injury lawsuits, all but one of which were litigated between the years 1986 and 2003. METHODS: Defence opening and closing statements, trial testimony, and depositions for these cases were obtained from the Tobacco Deposition and Trial Testimony Archive (http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/). All available defence-related transcripts from these cases were reviewed and a content analysis was conducted to identify common themes in the defendants' arguments. RESULTS: After review of the transcripts, defendants' arguments were grouped into seven categories: (1) there is no scientific proof that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer; (2) the plaintiff did not have lung cancer as claimed; (3) the plaintiff had a type of lung cancer not associated with cigarette smoking; (4) the plaintiff had cancer that may have been associated with cigarette smoking or smokeless tobacco use, but tobacco products were not to blame in this particular case; (5) the plaintiff had cancer that may have been associated with cigarette smoking, but the defendant's cigarette brands were not to blame; (6) the defendant's cigarettes (or smokeless tobacco) may have played a role in the plaintiff's illness/death, but other risk factors were present that negate or mitigate the defendant's responsibility; and (7) the defendant's cigarettes may have been a factor in the plaintiff's illness/death, but the plaintiff knew of the health risks and exercised free will in choosing to smoke and declining to quit. Use of the argument that smoking is not a proven cause of lung cancer declined in frequency during and after the period when tobacco companies began to publicly admit that smoking causes disease. Corresponding increases occurred over time in the use of other arguments (namely, presence of other risk factors and "free will"). CONCLUSIONS: Despite the vast body of literature showing that cigarette smoking causes cancer, and despite tobacco companies' recent admissions that smoking causes cancer, defendants used numerous arguments in these cases to deny that their products had caused cancer in plaintiffs. The cigarette companies, through their public admissions and courtroom arguments, seem to be saying, "Yes, smoking causes lung cancer, but not in people who sue us".  (+info)

The Tobacco Deposition and Trial Testimony Archive (DATTA) project: origins, aims, and methods. (26/75)

Research on previously secret tobacco industry documents has grown substantially during the past decade, since these documents first became available as the result of private and governmental litigation and investigations by the US Congress and the US Food and Drug Administration. Complementary research on tobacco litigation testimony is now being conducted through the Tobacco Deposition and Trial Testimony Archive (DATTA) project. We obtained transcripts of depositions and trial testimony, deposition and trial exhibits, expert reports, and other litigation documents from law firms, court reporter firms, individual lawyers and witnesses, tobacco company websites, and other sources. As of 3 March 2006, the publicly available collection of DATTA (http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta) contained 4850 transcripts of depositions and trial testimony, including a total of about 820,000 transcript pages. Transcripts covered testimony from 1957 to 2005 (85% were for testimony from 1990 to 2005) given by more than 1500 witnesses in a total of 232 lawsuits. Twelve research teams were established to study the transcripts, with each team covering a particular topic (for example, the health consequences of tobacco use, addiction and pharmacology, tobacco advertising and promotion, tobacco-product design and manufacture, economic impact of tobacco use, youth initiation of tobacco use, and public understanding of the risks of tobacco use and exposure to second-hand smoke). The teams used qualitative research methods to analyse the documents, and their initial findings are published throughout this journal supplement.  (+info)

Epidemiology of the third wave of tobacco litigation in the United States, 1994-2005. (27/75)

OBJECTIVE: To describe the epidemiology of litigation against the tobacco industry in the United States during the years 1994-2005 (described as the "third wave" of tobacco litigation). "Epidemiology" refers to the study of the distribution and determinants of disease in populations. We apply the term "epidemiology" to the litigation context for purposes of characterising qualitatively and, to the extent possible, quantitatively the variety of cases litigated against tobacco manufacturers and allied tobacco interests during the third wave and their impact on the tobacco industry. METHODS: The data for this paper come from legal cases identified in the Tobacco Deposition and Trial Testimony Archive (DATTA) collection (http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta), transcripts of testimony and related documents found in DATTA, government-mandated reports filed by tobacco manufacturers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, investment company reports, reports and analyses published by the news media, a variety of informational documents produced by the Tobacco Control Resource Center at the Northeastern University School of Law, and legal settlement documents provided by the National Association of Attorneys General. RESULTS: The US tobacco industry faced a far greater number of lawsuits, and a greater variety of types of lawsuit, between 1994 and 2005 than it had in previous years. Plaintiffs won 31 (41%) of the 75 cases that were tried to verdict during the years 1995-2005. Seven plaintiffs have been paid awards totalling US$115 million, including interest, following the exhaustion of appeals. Based on an evaluation of litigation brought against US industry leader Philip Morris, the total number of cases pending peaked in 2000, dropping off modestly since then. For example, 36 class actions were pending in 2000, while 33 were pending in 2005. In the same time period, individual actions fell from a total of 3385 to 2863. While the playing field has been levelled to some degree in the tobacco litigation arena with respect to the resources brought to bear by plaintiffs and defendants, tobacco industry defendants continue to employ far greater financial and human resources than their adversaries. CONCLUSIONS: The third wave of tobacco litigation has represented a sea change in efforts to hold the tobacco industry in the United States accountable in American courtrooms. While tobacco manufacturers continue to do their utmost to make these cases difficult to pursue, many of the cases that have gone to trial have met with success in recent years, which suggests that plaintiffs' lawyers are now better equipped to persuade juries of the defendants' culpability.  (+info)

Going, going, still there: using the WebCite service to permanently archive cited Web pages. (28/75)

Scholars are increasingly citing electronic "web references" which are not preserved in libraries or full text archives. WebCite is a new standard for citing web references. To "webcite" a document involves archiving the cited Web page through www.webcitation.org and citing the WebCite permalink instead of (or in addition to) the unstable live Web page.  (+info)

The Virtual International Stroke Trials Archive. (29/75)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Stroke has global importance and it causes an increasing amount of human suffering and economic burden, but its management is far from optimal. The unsuccessful outcome of several research programs highlights the need for reliable data on which to plan future clinical trials. The Virtual International Stroke Trials Archive aims to aid the planning of clinical trials by collating and providing access to a rich resource of patient data to perform exploratory analyses. METHODS: Data were contributed by the principal investigators of numerous trials from the past 16 years. These data have been centrally collated and are available for anonymized analysis and hypothesis testing. RESULTS: Currently, the Virtual International Stroke Trials Archive contains 21 trials. There are data on >15,000 patients with both ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke. Ages range between 18 and 103 years, with a mean age of 69+/-12 years. Outcome measures include the Barthel Index, Scandinavian Stroke Scale, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, Orgogozo Scale, and modified Rankin Scale. Medical history and onset-to-treatment time are readily available, and computed tomography lesion data are available for selected trials. CONCLUSIONS: This resource has the potential to influence clinical trial design and implementation through data analyses that inform planning.  (+info)

Plants used traditionally to treat malaria in Brazil: the archives of Flora Medicinal. (30/75)

The archives of Flora Medicinal, an ancient pharmaceutical laboratory that supported ethnomedical research in Brazil for more than 30 years, were searched for plants with antimalarial use. Forty plant species indicated to treat malaria were described by Dr. J. Monteiro da Silva (Flora Medicinal leader) and his co-workers. Eight species, Bathysa cuspidata, Cosmos sulphureus, Cecropia hololeuca, Erisma calcaratum, Gomphrena arborescens, Musa paradisiaca, Ocotea odorifera, and Pradosia lactescens, are related as antimalarial for the first time in ethnobotanical studies. Some species, including Mikania glomerata, Melampodium divaricatum, Galipea multiflora, Aspidosperma polyneuron, and Coutarea hexandra, were reported to have activity in malaria patients under clinical observation. In the information obtained, also, there were many details about the appropriate indication of each plant. For example, some plants are indicated to increase others' potency. There are also plants that are traditionally employed for specific symptoms or conditions that often accompany malaria, such as weakness, renal failure or cerebral malaria. Many plants that have been considered to lack activity against malaria due to absence of in vitro activity against Plasmodium can have other mechanisms of action. Thus researchers should observe ethnomedical information before deciding which kind of screening should be used in the search of antimalarial drugs.  (+info)

Reconstructing exposures from the UK chemical warfare agent human research programme. (31/75)

The UK government has carried out a research programme studying military capability under conditions of chemical warfare at a facility at Porton Down, Wiltshire, since World War I. In 2001 the Ministry of Defence commissioned a cohort study to investigate the long-term health effects on military veterans of their participation in this programme. We assessed the availability and quality of exposure assessment data held in the archive at Porton Down for the purpose of this study. This involved looking in detail at exposure data in a sample of 150 veterans and undertaking a general review of all available records held in the archive. These sources suggested that the Porton Down records were largely complete and included sufficient identifying information for linkage with service personnel data and with national mortality and cancer registration records. Servicemen usually had multiple tests so data were most readily available in a test-wise format, allowing subsequent aggregation of tests by individual. The name of the chemical used in each test could be determined for most tests and most of the named chemicals could be categorized into major groups for epidemiological analyses. For the major groups (vesicants and nerve agents), quantitative data were available on exposure and on acute toxicity. Standardization will be required of the several different units which were used. Based on this study, exposure assessment for the cohort study of Porton Down veterans will involve abstraction of the name of the chemical used in each test, with quantitative data on exposure and acute toxicity for vesicants and nerve agents. Our results here show that experimental records at Porton Down offer a unique and valuable resource for reconstructing the chemical exposures used in this research programme. The resulting cohort study has the potential to provide information which will assist in understanding the long-term health impact of chemical warfare agent exposure on these veterans.  (+info)

Quantitative fluorescence imaging analysis for cancer biomarker discovery: application to beta-catenin in archived prostate specimens. (32/75)

The surprising disparity between the number of protein-encoding genes ( approximately 30,000) in the human genome and the number of proteins ( approximately 300,000) in the human proteome has inspired the development of translational proteomics aimed at protein expression profiling of disease states. Translational proteomics, which offers the promise of early disease detection and individualized therapy, requires new methods for the analysis of clinical specimens. We have developed quantitative fluorescence imaging analysis (QFIA) for accurate, reproducible quantification of proteins in slide-mounted tissues. The method has been validated for the analysis of beta-catenin in archived prostate specimens fixed in formalin. QFIA takes advantage of the linearity of fluorescence antibody signaling for tissue epitope content, a feature validated for beta-catenin in methacarn-fixed prostate specimens analyzed by reverse-phase protein array analysis and QFIA (r = 0.97). QFIA of beta-catenin in formaldehyde-fixed tissues correlated directly with beta-catenin content (r = 0.86). Application of QFIA in a cross-sectional study of biopsies from 42 prostate cancer (PC) cases and 42 matched controls identified beta-catenin as a potential field marker for PC. Receiver operating characteristic plots revealed that beta-catenin expression in the normal-appearing acini of cancerous glands identified 42% (95% confidence intervals, 26-57%) of cancer cases, with 88% (95% confidence intervals, 80-96%) specificity. The marker may contribute to a PC biomarker panel. In conclusion, we report the development and validation of a new method for fluorescence quantification of proteins in archived tissues and its application to archived specimens for an evaluation of beta-catenin expression as a biomarker for PC.  (+info)