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TweetA federal judge on Tuesday ordered tobacco companies to publish corrective statements that say they lied about the dangers of smoking and that disclose smokings health effects, including the death on average of 1,200 people a day.U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler previously had said she wanted the industry to pay for corrective statements in various types of advertisements. But Tuesdays ruling is the first time shes laid out what the statements will say.
Each corrective ad is to be prefaced by a statement that a federal court has concluded that the …

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May 15, 2012, Harvard School of Public Health
In 2008, three different studies found that certain genetic variants associated with nicotine dependence and smoking were also associated with lung cancer. The findings raised a question: Were the variants linked with lung cancer only through their association with smoking, a known cause of lung cancer? Or were the variants associated with lung cancer through some other pathway, independent of smoking behavior?
Now, HSPH researchers have found strong evidence suggesting that the variants are directly associated with lung cancer, independent of their effects on …

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TweetDecember 21, 2011, Jeremy Laurance, The Independent
The tobacco industry is accused today of misleading smokers over the safety of additives in cigarettes.

Based on a new analysis of data used by the US cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris a decade ago, which found the additives were safe, University of California researchers claim the firm’s research “obscured findings of toxicity”.
The original study by Philip Morris, called Project Mix, resulted in the publication of four papers in a scientific journal that concluded there was “no evidence of substantial toxicity” associated with the additives studied.
More …

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TweetJuly 15, 2011, Boston Globe, Alex Beam
“Hey, fatty! Pull that doughnut out of your pie hole! You look like a pig, and you are costing me, and every other taxpayer, billions of dollars in unnecessary health care each year!’’
How do you like my new public service ad campaign, designed to stigmatize the overweight and the obese in the same way smokers have been made to feel the knout of social opprobrium for the past quarter-century?
I got the idea when I heard professor Daniel Callahan, the retired cofounder of the Hastings …

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TweetJuly, 5, 2011, Fast Company, Morgan Clendaniel
If you’re willing to put aside the cancer and emphysema and be a smoker, your last excuse might have just gone up in smoke. Smokers often claim that their habit serves as an appetite suppressant. They may be risking disease later in life, but at least they’re preventing obesity today. But that contention has just been disproved.
For the most part, smokers are actually more overweight than non-smokers.
The study looked at 6,000 smokers and non-smokers, comparing their body-mass index (BMI, a ratio of height to …

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TweetJune 22, 2011, Boston Globe, By Deborah Kotz and Neena Satija
Cigarette packages will soon be splashed with horror-movie-style warning labels showing corpses, diseased lungs, and rotted teeth, which were among nine new images unveiled yesterday by the Food and Drug Administration. By September 2012, cigarette manufacturers will be required to place these images across the top half of every pack, with large-type warnings such as “smoking can kill you’’ and “cigarettes are addictive.’’
The new images will replace the small white warning boxes that have adorned cigarette packages unchanged for …

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TweetJune 21, 2011, Press release, Harvard School of Public Health
A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and University of California, San Francisco, researchers suggests that men with prostate cancer who smoke increase their risk of prostate cancer recurrence and of dying from the disease. A link also was found between smoking at the time of prostate cancer diagnosis and aggressive prostate cancer, overall mortality (death) and cardiovascular disease mortality.
“In our study, we found similar results for both prostate cancer recurrence and prostate cancer mortality,” said Stacey Kenfield, …

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Food and Health News, November 22, 2010
Eating five portions of fruit and vegetables per day is one of the means that experts most frequently recommend for preventing cancer. Now, the European EPIC study carried out by researchers from 10 countries has shown that, in the case of lung cancer, the important thing is not just the quantity but also the variety of fruit consumed, which can reduce the risk by up to 23%.
“This research looks more deeply into the relationship between diet and lung cancer”, María José Sánchez Pérez, …

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TweetNew York Times, Duff Wilson, November 13, 2010
As sales to developing nations become ever more important to giant tobacco companies, they are stepping up efforts around the world to fight tough restrictions on the marketing of cigarettes.
Companies like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco are contesting limits on ads in Britain, bigger health warnings in South America and higher cigarette taxes in the Philippines and Mexico. They are also spending billions on lobbying and marketing campaigns in Africa and Asia, and in one case provided undisclosed financing for TV …

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TweetThe New York Times, Michael Barbaro and Anemona Hartocollis, November 16, 2010
By her own account, Cathleen P. Black, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s choice to be the next New York City schools chancellor, has had almost no experience with the public education system.
But for nearly 20 years, she played an influential role in a company that did: Coca-Cola.
As America awoke to a national obesity epidemic and schools tried to rid their hallways of sugary drinks, Coca-Cola emerged as the biggest and most aggressive opponent of the scientists, lawmakers and educators who …