"A delicate diplomatic situation": tobacco industry efforts to gain control of the Framingham Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The Framingham Heart Study (henceforth Framingham) is among the gold standards for epidemiological research. Being a prospective cohort study of 5,000+ men and women, it provided early findings about the causes of coronary heart disease (CHD), following a cohort over the course of 24 years. After US government funding ended, the tobacco industry funded Council for Tobacco Research (CTR) provided continued funding for analyses related to smoking.

Objective

This study sought to understand the tobacco industry's motivation and activities in funding Framingham.

Study design and setting

We analyzed previously undisclosed tobacco industry documents, conducting iterative searches of the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/), and assemb

SUBMITTER: Cataldo JK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3046548 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature