Secret smoking documents finally to go on the web
http://www.100md.com
《英国医生杂志》
legal correspondent, BMJ
Eight million pages of documents held in a depository in Guildford that expose the workings of the tobacco industry over four decades are to be made available on the web from next September.
British American Tobacco (BAT) was ordered to make its papers available to the public for 10 years as part of a settlement of tobacco litigation with the industry in 1998. But researchers accuse the company of obstructing access, tampering with documents, and failing to explain why 181 files have gone missing.
Last week a research team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine made public a four year clandestine project to copy all eight million pages of documents and scan them on to a website run by the Kalmanovitz Library, at the University of California in San Francisco.
The Guildford Archiving Project, which has involved researchers from the London School, the Mayo Clinic, and the University of California in San Francisco, has cost almost ￡2m ($3.7m; 3m). Researchers filled out 40 000 forms by hand to request the eight million documents, which still have to be scanned and indexed. The project is funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, Cancer Research UK, Health Canada, and the American Heart Association.
The research team says the project will "for the first time, provide meaningful public access to an estimated eight million pages of documents that are recognised around the world as an invaluable resource for understanding both how the tobacco industry has operated over the past four decades as well as its future strategies, especially in the developing world."
The Guildford depository is one of two set up to provide public access to documents produced during litigation against the tobacco industry in the 1990s. Access to the other depository, in Minnesota, which is run by an independent firm, has always been much easier than to the smaller, BAT managed Guildford collection, where the researchers say their efforts have been "severely hampered."
A paper by researchers from the Mayo Clinic, published in last week's Lancet ( 2004;363: 1812-9), accuses BAT of altering one document, changing a reference to marketing to "illiterate, low-income 16-year-olds" to the less controversial "18-year-olds" in some places. The researchers say that BAT rated its company files for "sensitivity," flagged up "Hot Docs" (documents classified as "hot"—seeming to mean "very significant"), monitored searches, and refused to supply some documents based on unchallengeable claims of "privilege" asserted by company lawyers. In addition, the depository now seems to contain 181 fewer files—over 36 000 pages—than in January 2000.
Dr Tony Woods, head of medical humanities at the Wellcome Trust, said: "The success of this hugely complicated project means that the inner secrets of the BAT company files will now be freely available to health researchers around the world. It is a potential treasure trove which could have been lost forever, had it not been for the sterling work of this dedicated research team."(Clare Dyer)
Eight million pages of documents held in a depository in Guildford that expose the workings of the tobacco industry over four decades are to be made available on the web from next September.
British American Tobacco (BAT) was ordered to make its papers available to the public for 10 years as part of a settlement of tobacco litigation with the industry in 1998. But researchers accuse the company of obstructing access, tampering with documents, and failing to explain why 181 files have gone missing.
Last week a research team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine made public a four year clandestine project to copy all eight million pages of documents and scan them on to a website run by the Kalmanovitz Library, at the University of California in San Francisco.
The Guildford Archiving Project, which has involved researchers from the London School, the Mayo Clinic, and the University of California in San Francisco, has cost almost ￡2m ($3.7m; 3m). Researchers filled out 40 000 forms by hand to request the eight million documents, which still have to be scanned and indexed. The project is funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, Cancer Research UK, Health Canada, and the American Heart Association.
The research team says the project will "for the first time, provide meaningful public access to an estimated eight million pages of documents that are recognised around the world as an invaluable resource for understanding both how the tobacco industry has operated over the past four decades as well as its future strategies, especially in the developing world."
The Guildford depository is one of two set up to provide public access to documents produced during litigation against the tobacco industry in the 1990s. Access to the other depository, in Minnesota, which is run by an independent firm, has always been much easier than to the smaller, BAT managed Guildford collection, where the researchers say their efforts have been "severely hampered."
A paper by researchers from the Mayo Clinic, published in last week's Lancet ( 2004;363: 1812-9), accuses BAT of altering one document, changing a reference to marketing to "illiterate, low-income 16-year-olds" to the less controversial "18-year-olds" in some places. The researchers say that BAT rated its company files for "sensitivity," flagged up "Hot Docs" (documents classified as "hot"—seeming to mean "very significant"), monitored searches, and refused to supply some documents based on unchallengeable claims of "privilege" asserted by company lawyers. In addition, the depository now seems to contain 181 fewer files—over 36 000 pages—than in January 2000.
Dr Tony Woods, head of medical humanities at the Wellcome Trust, said: "The success of this hugely complicated project means that the inner secrets of the BAT company files will now be freely available to health researchers around the world. It is a potential treasure trove which could have been lost forever, had it not been for the sterling work of this dedicated research team."(Clare Dyer)