Hockett dictum
|
This stub is a work-in-progress by the ScienceCorruption.com journalists's group. We are indexing the millions of documents stored at the San Francisco Uni's Legacy Tobacco Archive [1] With some entries you'll need to go to this site and type into the Search panel a (multi-digit) Bates number. You can search on names for other documents also. Send any corrections or additions to editor@sciencecorruption.com |
 |
This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation. |
The Hockett dictum or Hockett defense was the phrase advocated by the Center for Tobacco Research's (CTR) Associate Scientific Director, Robert C Hockett as the only way to counter the evidence that experiments with mice had shown that cancers could be created under laboratory conditions by painting their skins with the condensate of tobacco smoke.
He suggested variations on the now-familiar phrase "mice aren't men". This was to be repeated endlessly.
Ignorant smoker's looking to rationalise their addiction would latch onto this claim as evidence of scientific stupidity, and it became widely used to denigrate scientists who did these skin-paining experiments. It is still floated today when research proves some substance to be harmful.
Contents
Skin Painting
In the early days of the tobacco industry wars, mouse skin-painting was the best and most convincing way to determine which components of tobacco smoke (and other common chemicals also) triggered a cancerous reaction in cells. In the literature, these components are often referred to as "fractions". The researchers would condense the tobacco smoke into a liquid, then use laboratory processes to break the complex chemical down into 'fractions' which could then be painted repeatedly onto the mouse skins (special non-hairy mice were often used) over a period of months (since mice don't live too long).
The ultimate aim in the early years was to determine which component of the tobacco smoke was harmful, and which weren't -- with the aim of extracting the harmful "fraction" from fresh tobacco and making a "safe cigarette" (but this was never admitted).
Mice were easily handled in laboratory conditions in large numbers, and any cancerous changes could easily be detected by the naked eye. So, provided the appropriate protocols were followed (some painted with strong fractions, some with weak, others not painted) this technique provided convincing proof of the harmful substances in tobacco. (Most of the 'fractions' proved to be harmful to varying degrees.) Skin painting was just one form of animal "bioassay system" employed by researchers.
Hypocrisy
As with most of the other companies, British-American Tobacco were secretly working on attempts to create a 'Safe' or at least 'Safer Cigarette' while denying there was a problem. BAT in 1965 initiated Project Janus which, for 15 years, studied the effect of varying product parameters on the biological activity of smoke condensate using the mouse skin painting technique used by Wynder.
During this period, Brown & Williamson participated in the US National Cancer Institute's Tobacco Working Group (TWG) which also explored the effect of over 150 cigarette variables on biological activity, mainly by mouse skin paining. [2]
- (This was the corrupt series of experiments run by Dr Gio B Gori with tobacco industry staff with the aim of producing a 'Safe Cigarette')
Delaney Amendments
The attacks on laboratory experiments were mounted for most of the 50 or so years it took the public and politicians to take action against smoking, but it was especially rife during the attempts by the tobacco and chemical industries to amend the Delaney Clause (aka Delaney Amendment) of the Food Act which specified that, if it was discovered that any substance was carcinogenic, then food stuffs must be devoid of any detectable trace of the chemical. This was introduced to prevent the use of pesticides and herbicides on crops where the cancer-producing substance would get into the food chain.
The Reagan Administration was persuaded by the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (SOCMA) and the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) (along with the tobacco companies) to relax these strict rules, but this was heatedly opposed by most biomedical chemists and health workers.
Variations
The variation "mice aren't men, and lungs aren't skin" was used by tobacco scientists in the form of a claim that the researchers were using "... the wrong tissue of the wrong animal" since they couldn't convincingly attack the use of laboratory mice without denying a large part of the legacy of biomedical experiments where these detection techniques had been used for decades.
Hockett also extended this defense to the claim that the researchers were applying... "the wrong material, in the wrong form, in the wrong concentration, to the wrong tissue of the wrong animal."
The Counter
When the "mice-aren't-men" claim was used, the opposing scientists eventually learned to respond with "... but DNA is DNA." Cancer is a disease of the DNA in cells, so if the smoke condensate is attacking the DNA in skin cells, it almost certainly would also attack the DNA in lung tissues. At the level of normal cell growth processes, human and animal cells act in very similar ways.
Documents & Timeline
1960 Nov 15 A Robert Hockett speech to Passaic County Medical Society
Not only do these tests use the wrong tissue of the wrong animal, insofar as any attempt to assess hazards for humans are concerned, but they need evaluation in terms of dose-response relationship. When smoke condensate is painted repeatedly on one small area' of mouse skin the dosage is astronomically greater than anything encountered in human smoking experience. [3]
- [This is true in the same time period, but not true accumulated over a lifetime. It depends on whether you can find mice who live for 50 years, and can afford to wait 50 years for the tumors to develop.]
1964 The Tobacco Institute defensive document: The Cigarette Controversy.
It has been appropriately said of the mouse-painting experiments that they involve the application of "the wrong material, in the wrong form, in the wrong concentration, to the wrong tissue of the wrong animal."[4]
1970 Mar 24 A transcript of a speech by Brown & Williams marketing supervisor in defence of tobacco -- following the initial Auerbach Beagle-dog inhalation studies and Wynder's many years of mouse-painting studies.
This whole subject of mouse-painting caused Dr. Robert Hockett, the Associate Scientific Director of the Council for Tobacco Research, to comment in a speech that mouse-painting involves the application of ... " the wrong material, in the wrong form, in the wrong concentration, to the wrong tissue of the wrong animal." [5]
1970 May 25 This Cancer Program [Confidential] report found in RJ Reynolds files deals mainly with a new 'virus theory of cancer' being promoted by Dr Robert J Huebner and his colleagues. The tobacco industry was very keen to foster this line of research. They had contracted a study by Microbiological Associates with tests which were to include different bioassay techniques:
- cells in culture (petri dishes)
- whole animal skin painting
- whole animal inhalation experiments.
- [Note: Since these all used mice, hamsters, or other lab animals, the Hockett dictum became a problem. Which is why this kind of research was contracted under a secrecy clause.]
The document mentions one of their favourite early researchers, Freddy Homburger who was blowing smoke onto the skins of mice and hadn't detected any skin tumors:
While this experimental plan still uses the "wrong tissue of the wrong animal" it does employ smoke in conditions encountered in normal human smoking and should provide further insight into the significance or non-significance of the widely prevalent mouse-skin painting with stale "tars" in a solvent, as a bioassay system.
(Since he had not generated any tumors, they planned to extend Homberger's experiments with hamsters.) [6]
- [Note: this was at a period when genuine research was being conducted by the tobacco industry. Homberger later found cancer during inhalation experiments with hamsters and he published, despite threats from the industry.]
1980 /E A public release by British-American Tobacco on their attempts to develop a "Safer Cigarette" has the history of skin-painting in the 1950s by Ernst Wynder and others. This led to the development of better filters to try to remove the 'tar' from cigarettes.
They claim that the series of corrupt research efforts conducted under the auspices of the US National Cancer Institute by Dr Gio B Gori with the Tobacco Working Group (involving skin painting) was inconclusive.
Unfortunately as science has developed, none of te results of these tests has been showen to have relevance to human health. British-American Tobacco concluded that the mouse skin test was subject to a number of limitations because it involved the application of the wrong substance (smoke condensate or "tar" not fresh, whole tobacco smoke), in the wrong amount (concentrations thousands of time higher than a smoker obtains), on the wrong tissue (skin not lung), by the wrong route (painting not inhaling) and in the wrong animal (mouse not human). [7]
