Some Comments About the CTR Program

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

Some Comments About the CTR Program

This personal and confidential Philip Morris (PM) memo was used as a trial exhibit in the Minnesota and Boeken cases. In it, the Director of Research at PM, Dr. Thomas Stefan Osdene writes to Dr. Robert B. Seligman (Vice President of Research and Development at PM) criticizing the research results emanating from the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR). Osdene complains:

"I was amazed at the trend that CTR work is taking. For openers, Dr. Donald H. Ford, a new staff member, makes the following quotes:

"Opiates and nicotine may be similar in action."

"We accept the fact that nicotine is habituating."

"There is a relationship between nicotine and the opiates."

Osdene was also concerned that yet another scientist, Dr. Leo Abood, was investigating antagonists to nicotine and that his work "could well lead to a clinically acceptable antagonist." According to Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, Edition 13, an antagonist in the chemical sense is defined as "that which counteracts the action of something else." Thus Dr. Osdene was concerned that a chemical which counteracts nicotine would be developed through CTR-funded research.

Acknowledging that the industry's public statements differed markedly from the research results emanating from CTR, Osdene says,

It is my strong feeling that with the progress that has been claimed, we are in the process of digging our own grave...I believe that the program as set up has the potential of great damage to the industry...I am very much afraid that the direction of work being taken by CTR is totally detrimental to our position and undermines the public posture we have taken to outsiders.

Organizational Author: Philip Morris
Person Author: Thomas S. Osdene
Date: 19771129 (November 29, 1977)
Type: Memorandum
Bates No. 2022246952
URL: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/glr74e00