Where the tobacco industry goes, controversy is usually not too far behind.
The controversy confronting Ohio State is over a $6 million gift given to the OSU Heart and Lung Institute by the Lorillard Tobacco Company in December. The money will be used to fund research to find out why cigarettes cause diseases.
Ohio State’s acceptance of the gift made national news and waves in the medical profession.
“It’s prostituting research and science. Isn’t a public university supposed to serve the citizens of Ohio?” said Dr. Stephen Jay, chair of the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Jay has worked for Indiana for more than 20 years. He says as long as he is the chairman of Indiana’s medical school, the department will never knowingly take money from the tobacco industry.
“You can see how the lure of $6 million is so great; it puts the pressure on administrators. You can see how they rationalize,” Jay said.
Other universities also are shunning the tobacco taboo. John Hopkins University, Harvard University and the University of California at San Francisco are a few of the institutions that have severed ties with the tobacco companies.
The AMA policy “strongly discourages all medical schools and their parent universities from accepting research funding from the tobacco industry.”
Lorillard offered the gift to OSU because of its nationally recognized heart and lung research, said Steve Watson, spokesman for Lorillard.
Many universities do not have written policies on whether or not they accept gift money from cigarette companies, yet these millions of dollars are not to be confused with grants from tobacco settlement funds.
There is a national restriction that universities must refuse tobacco money to qualify for grants from tobacco lawsuit settlements. The university must continue their refusal for the duration of the grant. The stipulation formed by the American Legacy Foundation applies only to the school within a university that is administered the grant.
OSU President Karen A. Holbrook worked with an OSU medical staff committee to decide whether to accept the gift last month.
“The proposed research here at Ohio State is one more approach to alleviating one of our nation’s most serious public health concerns,” Holbrook said.
Universities aside, there still lies the burning question of what the tobacco company is gaining.
“We hope to develop a safer product or provide further information to the public regarding the dangers of smoking,” Watson said.
Watson admitted that there is a relationship between smoking, lung cancer and emphysema, but said Lorillard is interested to know what is causing the link.
“Tobacco companies may give money for reasons of reasonable publicity or tax write-offs,” said Thomas Payne, professor of medicine at the University of Mississippi.
Payne is in charge of a comprehensive tobacco clinic at Mississippi and said the clinic refuses all gifts or grants from the tobacco industry.
The agreement between Lorillard and OSU has no clause, Watson said.
“(OSU) can do whatever they want with the research,” he said.
The plans for the research results are unknown. Jay Zweier, head of the heart and lung research team at OSU did not return phone calls made by The Lantern.
