Safe smoking and tobacco industry funding of genetic research

A study by US researchers published in Addiction and a report by GeneWatch UK both detail tobacco industry funding of genetic research. Experienced observers of the tobacco industry believe the research could be used by the industry to shift responsibility for cancer from smoking to an individual’s genetic make-up.

Analysis of internal tobacco industry documents by the authors of the Addiction study uncovered extensive information describing industry interest in genetic research beginning in the 1960s. To counter growing evidence that smoking caused cancer, industry consultants argued that individual genetic constitution was a plausible alternative explanation for cancer among smokers.

The tobacco industry subsequently funded research to determine whether genes could affect an individual’s risk for lung cancer, and influence whether an individual would become addicted to nicotine.

Advances in behavioural genetics in the 1970s presented new potential opportunities for the tobacco industry to find evidence for its argument that individual proneness to cancer was a more viable cause than smoking, and that genetic constitution played a role in nicotine dependence.

The authors state that as the tobacco industry modifies its long-standing denial that nicotine is addictive, it may turn its attention from researching and promoting a ‘safe cigarette’ to identifying a ‘safe smoker’, in an attempt to deflect responsibility from its products onto individuals’ genetic constitutions.

In its June 2010 report, GENEwatch UK argues that the tobacco industry, along with the pharmaceutical and food industries, has promoted genome wide screening to predict individuals’ future health with the aims of encouraging healthy people to take drugs and absolving purveyors of unhealthy products that responsibility for poor health lies with the consumer.

The report dismisses claims that human genome sequencing is useful in predicting development of common diseases. It argues that it originated from “spurious findings published by tobacco-funded scientists”.

GeneWatch Director Dr Helen Wallace said that “the tentacles of the tobacco industry infiltrated top scientific institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, promoting a false story that smokers’ risk of lung cancer and likelihood of smoking are both in their DNA. Leading scientists endorsed the hunt for genes that don’t exist, creating a vast gravy train of funding for the human genome and a false message about cancer in the press.

“Having your genome sequenced is not good for your health: the big risks for most diseases are not inside your genes but in the world outside.”

The potential health risks of public misconceptions regarding unhealthy behaviours and genetic predisposition were suggested in Australian research in self-exempting beliefs published in 2004. A survey of 802 adults, either current smokers or recent quitters, found one in seven thought they had ‘good genes’ that allowed them to smoke without harm.

The fallacy of this way of thinking was explained by Professor Wayne Hall from the University of Queensland in an article in PLoS Medicine in 2004. He explained that it was highly likely that nearly all smokers would be at increased genetic risk of at least one of the many diseases that smoking caused.