The World Health Organisation (WHO) has heavily criticised multinational cigarette makers, accusing them of secretly trying to undermine its efforts to combat smoking.
In a 240-page report published in Geneva yesterday, WHO accuses the tobacco industry of "elaborate, well-financed, sophisticated and usually invisible subversion". One company, according to the report, had a master plan which referred to the need to "contain, neutralise and re-orient WHO anti-tobacco initiatives".
WHO refers to the Boca Raton Action Plan, devised by senior executives of the Philip Morris company, which calls for it to devise ways of lessening WHO's key influence on governments and consumers. The report also accuses the industry of hiring experts who grossly distorted the results of scientific research into the harmful effects of smoking.
The latest salvo is a sign that the battle between WHO and the tobacco industry is hotting up in advance of public hearings on tobacco which the organisation is planning to stage in October.
The anti-tobacco crusade is seen as a personal initiative by WHO's new director general, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland. The former Norwegian prime minister took office in 1998 with the stated aim of reviving the health agency's image after a decade of controversial rule by her predecessor, Mr Hiroshi Nakajima of Japan.
The revelation that international scientific experts had hidden financial ties to the tobacco industry raises questions about medical and scientific ethics. The published work of such experts must now be reviewed in the light of the WHO report.
Meanwhile, Dr Richard Peto and Dr Richard Doll, the Oxford scientists who first discovered the link between smoking and cancer, have published a comparative study of British lung cancer patients.
The research, to be published in the British Medical Journal, compares data from 1950 and 1990. It shows that people who stop smoking at 30 avoid more than 90 per cent of the risk of dying from lung cancer. Even stopping smoking at 60 brings with it some benefits, according to the study.
"People who stop smoking, even well into middle age, avoid most of their subsequent risk of lung cancer and stopping before middle age avoids more than 90 per cent of the risk attributable to tobacco," says the BMJ report.
The landmark research gives an added impetus to the current drive to stop young people smoking by offering a firm "carrot" for ceasing.
Smokers presenting to doctors' surgeries can now be offered a definite risk assessment based on this study.
The latest study has been released in advance of next week's World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Chicago. Starting next Monday, The Irish Times will carry daily reports from it.