376 



Mr. Wyden. Do you realize your opinion stands alone in compari- 

 son with all of these major medical groups that I have cited? 



We are talking about isolation. We are not talking about some 

 sort of 



Mr. Glenn. Mr. Wyden, I am not isolated as a scientist. If you 

 asked scientists to give you a scientific opinion about cause and ef- 

 fect, you will find that I am in the vast majority. The risk factors 

 of smoking are well-known. Nobody is arguing about that. 



What I am trying to impress on you is that there are much more 

 fundamental issues here in the matter of predisposition to various 

 disease processes that must be elaborated before we can address 

 other fundamental issues. 



As to the matter of 



Mr. Wyden. I don't know how an issue gets more fundamental 

 than looking at questions of cause, efiect, and addiction. You told 

 me from a scientific standpoint that you don't even look at any pos- 

 sible connection between smoking and disease, and I think that is 

 an extraordinary statement for an organization like yours to make. 

 This leads me to the additional area I want to explore, which is, 

 in my view, that you are a public relations shop essentially posing 

 as the National Cancer Institute. 



You have said to my colleagues again and again that you are 

 doing all this scientific work. You just told me that you have not 

 done any recent studies to look at the causal links between smok- 

 ing and disease, and I would like to now ask you what kinds of ac- 

 tivities you perform in a public relations sense. Certainly Ms. 

 Cohen told the Wall Street Journal that you were a public relations 

 shop and a lobbying shop. I quote her, "The Council for Tobacco Re- 

 search is just a lobbying thing. We were lobbying for cigarettes." 



Do you perform public relations functions or lobbying functions? 



Mr. Glenn. Mr. Wyden, I won't respond to your editorial but I 

 will respond in the matter of Ms. Cohen. Ms. Cohen has multiple 

 sclerosis. It is an established medical fact that people with this se- 

 vere debilitating neurologic disease develop mental problems as 

 well. 



Since making that statement to the press, Ms. Cohen has called 

 our office and tearfully apologized for her statements. I am very 

 sorry for the lady and I really don't think her name ought to be 

 invoked in this Congressional subcommittee. 



Mr. Wyden. In your opinion, at the time that she made these 

 statements to the Wall Street Journal, she was not capable of being 

 objective or truthful? 



Mr. Glenn. That was her statement to our staff" member. 



Mr. Wyden. All right. Could you get us anything that would doc- 

 ument that? I have not seen an3rthing that would suggest that she 

 repudiated it at any time when she was capable of doing so. 



[The following information was received:] 



At the May 26 hearing, I was asked to supply documentation for my statements 

 about Dorothea B. Cohen, the former Council employee to whom comments were at- 

 tributed in the Wall Street Journal article of February 11, 1993. We had intended 

 to respond to the subcommittee's request for documentation by obtaining an affida- 

 vit from Ms. Cohen, setting forth her view that the Wall Street Journal article was 

 inaccurate. However, Ms. Cohen has moved, and we have been unable to locate her. 

 We have spoken with Dr. John E. Bevilacqua, Ms. Cohen's treating neurologist (who 

 is also her cousin.) 



