Section II 
Transcript of Second- Day D 
iscussion 
DR. FREEMAN: Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome all of the 
speakers and panel members and the audience back to these deliberations. 
We will continue to deliberate concerning the FTC test method, and we will 
begin this morning with continuation of the dialog that we were having 
with Dr. Townsend and Dr. deBethizy, who represent the tobacco industry. 
DR. BENOWITZ: 1 would like to follow up with two questions on why the 
results from the study of 33 subjects relating the total nicotine recovery vs. 
the FTC yield from cotinine studies are so different. The first question is, 
since these results were so different, it would be very interesting to have 
measured cotinine levels in these smokers, as well as looking at urinary 
metabolites, and I would like to know if that was done and if we could 
see those data. The second thing 1 was wondering was, since this question 
of yield versus intake has been so important for so many years and since 
R.J. Reynolds has the capability of doing it, I wonder if they have ever done 
a study like the ones that 1 showed where they looked at cotinine levels 
vs. yields in a large population just to see if their own work would replicate 
the work of other people, and it seems like a very straightforward study 
that would be something they might have done. 
DR. DEBETHIZY: The answer to your first question is no, we did not measure 
plasma cotinine in those studies. We were studying nicotine metabolism 
interindividual variation. That was how we got into that work, and we 
extended it then to ask the question across the tar categories. In the study 
that we are currently doing, we are actually measuring salivary cotinine. 
We made a conscious decision not to measure plasma cotinine because we 
did not want to interfere by taking a blood sample. So, we are doing salivary 
cotinine in that study to answer the exact question that you have raised. 
I think that is a good question to ask. In subjects where we see lower total 
nicotine output, are the plasma concentrations higher? That is a good 
question. And your second question was? 
DR. BENOWITZ: There were data from Dr. Gori's work that I presented that 
were supported by Brown and Williamson, I believe. We basically looked at 
cotinine levels vs. yields for a large population, and I think those data were 
very important. I was wondering if R.J. Reynolds has ever done such 
a study, and if any data are available addressing that question? 
DR. DEBETHIZY: We have not done a field study. There were so many field 
studies in the literature already, we just have never done a study like that. 
DR. SHIFFMAN: Just to follow up on that study, a couple of us were pointing 
out that the relationship seemed to be very much driven by the extremes, 
and I took the liberty of computing what the correlation would be in those 
same data if one excluded the very extremes. I had to impute the data from 
193 
