RESEARCH CONFIDENTIALITY:
UC Fights Tobacco Company Subpoena
Eliot Marshall
The tobacco companies are asking Congress to declare a truce in the legal war over smoking, but at the same time they are waging some pitched battles in the states over the control of scientific files that could be important in antismoking lawsuits. In March and April, for example, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, maker of Camel cigarettes, obtained two subpoenas demanding broad access to the files of a University of California, San Diego, cancer epidemiologist who co-authored a study published in the 18 February Journal of the American Medical Association that links cigarette advertising and teenage smoking. On 20 April, university lawyers filed their latest response in a state court in San Diego, arguing that the researcher should not be compelled to surrender all the raw data Reynolds has demanded.
