“Certain scientists and medical authorities have claimed for many years that the use of tobacco contributes to cancer development in susceptible people,” the letter said.
“Just enough evidence has been presented to justify the possibility of such a presumption,” it added.
The writer was not a tobacco industry critic, but a tobacco company chemist. The year was 1946 and the chemist, Harris B. Parmele, who worked for Lorillard and wrote that letter to a Lorillard official, would go on to become the company’s vice president for research and a member of its board of directors.
The Parmele letter–written 18 years before the U.S. surgeon general’s report and 20 years before warning labels appeared on cigarette packs–is among a flurry of intriguing documents to surface in a history-making cigarette liability trial in Newark, N.J., now in its third month.
Read more: http://articles.latimes.com/1988-04-21/news/vw-2440_1_tobacco-industry
