The first objective of Phase I is to describe and document for 2 tobacco related diseases (lung cancer and coronary heart disease, CCHD) the chronological evolution of scientific knowledge of the causal relationship between tobacco use and disease incidence. These materials would help lawyers, judges, and juries decide whether a "reasonable tobacco manufacturer" should have had "reasonable grounds to suspect" the existence of this causal relationship -- and therefore was legally obliged to do further research and to warn consumers -- before the plaintiff became addicted to tobacco, or before warnings began to appear on packages and advertising and in the popular press. The second objective is to develop a set of quantitative procedures that can be used to determine the likelihood that individuals with a history of tobacco use who develop diseases which are causally associated with tobacco use would not have developed those diseases had they not used tobacco. Providing this information to lawyers, experts, and eventually jurors would aid in determining whether plaintiffs in tobacco products liability cases have made the required showing that tobacco use probably caused their disease. This question involves the estimation of the proportion of disease cases in tobacco users that are attributable to their tobacco use. Phase I of this project will serve to test and refine the methodology for achieving these two objectives of detailing the chronological evolution of scientific knowledge about the causal relationship between tobacco use and various diseases, and of providing a basis for judging the etiology of specific instances of each tobacco related disease. Lung cancer and CHD will provide a good sample of the methodological issues to be encountered in the Phase II project which will consider the remaining tobacco-related diseases.
