摘要：The concept of stress remains prominent in public health and owes much to the work of Hans Selye (1907–1982), the “father of stress.” One of his main allies in this work has never been discussed as such: the tobacco industry. After an analysis of tobacco industry documents, we found that Selye received extensive tobacco industry funding and that his research on stress and health was used in litigation to defend the industry's interests and argue against a causal role for smoking in coronary heart disease and cancer. These findings have implications for assessing the scientific integrity of certain areas of stress research and for understanding corporate influences on public health research, including research on the social determinants of health. An analysis of internal tobacco industry documents since the 1990s has revealed extensive efforts by the industry over decades to undermine the scientific evidence on smoking and health. These efforts include commissioning research from pro-industry scientists to challenge scientific findings and offer alternative explanations. To this end, the industry created the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR) in 1953, initially known as the Tobacco Industry Research Council, to fund research with significant “adversary value.” 1 Award letters for CTR “special projects” instructed recipients not to disclose that such research was undertaken predominantly for litigation purposes 1 or that industry legal reviews, rather than the normal scientific peer review process, served as the basis for publication. 2 – 4 Previous analyses have shown how scientists were used to defend and promote smoking, thus giving the impression of “a chorus of seemingly authoritative voices from respected institutions around the world spreading damaging arguments designed to benefit the tobacco companies and damage health.” 5 Smoking bans to protect against secondhand smoke (SHS) were undermined by paying scientists to disseminate industry messages in the United States. 6 In Europe, the industry attempted to infiltrate the World Health Organization's cancer research arm and the International Agency for Research on Cancer; under what was known as “Project Whitecoat,” it aimed to recruit “groups of scientists [that] should be able to produce research or stimulate controversy in such a way that public affairs people in the relevant countries would be able to make use of or market the information.” 7 , 8 In China, British American Tobacco funded liver disease research to divert attention from SHS. 2 It has also been shown that social scientists were used to promote smoking in many countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Germany. 5 We analyzed another important strand of tobacco industry–funded research not hitherto described: the relationship between stress and illness. Stress is regularly cited as an important social determinant of health. 9 – 15 Contemporary research on stress, however, must take into account the decades-long support by the tobacco industry for stress-related research beginning with the role of physiologist Hans Selye (1907–1982). Selye developed the concept through animal studies from 1933 to 1945 16 , 17 and popularized it in many best-selling books. 18 In 1977 he retired and set up the International Institute of Stress in Montreal and the Hans Selye Foundation to fund stress research. 19 Selye drew parallels between his own career and that of the chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur. 17 He died in 1982, having been hailed the “father of stress.” During his career, he wrote 1700 articles and 39 books, was nominated for the Nobel Prize 10 times, and received the Order of Canada, one of the country's highest honors. 20 – 22 Selye's links to the tobacco industry have not been hitherto examined, to our knowledge. We analyzed internal industry documents and describe how the industry funded his work, used him as an expert witness in legal proceedings, and made extensive use of his research for litigation and public relations. Our findings raise important questions about assessing the scientific integrity of stress research and about the scope of the industry's influence on public health research and policy.
