Speaker looks critically at tobacco companies
LEBANON, N.H -- Joking that he was "making up for past family sins," Michael Cummings, a researcher at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the grandson of a cigarette company employee, criticized the tobacco industry in a lecture at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center on Thursday. Focusing on the public health implications of tobacco use rather than the science behind these issues, Cummings addressed the expansion of smoking worldwide, the history of cigarettes, the reasons people smoke and how governments can combat tobacco use. Cigarette smoking causes 7,500 deaths each week, Cummings said. "Imagine if those deaths were caused by the 'evil-doers' out there, we'd probably do a lot more to fix it," he said. Images of the Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar, Osama bin Laden and the founder of Phillip Morris then flashed on the screen behind him. Cummings colored his lecture with a series of videos and jokes.
