ANOTHER round has just been fought in the battle between tobacco companies and those who regard them as spawn of the devil. In a paper just published in the Lancet, with the provocative title “Secret science: tobacco industry research on smoking behaviour and cigarette toxicity”, David Hammond, of *Waterloo University[1] in Canada and Neil Collishaw and Cynthia Callard, two members of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, a lobby group, criticise the behaviour of British American Tobacco (BAT). They say the firm considered manipulating some of its products in order to make them low-tar in the eyes of officialdom while they actually delivered high tar and nicotine levels to smokers.

　　烟草公司与那些视其为“魔鬼之子”的人之间刚刚又进行了新一轮的交锋。新近出版的《柳叶刀》刊登了一篇题目颇具煽动性的论文《秘密科研——烟草业开展对吸烟行为和香烟毒性的研究》，作者是加拿大沃特鲁大学的戴维 哈蒙德以及加拿大一个名为“无烟加拿大医师”游说团的两名成员尼尔 科里肖和辛西娅 加拉德。他们对英美烟草公司的行为提出了批评，称该公司拟对某些烟草产品进行处理，企图让监督部门误以为其焦油含量低，而实际上这些产品仍会使得烟民吸收高浓度的焦油和尼古丁。