By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
Three major hospitals have recently begun research on the harmful effects of smoking at the request of a multinational tobacco company.
Seoul National University (SNU) Hospital, Chonnam National University Hospital and Catholic University Hospital are now recruiting 540 people for clinical tests for evaluating harmfulness of cigarettes at the request of Philip Morris International. Kyungpook National University Hospital, which was to originally conduct the research, withdrew from the project last month.
The research is conducted both in South Korea and Japan.
However, civil organizations including Korean Association of Smoking & Health have urged the hospitals to withdraw from the research project, saying that the research funded by tobacco company is ``unethical'' and it will only help tobacco company flourish further.
Jang In-jin, a medical professor at the pharmacology department of SNU who is in charge of the research, said it is part of a basic research aimed at finding out how harmful factors of smokers and non-smokers in Asia are different. ``Philip Morris had done the same kind of research to thousands of people in Western countries in the past and is currently conducting the research in South Korea and Japan. It is expected to cost about 1 billion won in total,'' said Jang.
Jang also said that SNU decided to undertake the research after getting a ruling from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) that the research is ethical enough.
``We will complete the research by the end of this year,'' said Jang.
Research funded by tobacco companies is mostly banned in major universities in Western countries for ethical reasons.
In the case of Japan, university hospitals are not allowed to perform the research.
In the United States, major universities like Harvard University and Columbia University are banned from getting their research funded by tobacco companies. Also professors at California State University last year decided not to receive research funds from tobacco companies saying that it suppresses academic freedom as the research results cannot be free from the influence of tobacco companies.
``If you want to raise ethical questions regarding this research, you should first question ethics of South Korean government which promotes sales of cigarettes through the state-run tobacco maker KT&G but is not active in conducting research on harmfulness of cigarettes,'' said Jang.