Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition

by Robert N. Proctor

Overview

The cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization. It is also one of the most beguiling, thanks to more than a century of manipulation at the hands of tobacco industry chemists. In Golden Holocaust, Robert N. Proctor draws on reams of formerly-secret industry documents to explore how the cigarette came to be the most widely-used drug on the planet, with six trillion sticks sold per year. He paints a harrowing picture of tobacco manufacturers conspiring to block the recognition of tobacco-cancer hazards, even as they ensnare legions of scientists and politicians in a web of denial. Proctor tells heretofore untold stories of fraud and subterfuge, and he makes the strongest case to date for a simple yet ambitious remedy: a ban on the manufacture and sale of cigarettes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520270169
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/28/2012
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	774
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.00(h) x 2.10(d)

About the Author

Robert N. Proctor is Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University and author of Cancer Wars, Racial Hygiene, and The Nazi War on Cancer He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Prologue 1

Introduction: Who Knew What and When? 13

Part 1 The triumph of the Cigarette 25

1 The Flue-Curing Revolution 31

2 Matches and Mechanization 36

3 War Likes Tobacco, Tobacco Likes War 44

4 Taxation: The Second Addiction 49

5 Marketing Genius Unleashed 56

6 Sponsoring Sports to Sell Smoke 88

7 Parties, the Arts, and Extreme Expeditions 118

8 Clouding the Web: Tobacco 2.0 134

Part 2 Discovering the Cancer Hazard 145

9 Early Experimental Carcinogenesis 149

10 . Roffo's Foray and the Nazi Response 155

11 . "Sold American": Tobacco-Friendly Research at the Medical College of Virginia 171

12 A Most Feared Document: Claude E. Teague's 1953 "Survey of Cancer Research" 191

13 "Silent Collaborators": Clandestine Cancer Research Financed by Tobacco via the Damon Runyon Fund 200

14 Ecusta's Experiments 210

15 Consensus, Hubris, and Duplicity 224

Part 3 Conspiracy on a Grand Scale 253

16 The Council for Tobacco Research: Distraction Research, Decoy Research, Filibuster Research 257

17 Agnotology in Action 289

18 Measuring Ignorance: The Impact of Industry Disinformation on Popular Knowledge of Tobacco Hazards 305

19 Filter Flimflam 340

20 The Grand Fraud of Ventilation 357

21 Crack Nicotine: Freebasing to Augment a Cigarettes "Kick" 390

22 The "Light Cigarette" Scam 406

23 Penetrating the Universities 418

24 Historians Join the Conspiracy 459

Part 4 Radiant Filth and Redemption 483

25 What's Actually in Your Cigarette? 489

26 Radioactivity in Cigarette Smoke: "Three Mile Marlboro" and the Sleeping Giant 306

27 The Odd Business of Butts-and the Global Warming Wild Card 513

28 "Safer" Cigarettes? 529

29 Globalizing Death 539

30 What Must Be Done 549

Notes 563

Selected Bibliography 667

Lexicon of Tobacco Industry Jargon 681

Timeline of Global Tobacco Mergers and Acquisitions 691

Timeline of Tobacco Industry Diversification into Candy, Food, Alcohol, and Other Products 697

Acknowledgments 699

Index 703

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Draws on previously confidential industry documents and Proctor's own experience as the first historian to testify in court about [industry] lies. What lies? How deep into the pleural linings did they go? All the way."—Harper's Magazine

"Lays out in head-shaking detail how a handful of companies painstakingly designed, produced, and mass-marketed the most lethal product on the planet."—Mother Jones

"[A] monumental and sobering indictment."—Nature

"Proctor documents a breadth and depth of the industry's duplicitous actions that is astounding."—Science (Aaas)

"A nearly 800-page book that begins as the Bible of the twentieth-century cigarette industry only to end as its millennial counterblaste."—Harper's

Editorial Reviews

"Proctor’s book will be of great interest . . . it debunks fraudulent industry claims past and present, provides credible arguments for banning cigarettes, and delineates steps to take before abolition is politically possible. . . . For historians, Proctor’s book particularly calls for serious conversation about ethics and best practices in our era of decreased public support of universities and rising dependence on corporate donors."

Journal of the History of Medicine - Nan Enstad

Lays out in head-shaking detail how a handful of companies painstakingly designed, produced, and mass-marketed the most lethal product on the planet.

Mother Jones

An invaluable reference for historians interested in the tobacco industry, health and medicine, or marketing in the twentieth century.

Jrnl Of American History - Karen Miller Russell

A landmark study in medicine and the history of science, and of an industry [Proctor] describes as ‘evil.’

Toronto Globe & Mail

A historian’s testimony on his own terms. . . . Entertaining and hard-hitting.

Carol Benedictn Historical Review

A passionate work and not for the faint of heart.

American Journal Of Epidemiology

Proctor documents a breadth and depth of the industry’s duplicitous actions that is astounding.

Science (AAAS)

Engaging, inexhaustible with information, and driven.

Chronicle Of Higher Education

[A] monumental and sobering indictment.

Nature

Draws on previously confidential industry documents and Proctor’s own experience as the first historian to testify in court about [industry] lies. What lies? How deep into the pleural linings did they go? All the way.

Harper's Magazine

Proctor’s extensive use of previously secret tobacco industry documents makes his case convincing, even compelling.

Global Public Health - Katherine E. Kenny Sociology/Science Studies

A nearly 800-page book that begins as the Bible of the twentieth-century cigarette industry only to end as its millennial counterblaste.

Harper's - Joshua Cohen

A comprehensive and devastating account of tobacco industry perfidy in promoting the sale of its deadly cigarettes.

Bulletin Of The History Of Medicine - Barron H. Lerner

Proctor challenges his readers to conceptualize a much happier and healthier world in which the manufacture and sale of cigarettes is prohibited.

The Huffington Post

[A] monumental and sobering indictment.

Nature Lib

“A historian’s testimony on his own terms. . . . Entertaining and hard-hitting.

American Historical Review - Carol Benedict

“Draws on previously confidential industry documents and Proctor’s own experience as the first historian to testify in court about [industry] lies. What lies? How deep into the pleural linings did they go? All the way.

Harper's Magazine