A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that life and health insurance companies in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain invest heavily in tobacco companies. Tobacco use is a major cause of fatal lung diseases and cancer, and is known to elevate the risk for heart attack and stroke. The study found that the American insurance company Prudential Financial, Inc. has $264.3 million invested in U.S. cigarette makers, including Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. The Canadian company Sun Life Financial, Inc., which sells life, health and disability insurance, owns over $1 billion worth of stock in tobacco interests, including $890 million in Philip Morris. Prudential Plc, which sells health and disability coverage, has $1.38 billion invested in two tobacco companies, including British American Tobacco. Wesley Boyd, the study's lead author and a faculty member of Harvard Medical School, says that while it may seem self-defeating for companies to sell insurance while also owning tobacco stocks, insurers have found ways to profit from both. "Insurers exclude smokers from coverage or, more commonly, charge them higher premiums. Insurers profit -- and smokers lose -- twice over." Study co-author David Himmelstien explains, "It's the combined taxidermist-and-veterinarian approach: either way, you get your dog back." Boyd adds that the main objective for insurance companies is not to safeguard customers' well-being, but to generate profits. The authors also point to this study as a reason why health insurance coverage should not be left in the hands of private insurers.

On May 28, industry executives met "to devise a public relations and lobbying strategy to block government bans" of bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in cans and plastic containers. The "manufacturers of cans for beverages and foods and some of their biggest customers, including Coca-Cola" are considering spending $500,000 on PR "to defend their industry." Independent research has linked BPA to heart disease and diabetes in humans, and a wide range of diseases including cancer, obesity and reproductive problems in lab animals. Canada has banned BPA in baby bottles, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration "has deemed it safe largely because of two studies, both funded by a chemical industry trade group," part of the American Chemistry Council. At the meeting, industry executives described their "'holy grail' spokesperson" as a "pregnant young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about the benefits of BPA." Industry representatives also suggested "using fear tactics" -- like asking "do you want to have access to baby food anymore?" -- and framing the opposition to BPA bans as "giving control back to consumers." Their main concern is "young mothers, who often make purchasing decisions for households and who are most likely to be focused on health concerns."

Conservatives for Patients' Rights, a group bankrolled by Richard Scott and promoted by CRC Public Relations, is going beyond its "ominous ads warning that President Barack Obama will institute government-run healthcare." It's produced "a 30-minute documentary-style video featuring patients from the United Kingdom and Canada recounting horror stories at the hands of their country's government health care systems." The video is running on cable networks and will air "immediately after NBC's Sunday talk show 'Meet the Press' May 31," just as Congress returns from break. "The spot is part of a planned $20 million ad campaign," reports the Wall Street Journal. Another group, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, is spending $1.7 million on a similar ad campaign. In the Americans for Prosperity spots, a Canadian woman says, "As my brain tumor got worse, my government health-care system told me I had to wait six months to see a specialist." The group plans to run its ads in eight states "seen as influential in the health-care debate" -- Montana, Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, Indiana, Alaska and Nebraska -- and hold rallies "in Virginia and elsewhere."

The Wall Street Journal has published a revealing story about one of the seamier sides of the drug industry's marketing campaigns: paying patients to offer testimonials about their drugs. As health industry observer Merrill Goozner explains, the story came to light because a "celebrity patient" had a "falling out with his corporate sponsor, Bristol-Myers Squibb. Andy Behrman is bipolar, and he earned $10,000 a day or $400,000 in total singing the praises of Abilify (aripiprizole, an atypical antipsychotic drug) to Bristol-Myers' drug salesmen and physician-consultants. Behrman's presentations worked off talking points provided by a public relations firm." He was supposed to tell people that the drug had no side effects and not to tell them that he was being paid by the company. "Behrman now claims he suffered serious side effects while on the drug," Goozner notes. He makes these and other charges in a new tell-all book. In response, the company says that he attempted to shake them down for a $7.5 million contract before turning against his former handlers.

The major American cigarette manufacturers, including Altria and Reynolds American, have lost their appeal of a 2006 Federal court ruling that convicted them of fraud and racketeering. A three-judge panel of the Washington, D.C. U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's 2006 decision that the cigarette companies had systematically lied to the public in a 50-year conspiracy to defraud the public about the health hazards of smoking cigarettes. The Court also agreed that tobacco companies must publish "corrective statements" on the adverse health effects and addictiveness of smoking and nicotine, and stop using misleading labels like "low tar," "light," "ultra light" or "mild," since such cigarettes are now known to be no safer than others, because of the way people smoke them. The court said that tobacco companies "knew about the negative health consequences of smoking, the addictiveness and manipulation of nicotine, the harmfulness of secondhand smoke, and the concept of smoker compensation, which makes light cigarettes no less harmful than regular cigarettes and possibly more."

A class-action lawsuit charging major tobacco companies and a public relations firm with a "decades-long campaign of deceptive advertising and misleading statements" can proceed, ruled the California Supreme Court. The suit is being brought against cigarette makers Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard, and the PR firm Hill & Knowlton. The suit was originally filed in 1997, but changes to California's class-action requirements put its status in question. The recent ruling affirms that the case can proceed as a class-action suit, with "only a handful of plaintiffs leading the suit" required to "show proof of damage and deception, not all plaintiffs in the suit."