In Reply.
—It is understandable that Mr Parrish, as a representative of the tobacco industry, is upset when an editor draws attention to the possibility of an industry letter-writing tactic that has already been shown to distort the evidence on ETS, a tactic that might work better were our readers uninformed and his assertions unable to be verified.
Parrish will find that nowhere in my Editorial do I question the veracity of those whose letters were critical of the article by Trichopoulos et al1 on preneoplasia of the bronchial epithelium in active and passive smokers.
As for Australian Justice Morling's critical evaluation of the evidence that ETS causes lung cancer, his findings on this point were not overruled on appeal, so Parrish's statement is simply untrue. The Full Federal Court elected not to revisit the issue of precisely what the available evidence did and did not say on the
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