Warning: VCU's proposal for a tobacco-funded pregnancy center could cause irreparable harm to its reputation and research efforts.
Jump to full article: Style Weekly, 2008-08-13
Author: Chris Dovi
Intro: It's buried in a funding proposal floated by Virginia Commonwealth University to create a new health center for pregnant women: Research shows that nicotine entering the bloodstream of pregnant women enrolled in smoking-cessation programs improves the health of their unborn children.
Indeed, in the annals of tobacco-related research there isn't a consensus on the effects of nicotine patches and cessation therapy during pregnancy. The lack of consensus, though, isn't what goads critics. It's that the nicotine replacement claim is part of a funding proposal that VCU recently shopped to Altria, parent company of Philip Morris USA.
The proposal is at the heart of the uproar over VCU's research partnership with Philip Morris.
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Quotes from this article:
Does the end justify the means? Am I willing to take tobacco money to do good? Yeah. I think it's immoral not to.
Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School Dean Jerome Strauss, originator and a key proponent of a proposal that Philip Morris fund the new VCU Center for Healthy Pregnancy and Neonatal Outcomes. The proposal claims that research shows that nicotine entering the bloodstream of pregnant women enrolled in smoking-cessation programs improves the health of their unborn children.
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