The Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention & Screening -- a charity funded almost entirely by a tobacco company -- provided funding for a Cornell study that concluded that CT scans could prevent most lung cancers, the New York Times reported March 26.

Officials at the New England Journal of Medicine, which published the study by Claudia Henschke of Weill Cornell Medical College in October 2006, said they did not know that the foundation was funded by Vector Group, the parent firm of cigarette company Liggett Group. "In the seven years that I've been here, we have never knowingly published anything supported by" a tobacco company, said journal editor-in-chief Jeffrey M. Drazen.

In fact, Henschke was the president of the foundation, and while Vector had announced in 2000 that it was making a grant to Cornell to fund her research, no mention was made of the foundation. Henschke and collaborator David Yankelevitz denied that there was any attempt to cover up the funding source.

"The gift was announced publicly, the advocacy and public health community knew about it, it is quite easy to look it up on the Internet, its board has independent Cornell faculty on it, and it was fully disclosed to grant funding organizations," they wrote in an e-mail. While Vector made $3.6 million in grants to the foundation, the authors said that tobacco money funded only a small part of the CT study and that the foundation no longer accepts donations from tobacco companies.

Still, colleagues expressed shock over Henschke's relationship with Liggett. "If you're using blood money, you need to tell people you're using blood money," said Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. Brawley said that the group would never have given Henschke the $100,000 in grants it provided to her between 2004 and 2007 if officials knew about the Liggett funding.

Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, said he believes the foundation was set up to obscure the funding source for the study. "You have to ask yourself the question, 'Why did the tobacco company want to support her research?'" Kassirer said. "They want to show that lung cancer is not so bad as everybody thinks because screening can save people; and that's outrageous."

"[Henschke is] the biggest advocate for widespread spiral CT screening," said Paul Bunn of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. "And now her research is tainted."