Patients’ data given to tobacco giants
Health officials hand cancer victims' records to US firm working for cigarette companies
THE medical records of British cancer victims have been handed to a controversial American firm working for one of the world’s biggest tobacco companies, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
The data covering almost 180,000 patients – every case of lung cancer diagnosed in England over a four-year period – was given by health officials to a firm which has acted for cigarette giant Philip Morris International for almost three decades.
It is feared the company could use the data in legal cases minimising the dangers of smoking, or fighting regulation.
The sensitive information, taken from anonymised NHS records, was taken without the consent of any of the cancer sufferers or their families.
An investigation by The Daily Telegraph reveals that Public Health England (PHE) gave the data, covering 179,040 lung tumours diagnosed between 2009 and 2013, to a firm called William E. Wecker Associates.
The company has testified on behalf of tobacco giants in dozens of lawsuits, including the landmark United States v Philip Morris case, which in 2006 held Philip Morris liable for racketeering and deceiving the public for decades about the dangers of smoking. Records seen by this newspaper show that PHE released the cancer data to William E. Wecker Associates in July 2016.
It did so after the firm explained that it wanted to evaluate lung cancer trends in Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The request came as Philip Morris, maker of the Marlboro brand, unsuccessfully fought government plans to introduce plain packaging in the UK, which had already been introduced in Australia and agreed for Ireland.
In the request, Wecker said it wanted to examine the relationship between tobacco use and cancer – having made a career out of downplaying such links – and the part played by regulation.
The firm’s president featured heavily in the 2006 case that the tobacco industry had deceived the public about the harm caused by smoking. The court found that Dr William E Wecker, “by his own admission, has ‘never been qualified by a Court as an expert in the subject of smoking and health’”, describing his analyses as “flawed”, his arguments “irrelevant” and “flatly contradicted by … voluminous research reports and other documents, spanning decades”.
Last night, PHE said it was not aware
of the links between William E Wecker Associates and Philip Morris until contacted by The Daily Telegraph.
Senior officials said they had been told the study aimed to “identify strategies to achieve a healthier global population”. They insisted they had a legal duty to release the information when it was requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
Laws governing the release of medical data state that it should only be released “in the interests of improving patient care, or in the public interest”.
Charities last night said it would be “incredibly distressing” for lung cancer sufferers to learn that their medical data was being used by the industry which had caused so many cases of the disease.
Privacy campaigners said the disclosures were scandalous, as they called on the Commons Health Select Committee to investigate how the situation could have been allowed.
Lung cancer is the third most common form of cancer in the UK, with about 45,000 diagnoses annually, with nine in 10 cases caused by smoking.
PHE has access to thousands of medical records, which come from NHS hospitals and screening services.
Patients are unable to block the use of information about them, because the body is not currently covered by NHS rules on consent, which allow patients to refuse for their data to be used for any purpose except direct care.
The rules have been dogged by controversy. Plans for a national database of medical data were halted in 2014 amid concerns that the public had not been properly informed about their right to opt out. A new consent model is due to be introduced in March, but it is not yet clear whether the rules will apply to data extracted by agencies such as PHE.
The apparent lack of due diligence raises question marks about whether there are any safeguards in place to present misuse of data released by PHE.
Sam Smith, from privacy campaigner medconfidential, said: “This is a system that relies on public trust; a system so flawed that it’s not yet clear if any rules were broken.”
“It’s a scandal that ‘medical purposes’ has been twisted, and officially approved, to include a firm working for big tobacco,” he added. “We want the Commons health committee to now investigate as a matter of urgency. Even now we don’t know how this data from medical records is being used. We only know it was given to a firm which has spent three decades acting for a tobacco giant, trying to use statistics to dispute the impact of smoking on cancer.”
Paula Chadwick, chief executive of Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, expressed alarm at the revelations. “This could be incredibly distressing for patients and their loved ones,” she said.
A spokesman for PHE said the data was released to Wiliam E Wecker after it set out plans for a study evaluating “morphological changes in lung cancers across countries and continents” in order to “extend the analysis of relationships between tobacco use and cancer” and “identify strategies to achieve a healthier global population”.
Health officials said the request from the firm stated: “It is widely accepted that the largest contributing factor in developing lung cancer is tobacco use ... We would like to do a cross-continental study involving Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States to evaluate whether cancer morphologies differ across nations or continents.”
The spokesman said PHE was not told who funded the study.
Dr Jem Rashbass, National Director for Disease Registration and Cancer Analysis, PHE, said: “We released this data under our legal duty to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. Patient confidentiality is of upmost importance and we’ve ensured that no sensitive or identifying patient information has been released.
“Any organisation or person can submit an FOI request and is legally entitled to a response, provided there is no applicable exemption.”
The Telegraph asked William E Wecker to provide details of the study, including any plans to publish its findings, but no response was provided.