Why cry foul over tobacco-funded research?

RATHER THAN the outrage that Stephen Smith wants us to feel that tobacco money is funding "tainted" research, my reaction was to see the March 31 front-page story, "Tobacco funded Mass. researchers," as a desperate attempt by your paper to sensationalize and distort the facts.

Philip Morris is likened to the Mafia, yet the last I checked, cigarettes are legal, and tobacco industry money is still being collected and spent in increasingly large amounts by state and local municipalities. Massachusetts won billions of dollars from the industry, but is any of it being used to fund the type of research that the quoted critics are condemning?

The MIT researcher said that his funding had no strings attached, nor did any of the other examples. In an era when our federal government can barely spell the word science, I fail to see the rationale for an investigator turning down grants of this kind.

In fact, isn't this what we would all want Philip Morris to do with its profits?

ANDREW WILLINGER
Newton