"The great cause of global health is in Robert Proctor''s
debt. Golden Holocaust is a model of impassioned scholarly
research and advocacy. As Proctor so powerfully demonstrates, the
time has come to hold the tobacco industry accountable for the
massive disease, debility, and death that they produce around the
world."--Allan M. Brandt, author of The Cigarette
Century
"Robert Proctor unpacks the sad history of an industrial fraud. His
tightly reasoned exploration touches on all topics on which the
tobacco makers lied repeatedly to Congress and the public."--Don
Kennedy, President Emeritus, Stanford University and former Editor,
Science
"This book is a remarkable compendium of evil. It will keep you
spinning from page one through the last with a detailed description
of how one of the most notorious industries in American history
deceived and manipulated the public, the politicians, and the
scientific community into allowing an age-old toxin to be breathed
directly into the lungs of millions of Americans. It is the type of
book that makes you wonder how, in God''s name, this could have
happened?"-David Rosner, author of Deceit and Denial
"Proctor powerfully documents how a small number of tobacco
companies caused a tragic, global epidemic. His account of this
history and of the ''lessons learned'' is relevant to the ongoing
effort to end the tobacco epidemic and to efforts to control
emerging pandemics of non-communicable diseases." --Jonathan M.
Samet, M.D., M.S., Director, Institute for Global Health,
University of Southern California
"Proctor weaves together the public historical record with inside
details and insights from thousands of once secret industry
documents. Anyone who cares about health, deception, science or
politics will learn something new from this book."-Stanton A.
Glantz, Professor of Medicine, UC San Francisco, and author of
The Cigarette Papers
"A powerful indictment of the world''s deadliest industry"-John R.
Seffrin, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, American Cancer
Society
"By carefully analyzing formerly secret industry documents, Proctor
has shown how cigarette manufacturers knew that the "filters" on
virtually all cigarettes sold today are utterly fraudulent. His
call for a ban is likely to change how we think about such devices;
this excellent book is a must read for tobacco control and
environmental activists alike."--Thomas E. Novotny, MD MPH, Former
US Assistant Surgeon General and CEO, Cigarette Butt Pollution
Project.
"Scholarly yet eminently readable, indeed gripping, this book asks
us to consider what the end game for tobacco might look like. A
must-read for policy makers and public health officials, and for
anyone struggling against the tobacco industry in the
field."--Professor Judith Mackay, Senior Advisor, World Lung
Foundation, Hong Kong, China SAR"
"The machine-rolled cigarette is the single most deadly consumer
product ever made. Proctor''s powerful, witty, and wide-ranging
book shows how we came to accept as normal the promotion and use of
products that have caused a global epidemic of disease and death.
But more importantly, he outlines a way to end this grim chapter in
human history."--Ruth E. Malone, RN, PhD, FAAN, Editor, Tobacco
Control
"This is the most important book on smoking in fifty years.
Proctor''s unique mix of scholarship, readability, wit and
political understanding tells a no-holds-barred story with
conclusions that governments cannot afford to ignore. It will
change the course of public health history."--Professor Mike Daube,
President, Australian Council on Smoking and Health
"Proctor draws masterfully from a vast archive of documents wrested
from the industry, including many never before discussed, and
mounts an unforgettable case about what the tobacco industry has
done and what we must do about it. This is the book to help us
understand what we must do to save lives."--Peter Galison, author
of Einstein''s Clocks, Poincaré''s Maps
"Golden Holocaust will stand indelibly as a landmark in
the field of medicine and the history of science. It is a monument
of committed scholarship and cool passion, making brilliant use of
the new technics of data-mining to reveal a terrible calculus,
while giving the lie to claims that advocacy must be the enemy of
objectivity. Lives, far too many lives, depend on what this book
contains."--Iain Boal, Birkbeck College, London and Guggenheim
Fellow in Science and Technology
"Robert Proctor draws an unvarnished conclusion: that the tobacco
industry, and the men who led it, were evil, plain and simple. They
knowingly sold a product that, when used as intended, killed
people. And then they conspired to suppress the evidence. Not
everyone will agree with Proctor, but anyone interested in the
intertwined issues of science and health, and culture and commerce,
needs to read this book."--Naomi Oreskes, coauthor of Merchants
of Doubt
"Robert Proctor lays bare the deliberate choices made by the
tobacco companies to addict their customers and cause premature
death. Here is clarity to the unprecedented scientific fraud
perpetrated by the tobacco industry."--William A. Farone, Ph.D.
Chairman, Applied Power Concepts, Inc. (formerly Director of
Scientific Research for Philip Morris USA, 1977-1984).
The cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization. It is also one of the most beguiling, thanks to more than a century of manipulation at the hands of tobacco industry chemists. In "Golden Holocaust," Robert N. Proctor draws on reams of formerly-secret industry documents to explore how the cigarette came to be the most widely-used drug on the planet, with six trillion sticks sold per year. He paints a harrowing picture of tobacco manufacturers conspiring to block the recognition of tobacco-cancer hazards, even as they ensnare legions of scientists and politicians in a web of denial. Proctor tells heretofore untold stories of fraud and subterfuge, and he makes the strongest case to date for a simple yet ambitious remedy: a ban on the manufacture and sale of cigarettes.
