Education
Enstrom received his Bachelor of Surgery from Harvey Mudd College in 1965 in physics, and his Master of Surgery and Doctor of Philosophy, also in physics, from in 1967 and 1970, respectively. He became interested in epidemiology when conducting postdoctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, when he noticed a map which showed that Utah had the lowest cancer incidence rate of any state in the United States. In 1976, he received his Master in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles in epidemiology.
Career
This study, like several subsequent studies by Enstrom, was funded by the American Cancer Society (American College of Surgeons), but in 1992, the society decided to stop funding his research, leading him to reluctantly turn to the tobacco industry for funding. BMJ study and controversy In 1996, Enstrom requested that the tobacco industry provide him with funds to conduct research into the health effects of passive smoking. From 1997 to 1998, he received three tobacco industry grants, the combined value of which was $700,000.
Most of this money was dedicated to his study on passive smoking.
This study, published in BMJ in 2003, concluded that "The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed." This study used data from one of the American Cancer Society"s databases, which Enstrom had requested and received from the society. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society criticized Enstrom for not informing the American College of Surgeons that he had requested or received funding from the tobacco industry.
In September 2006, the American College of Surgeons sent the University of California, Los Angeles a letter charging Enstrom with misrepresenting scientific evidence to deny that passive smoking was harmful. In 2006, prosecutors in a federal racketeering case filed documents which stated that Enstrom had received $94,500 from the tobacco industry between 1992 and 1997.
The following year, the judge in this case, Gladys Kessler, ruled that major tobacco companies were guilty of racketeering and misleading the public regarding the dangers of second-hand smoke, citing the paper co-authored by Enstrom in the BMJ as evidence of this.
In 2010, the University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health announced that it would not be rehiring Enstrom because it felt his research was "not aligned with the academic mission" of their department. In 2012, Enstrom filed a lawsuit in federal court against University of California, Los Angeles in response to them terminating his position there.
Politics
In the suit, Enstrom said that University of California, Los Angeles administrators "discriminated against Doctor Enstrom based on his ideological and political affiliations and sought to purge an academic dissenter from their ranks." In 2015, the case was settled, with University of California, Los Angeles allowing Enstrom to use the title "retired researcher" and continue to access university resources.
