Tobacco

In an effort to distance itself from the stench of its reputation as the world's worst tobacco company, Philip Morris recently changed its name to "Altria." To guard the new name against parodies, the company then sneakily bought up the domain name registration for "AltriaSucks.com." Bret Fausett,

"I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings," writes Joe Eszterhas, the author of movie megahits such as Flashdance and Basic Instinct. "I am admitting this only because I have made a deal with God. Spare me, I said, and I will try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did." His crime? Making smoking look "cool and glamorous ... an integral part of many of my screenplays." Eszterhas says his moral awakening came after he was diagnosed with throat cancer, "the result of a lifetime of smoking. I am alive but maimed.

"Even the executive from Philip Morris Companies Inc., the parent company of the largest cigarette maker in the United States, couldn't ignore the irony that he had been scheduled to speak about corporate responsibility," writes Marc Levy in an Associated Press report on a speech delivered on Monday by PM vice president David Greenberg.

Ragnar Rylander, a respected Swedish scientist, has been doing research on the connections between environmental tobacco smoke and lung disease, research that has been secretly funded by the tobacco company Philip Morris. Rylander has been accused of manipulating his studies to suit tobacco interests, and of thus partaking in a "scientific fraud without precedent."