Over a cup of coffee, in one of those shabby railway cafes you get round England, I came across this story in the New Scientist. I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading and therefore decided to buy my first ever issue of the New Scientist - which is quite expensive at £3.25 – to lighten the train journey. The story goes like this. The US food and drug administration (FDA) is potentially going to get the job of regulating the tobacco industry. I can see it now; smoke this lighter brand of FDA approved cigarettes. Now this has to be a joke but it isn’t, as tobacco companies have begun ‘clinical trials’. A clinical trial as defined by wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn is a rigorously controlled test of a new drug on human subjects, and in the United States it is conducted under the direction of the FDA before being made available for general clinical use. Cigarettes companies are developing a range of prototype lighter cigarettes. I think I’ve heard of these before - they are called lights. The worst of it is BAT has started a trial on 250 smokers who are either given normal cigarettes or prototypes. Now I have had some problems with ethics committees before; but, if you can get away with randomizing someone to one of two killers then I can’t see why there is a need for ethical committees. Here is the best of it though; they are only using a surrogate of urine toxins to see which cigarette lowers them and then relating this to potential cardiovascular reductions. You may be sitting there like me thinking what a load of rubbish, they will never get away with this. Well, the US senate has voted on it this week, and when you think that the World Health Organization predicts by 2030, 80% of tobacco related deaths will be in low to middle income countries, then this decision could worsen the gains made in recent years in reducing the numbers smoking.