The Forward, NY
June 29, 2001- Letters
time to take tisch , tobacco to task
Having buried smokers, among them my dad (following 27 years with heart disease and 17 years of cancer), my aunt F. (ovarian cancer), my aunt L. (congestive heart failure), my aunt R. (cancer), and more classmates, friends, neighbors, colleagues, teachers, professors and co-workers than I can remember, I’m dumbfounded that the UJC would nominate James Tisch to be chairman of the board (“His Critics See Smoke, But Little Fire, as Tobacco Exec Takes Reins at UJC,” June 15).
His brother Andrew’s statements to Congress that he did not believe that cigarette smoking causes cancer were not only perverse lies, that testimony should rightly have sent him and his cronies from RJR Nabisco and Philip Morris to prison for perjury.
No amount of tzedakah to the worthiest of causes can cleanse Mr. Tisch’s hands of the thousands of deaths his company’s cigarettes cause Americans who gasp and wheeze in hospitals and hospices every second you’re reading this. Let him sue my old man and other late relatives for defamation.
Akiva Kenneth Segan
Seattle