Dr. Swain wrote to Dr. Philip Leder, chairman of the department of genetics at Harvard Medical School and a senior investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

"It gives us another bullet in the gun," said Robert M. Anthenelli, an addiction psychiatrist at the University of Cincinnati and an investigator in the smoking trial.

In 1980, Frederica Perera, a professor at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health and a highly regarded investigator of the effects of environmental hazards, was studying how certain chemicals in cigarette smoke might cause cancer.

"This work will help us see the likely impacts of the things we might control," said Patrick L. Kinney, an associate professor at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health and a principal investigator for the climate and health project.

Those data are still being analyzed, said Dr. Margery Gass, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Cincinnati and a principal investigator in the hormone replacement study.

"We have to separate our aging from our going through menopause," said Dr. Susan Hendrix, a gynecologist at Wayne State and an investigator in a large federal study that cast doubt on the drugs' overall benefit.

"It's very exciting from a patient-care point of view," said Dr. Debra Goldstein, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Illinois and a principal investigator on Vitravene.

--The term "related entity" includes a contractor or subcontractor at any tier, a supplier, a grantee, and an investigator or detailee.

He is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

"It would be morally indefensible," said Dr. Brigid Hogan, a professor of cell biology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.