October 6, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-David Kessler, dean and vice chancellor for medical affairs at the University of California at San Francisco, will talk about "Tobacco Wars" on Thursday, Oct. 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College. Kessler's talk, the annual Everett H. Pryde Lecture, will be free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served after the talk.

Former dean of the Yale School of Medicine and former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Kessler is best known for taking on the tobacco industry under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton (1990-97). He instituted a program to regulate the marketing and sale of tobacco products to children, and later revealed that the tobacco companies had known for 50 years that nicotine was an addictive drug and manipulated its levels in cigarettes. He chronicled these efforts in A Question of Intent (2001).

After his B.A. degree in 1973 from Amherst, Kessler earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1979 and did his internship and medical residency in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received a J.D. from The University of Chicago Law School, and a professional certificate in management from New York University Graduate School of Business Administration. He has published numerous articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and other medical journals, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Everett H. Pryde Fund, established in 1986 by Mrs. Phyllis W. Pryde in honor of her husband, is used to bring to Amherst distinguished alumni who specialize in chemistry and to honor a senior who is an outstanding research assistant in chemistry. Everett Pryde graduated in the Amherst College Class of 1939, obtained an M.A. at the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, and went on to become a distinguished scientist and researcher in natural chemistry, publishing more than 100 papers and was awarded 20 patents.

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