UC Berkeley's renowned School of Public Health has banned the use of tobacco industry funds for research because of the devastating death toll of smoking, the school's dean said Friday.

"Cigarette smoking kills 440,000 Americans a year," Dean Stephen Shortell said. "A thousand of those deaths are estimated to be infants. It's a pretty evil product. Worldwide, over 4 million people died from tobacco use in 2000."

The ban was "overwhelmingly approved" in a faculty vote last week, Shortell said. He said about a half dozen other schools of public health have adopted similar rules, including those at Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities.

Brendan McCormick, spokesman for Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest tobacco company, called the ban "shortsighted."

"Our belief is that the more research dollars that can go to people who can help reduce the harm associated with our product, the better," he said.

Adopted after a year of faculty discussion, the policy is intended as a "public statement," Shortell said. The school, the first school of public health west of the Mississippi River, has not taken tobacco money in the past, he said.

The use of tobacco-industry funding for research has stirred wide debate. UCSF faculty members narrowly voted in favor of such a ban last year.

Smoking-related disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.