Tobacco Documents Online

i I (ApproXimate introductory tom'ks to "HFALTHIER CIGARETTES AND~ANCER pREVENTION," a ~ecture delivered Sunday, July 6, 1969, at the Amhessndor P~tel, Los Angeles, California, by Dean Burk) Before I begin I must make it abundantly clear that the facts, views and interpretations I shall present this af~rnoen do not necessaril.7 co~oide with those of all administrators of the National Cancer Institute, all honorable gentlemen in the \ sense of ~hrk Anthony, and, by virtue of their positions, of course possessed of infinite wisdom, which I ~u not; what I can offer~ however, is, on the one hand, much longer staff service in the National Cancer Institute (over thirty years) then a~ of them, and, on tbe other hazd, far ~ore direct and personal erperimentul studies from the laboratory bench, that final arbiter of all thinga scientific. What i have te say on the subject of cigarette smoke and smoking this afternoon should, in fact, eventually please everyone . after Understanding of mY point of view has been reached , and after prejudices or ~nwarranted biases have been eliminated: First, the Surgeon General of the U.B. Public ~ealth Service and all anti-cigarette forces sho~d be pleased to hear that we have found that smoke from cigarettes on today's market are m~re toxic than even they had pressed; and secomd, the proclgarette forces of the public, industry and agriculture should be pleased to learn that we hove found a virtually satisfactory way tc ove~ome this toxieity~ a ~y that should legitimately disgruntle the anti-cigarette forces. The horse-and-buggy people of 1900-1915 looked askance at automobiles as very dangerous, as indeed they were then a~ still are nov. But At would never have been any real solution to han~ or prohibit automobiles generallyp ~t rather to make / automobiles -and their counterparts such as airplanes and space ships . as safe as possible ~ithim reason. The same is true'for cigarettes, with the important difference that, as I hope to indicate this afternoon, cigarettes can be made vastly safer, relatively, than automobiles ever can. We all know that the harm and misery of cancer, in terms of persons killed or raised by this disease, are both greater than not only the ~rtelity and morbidity induced by automoblles today, but also by all military wars of the United States again in terms of killed and wounded, per unit of populatimn. At no time has any

~troduction - p. 2 What is not ~o ~ell known, however, is that the harm of morbidity and ~ortali~ caus~ by the smoking and ~nhalinS of ci~arottes current~ on the market is still even • greater than that of all cancers combined, which in the United States now takes some 300,000 lives a year ~i~h upwards of a million sufferes from this disease. But these n~bers are nothing compared to those 60,OSOpO00 . 80,000,000 American smokers of pre~ent day ci~rettes, ~ieh cigarettes induce emp~Be~ bramchitie, heart and ~asc~ar a~ents, etc., in addition to being reeponsi~e for much can~sr, so that the "s.~okinJnon-s~oks-iaduced cancer " ratio is even greater. Now, these ~,000,000 cigarette smokers are going to smoke a~y, regardless of ~e aforeimdicated consequences. Only a modern King Canuts wo~d deny this. So, prohibition of cigarette smoking is quite out of the question for the nation as a ~hole, however effectively our dear Chairman Ellis has dons so ~th respect to this ~bassy Room ~u~ing these meetings° Thas,~ we are left with a national problem on our hands, to be solved, not dictated or dreamed away. As ststed ~y a ~itnsss in the 1967 Hearings of the Co.~ttee on Coheres, U.S. Senate, "it is now rather obvious that anti-cigarette advocates prefer to pretend that cigarette smoking is not of important health benoflt, just as the tobacco industry prefers to ~retend that cigarette smoking is not an important health hazard. Such a serious health pr@blem, which so deeply involves the lives of countless millions, deserves something ~ettsr than a make-belleve approach to its solution." The New York Times of only lamt FridaM, reporting hearings before the Federal Trade Commission of the day before, July 2, 1969, said, i "~. Austern ((an industry lawyer)) challenged the commission's contention that c~garette advertising is deceptive because it depicts smoking cigarettes as desirable without ~entionlng any possible hazard. / "Anybody who is not deaf and blind kno~:itls a hazard,,, he said. Th~s was the first time that a tobacco industry spokesman had conceded any l~nk between smoking and health." The widely publicized Surgeon General's Report (Pub. 1103) of 1964, contains a section on "Beneficial effects of tobacco," concluding this section, on p. 356, ~ith the statement that "Hedical perspective requires reco~itlon of si~nifiaant beneficial effects of smoking, primarily in the area of mental health. These benefits originate in a psychologic search for contentment and ar~ measurable only in tBrms of individual behavior. Since ~o means of

\ Inhroduct~on p. 3 \ In any event, we are left with trying to solve a problem affecting presen~y some 7S,000,000 people im the United States. Even if every person in this ro~ were bitterly ao~ainst the smokin~ of currently marketed cigarettes, and, llke myself~ had no personal use for them (though my three children do), we would still be left with some 70,000,000 of our fellow citizens on our hands, a vastly greater ~u~ber than those present in this room. With this perspective in mind, I trust that personal biases My at least temporarily be laid aside, and that you may be interested to hear ~w what~v colleagues and ~ haw been doing at the N~tional Cancer Institute in Bethesda on o~ solent~io laboratory benches to aid in solving the problem outlined. We believe that we have already attained a far, far ho~ thlor cigarette than any~ available on the American market, or any other ~arket so far as k~,o~, by first developing a new, fumdamental bio~cal test system for cigarette s~oke toxlcity, and then uslng th~s test system te develop and test new and effective filters that eliminate already peThaps not less than 90-95% of this smoke toxicity refers it enters the smoker's mouth, without ~due less of cigarette satisfaction in terms of flavor and draw for all b~t possible faddists, of whom Sir Walter Raleigh was not one. I shall now proceed to teohnieal ~d la~raterX aspeete, .fworksup~rting this claim. ./