Tobacco Documents Online

L SYDINfiY: A visiting Ameri- ` ; * caniacademie sa±s, he has new li evidence thav overturns thee conventional view of the con- nectionibetw•een smoking and heart disease. Dr Carl C. Saltzcr, a Harvard Fellow, who also holds, a pro- fcssorship Gom Tufts University, h9assaehussets; cha!lun^-es the no: tion that people who gi e up smok• ing can reduce thctr chanccs of' that the studies on which this view has been based had 16acn faultily conducted. Two more-reccnt, studies sup- portcd' his view. One of'them, with which he was connected and which was soon to appear in Thc Journal of Chronic Diseases, w.as based on 40,000 people in California and showed that fdrmcr smokers, before they stopped smoking; were ean- sidcrabhy dirferent'in many charac- heart disease. . taisti¢s from i continuing smokers He said thera was new evidence -and'thereforetould not be used as a random sample of continuing ". smokers. This did not allow their ; eventual heart-disease rates to be i properly comparcdl, t Former smokers, before they ~ stopped smoking, were healthier; than continuing smokers, so it was hardly, ssurprising thcy, had Idwer' rates of' hcart' diseose. "It is not due to stopping smok, ~ ing, but to thc fact that they are different kinds of peo,ple,to begin I with", he saidJ, ' AUSTRALIA AUS'd`'. CAPITAL TFRRITORY' "CAIdBERRA TIIES" May a', 1979 4WW=-