Tobacco Documents Online

G' CHANNEL 10 6,.,00 ' F.Mt. NEWS 1.5.79 A'G6:YCY !;tFC?T FOR r'Er'^.•JII:+L RE!!,7'e +'.'..'. (i' NCy;" Fn L+E 177.^, r:11ii~1 "L'ff With National Heart W'eek'barely over, an American t+ledical Expert now in Sydney claims to have evidence that the Heart Foundation Now the Foundation~has been telling ~ is on the wrong track ~ . Australians that smoking is a heavy factor in coronary heart f disease, but the new evidence according to the man who came up with it shows that"swrong., R~ichardlCovelli reports, ~ Each year Australians puf'fI their way throug,h 32,00i0,million cigarettes - the H'eart.-Found'ation spends large amounts of time and money trying*to convince• us that this nasty habit will result in serious problems, like coronary heart disease, the biggest killer in our community, but an American medical expert now inlAustralia says that"s not so. Karl Seltzer, although not a dbctor of medicine, has been carrying out medical research at Hlarvard University for the past 4'5 years. Karl Seltzer, himself'a smoker for the past 56 years„ says his latest survey shows that there"s no evidence that smoking does cause heart disease and' past studies hiave been biased and wrongi. e Dr. Seltzer: I say that I'm bringing mew evidence tolAustralia new scientific evidence which indicates that stopping smoking does not red'uce heart disease.. We found that previous studies have just compared exrsmokers with continuing smokers and they have found'that the ex-smokers have lower rates of heart disease and doctors have merely assumed that this was the proof that stopping smoking redhced'heart disease. The proper base line is to determine whether ex-smokers are the same kinds of'peopl'e as continuing smokers, except they stop smoking, you have to study ex-smokers before they stop smoking. We studied'ex-smokers before they stopped smoking and we found they were remarkably different from those who continued to smoke and the d'irection of the differences ind'icated! -that ex-spokers, people destined to stop smoking were healthier before they stopped smoking than the people who eventually continued to smoke. Small wonder that the data show later on that they have less heart disease because they were healthier to begin with. In view of' thilsw new evid'ence,, in vilew of the fact that I've writtenn more than 50 articles on the subject opposing, or contrary to the "' X.~e : U E::_ ll.'iE .1CCC•'RACY. IICh:Et'ER ~ YG' REi.F7J113i3iLI: Y I.; TAKIiI! FCa? .:~.ryC~~.. .: C :4i7

C ; conventional view. I firmly believe that the conventional view `- that smoking causes heart disease may become the outstanding faTT.3cy of'this medical era. i 4W, C