Tobacco Documents Online

"E7SCESS DEATRS"=-SCIENTIFIC FACT OR SPECiTLATION ? In the 1965 hearings before the Committee on ^~nnerce United States Senate, Mr. Emerson Foote, an advertising executive, who at the time was chairman of the Nationali Interagency Council on Smoking and'Health, stated that smoking was responsible for at least 125,000 aadimaybe 300,000 deaths per year. In response to a question about the sources for these figures Mr, Foote named the Public Health Service and Dr. Harold S. Diehl. Dr. Diehl also testified at these hearings and in his statement submitted for the record he referred~to a letter to the editor of the American Journal of Public Health, November 1964, by Dr. Heimert Ravenholt and' the work of Dr. Morton Levin,as his sources for these figures. Later In this hearing Dr. Daniel Horn of the Public Health Service testified to the same fijgures mentioned by Mr. Foote and cited Dr. Levin as his source. Consequently, Drs. Ravenholt and Levin were the only sources - other than each other - cited by any of these three witnesses at the '65 hearing. A careful analysis of Dr. Ravenholt's computa- tion shows that his figure of 250,000 excess deaths due to cigarette smoking has no scientific basi,s. In parti- cuUar, without any explanation Dr. Ravenholt stated~that the total number of excess deaths in the population due to cigarette smoking is about six times the total Iungg r

196 cancer mortality in the population. Consequently, he estimated the number of excess deaths due to smoking, by multiplying,by 6 the 41i,37&deaths ascribed to lung cancer in 1962. Dr. Levi'm's analysis is contained~ im his state- ment submitted for the record im the '65 hearings and it includes a table containing his results. He mentions that he and a colleague made an estimate of the excess " deaths among cigarette smokers by "taking into account the age distribution of the male population, the number of smokers and non-smokers, and the number of deaths } from various causes in 1962.° With this brief explanation and no specific statistical ;i'ata it is impossiible for an independent scientist t;o reproduce the calcul!ations that Dr. Levin performed!. Further the prospective studies from which Dr. Levin obtained'~data on smoking habits were not identified. The scientific inadequacies of the above tech- niques of Levi'~n and Ravenholt may best be illustrated by' an example. If these techniques were to be applied to an analysis of the approximately quarter of a million American soldiers who died,during World War IIi, one might conclude that there had been a 1'arge number of excess deaths among cigarette smokers. Then, fo1'lowing the a .ea! :hal :f t the and to "ih san smo thi cig tor hea sta riv up Lev ear cat at as

197 reasoning of these two authors, one would have to say that many men would not have died from gunshot wounds it they had not smoked. The comments of a distinguished physician at the hearings before the House Committee on Interstate and'Foreign Commerce in 1969 are particullar3y pertinent to the above discussion. Dr. Milton B. Rosenblatt said: "The widely publicized accusations of hundreds of thou- sands of deaths caused by cigarettes and, of shortening life expectancy a specific number of minutes per cigarette smoked are fanciful extrapoliations and not factual data." In the succeeding years since the 1'965 hearings this claim of "300,000 excess deaths a year caused by cigarette smoking" has been echoed from hundreds of edi- t'orialis, news stories and speeches. At the 1969 House hearings Dr. William H. Stewart, the then Surgeon GeneraL,, stated that the 300,000 figure which he adopted was "de- rived from methodology of Dr. Morton,Levin and brought up to date from the time he did it." By applying Dr. Levin's percentages - contained'in~the table mentioned earlier - to the 1966 mortality data and the disease categories Dr. Levin had'used in 1965 Dr. Stewart arrived at a figure of 300,124 deaths. Dr. Stewart is also quoted as stating that his figure was "admittedly a crude estimate."

198 And now Secretary Califano is further perpe- tuating this speculative figure. In his January 11, 1978 speech at the meeting of the National Interagency Council on Smoking and Health Secretary Califano stated,that in 1977, smoking caused 220,000 deaths from heart disease, 78,000 from lung,cancer and 22,000 from other cancers including bladder cancer for a total of 320,000. One month later, at these hearings, Secretary Cali,fano attri= buted to cigarette.smoking 15,000 deaths from chronic bronchitis and emphysema, 175,000 deaths'from heart disease and 1'D0,000 deaths from cancer, and states this total to be "more than 320,000." He gives no source for any of his figures. Neither does he explain why or how the heart disease figure fel1by 45,000 deaths between January 11 and'February 15, or why chronic bronchitis and emphysema,were included in his February 15 total but`^ not in,his January 1T total. Nor does he explain how his' estimate that smoki,ng,accounts for 40% of all cancer deaths yearly is Jiust double that of the American Cancer Society.z~`V ;11 that none of the estimates is based'upon a solid',sci,entifio' The explianation for all these discrepancies is, of course,' foundation,. "% : thin ever ~ ~~ . of, Sr does in t} L'nit searc eearc 1931 searc po:,e ahit budr In rnilli proj, for " cithe thi'r& also '.Rit woub recor'1fr `Tf [T i