Tobacco Documents Online

-10- Everyone's heard the old admonition that smoking will stunt a youngster's growth. What about the new claim that youngsters whose mothers smoked while carrying them are shorter than their contemporaries whose mothers didn't smoke? Those who say this cite research in England that purported to show that children of smoking mothers were shorter, on average, at age 7 (39). The difference in average height was 1 centimeter, or about three-tenths of an inch. And the same study found that at age 7 the child of a blue- collar family was on average 1.3 centimeters shorter than the child of wealthier parents. The fourth child was 2.3 centimeters shorter than a first born. The same British survey is used for the allegation that smokers' children lag behind in reading ability at age 7 (25). The claimed difference is four months. No such differences were found in a Johns Hopkins study of heights and intellectual abilities of 7-year-old children of smoking and non- smoking mothers (46). In Brazil, a study which compared the physical growth rates of LBW babies of smokers as well as, nonsmokers with infants of average weight showed that the LBW babies grew faster and had essentially caught up by the second year of life (8). And the British researchers measured little difference in either physical or mental development in the same children four years later, when they were 11. The doctor and the statistician who had designed the study reported in 1973 that what variations there were were small compared to differences associated with social class and family size (15). For instance, comparison showed that a child from a household with no older

children was on average 16 months behind in general ability when compared with the child who had three or more older sisters and brothers at home. The average difference in reading ability was 29 months, in mathematics 14 months. And the child with no older sisters and brothers was 4 centimeters taller on the average at 11. Coincidentally, other researchers using the same British study data showed that near-sighted children are more than a year ahead of the average at age 11 in math and general ability (78). But those who look only at whether mother smoked or not continue to claim that her smoking impedes her child's growth and learning skills...

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-13- Q, Is it true that smoking mothers can harm their babies after birth -- that children of women who smoke suffer more respiratory illnesses, especially bronchitis and pneumonia? This is a frequent emotion-laden claim against cigarettes. Children have more respiratory infections as a whole than adults. They are thought to be more susceptible to airborne germs, smog and other environmental effects. So a number of researchers have set out to investigate the effects of parental smoking -- with conflicting results. Statements that the child's health is harmed by a parent's cigarette smoke are usually based on research in Texas (69), and Michigan (17, 18), in England (20) and in Israel (47), dating as far back as 1969. The findings and conclusions of each of these studies, however, have been questioned by the U. S. Public Health Service because of faulty study design (104, 107). Three other studies here and abroad have failed to demonstrate any adverse relationship. One was conducted among second graders in Chattanooga by government health officials (89). Another, supported by the Public Health Service, was done by researchers from Yale and Johns Hopkins (88). The third, a survey of 1400 Dutch school children, found that the respiratory symptoms of the children were related to their parents' symptoms, whether or not the parents smoked (63). More recently, a four-year study of 5700 youngsters in England and Scotland identified a so-called "cooking effect" among other environmental

-14- and socioeconomic factors in the prevalence of respiratory symptoms and diseases (75). Boys and girls from homes in which gas was used for cooking had more coughs, "colds going into the chest" and bronchitis than children whose homes had electric stoves. The researchers concluded that products of fuel combustion might be the cause of the increased respiratory illness. It is difficult to understand why parental smoking is blamed for a child's coughs or wheezes, in view of these conflicts in research findings. :;4

-15- Q. Is there anything to the charge that smoking can interfere with sexual and reproductive functions of both men and women -- that it may lower the libido and impair fertility? This favorite attention-getter of anti-smokers shows up from time- to-time, particularly in stories supplied to local newspapers by fund- raising organizations in health fields. There are limited and nonscientific data on animals and less on humans, most representing uncontrolled "clinical" observations and questionnaire surveys of individuals who claimed "sexual problems." Some eminently refutable claims about impaired sex activity were included in a popular national family health magazine in 1974 (95). But, in 1975, an international scientific publication, The Journal of Sex Research, published "A Critical Review of Reports on the Effect of Smoking on Sex and Fertility," a comprehensive survey of 41 medical papers, dating back to 1923 (93). The authors concluded: Existing evidence does not support the hypothesis that smoking or tobacco extracts have an effect on sexual activity or procreation. An Ohio physician, a longtime anti-smoking volunteer, with refreshing candor, more recently told an American Cancer Society meeting in Chicago the same thing. Only "a thoroughgoing statistical analysis of a sizeable population" could prove any point about smoking and sexual dysfunction, he said, "and I have not yet seen such a study..." (60).

-16- Nevertheless, the issue shows that history does have a way of repeating itself. A contemporary historian devoted two pages in a tobacco history to some claims of 19th century reformers and evangelists (84). While some of them warned that tobacco would render users impotent, others spoke of "tobacco excitement" and cautioned: Ye who would be pure in your love-instinct, cast this sensualizing fire from you.

-17- Q, Is it true that smoking causes facial wrinkles? As Those who may not be familiar with the medical literature, who may have merely repeated what they've been told by others, say smokers have more facial wrinkles than nonsmokers, and so smoking obviously causes wrinkles. One doctor, an internal medicine specialist in Cali- fornia, is the originator of this claim. He reported in 1971 that among his patients, friends and casual visitors, the smokers had more and deeper crow's feet around the eyes than the nonsmokers (24). He admitted that his grading system for the severity of wrinkling was "crude" and said he didn't think that any observer bias could explain the nonsmoker-smoker differences found. "The additional evaluations by fresh, naive observers of the same subjects would seem to support this view," he said. The catch was that the fresh, naive observers in his "scientific" experiment -- who measured wrinkles in pictures of 400 persons -- were two high school sophomores and a 12-year-old. Shortly after these observations were published, three Navy doctors set out to check the Californian's conclusions, asking themselves three questionst 1. If smoking is the most important factor in producing wrinkling, why does it occur in sun-exposed areas and not on all skin areas? 2. Do blacks, whose skin is not susceptible to sun-caused changes, develop similar wrinkles if they smoke? 3. If smoking is the "prime" cause of facial wrinkling, how does it create the wrinkles?

-18- They designed a controlled study, and,unlike the California "research," included blacks. They reported that black smokers were no more wrinkled than black nonsmokers, and they concluded in an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that sun exposure -- not smoking -- causes early crow's feet (1). The anti-smokers, however, continue to cite what one news service reporter called "the latest weapon in the arsenal of the anti-smoking crusade...an appeal based on the presumed vanity of women" (33).

-19- Q, There are those who call for an end to cigarette advertising because, they say, it persuades people to begin smoking, especially the young female, in an era of new freedom for women. Does advertising create new smokers? As No more than advertising a specific brand of toothpaste causes more people to use toothpaste. Cigarette advertising is brand advertising, aimed at interesting smokers in switching brands and in creating brand loyalty. A Wayne State University economics professor said in a study supported by the American Cancer Society that cigarette advertising is a "competitive weapon that companies have used to divide the cigarette market; it has not been used as a means for expanding the cigarette market" (44). And the chairman of Harvard's department of psychology and social relations told an ACS meeting in June 1977 that most of the evidence indicates that advertising does not play a major role in inducing young- sters to smoke (71). But perhaps the best answer lies in the words of a woman -- a New York advertising agency president and ACS consultant who is active in Cancer Society affairs: ...I don't think the increase in cigarette smoking in girls and women is due entirely or even largely to skillful, mani- pulative advertising. Essentially we are dealing with a broad cultural development: a good deal of the behavior that has been man's alone for so long is now open to women...including cigarettes on a man-sized scale (41).