Tobacco Documents Online

TRANSCRIPT OF EDWARD R. MURROW'S SECOND TV SHOW ON "CIGARETTES AND LD-NG CANCER" June 7, i~55 (Transcribed from a tape recording made for Hill and Knowlton, Inc., during the telecast on CBS-TV, 10:30-11 p.m. ) MR. M~RROW: Good evening. This is "See It Now," produced by the partnership of Friendly and Murrow and presented by Alcoa, the Aluminum Company of America. Tonight, the second half of a report on cigarettes and cancer. Our reporter, Arthur Morse; camersm~_n, Leo Rossi. Every time a package of cigarettes is sold, the United States govern- ment collects 7 cents, in a year~ more than $1.5 billion. Almost a million people are employed in the making of over 400-billlon cigarettes a year. This year~ however, there has been a cba~ge in the statistics. Filter tips represented less than 2 per cent of the total in 1952. In 1955, more than 20 per cent are filter tips, and the figure is rising. There is a clear indication that the relationship between cigarettes and health has caused this change. The cigarette industry, aware of this fact, and fully, cognizant of its responsibility, has organized the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. Its Scientific Director is the eminent cancer investigator, Dr. Clarence Cook Little~ head of the Jackson Memorial Laboratory at Bar Harbor, M~ine. QUESTION: Dr. Little, have any cancer-causing agents been identified in cigarettes? DR. LIT21E: No. None ~qatever, either in cigarettes or in any product of smoking, as such. This is interesting in a way, because there are many known cancer-forming substances in tar, and I'm sure that research in this field will continue. People are bound to look for cancer-causing agents in all kinds of material. It is interesting that certain of the published data seem to show an association between certain types of cancer, or perhaps cancer in general, and excessive use of cigarettes. Now, we're very interested in finding out what kind of people are heavy smokers and what kind a_~e not. Not everybody is a smoker, not everybody who smokes is an equa7 ]~y heavy smoker. What determines these selections on the part of people? Is it a different nervous type of person who smokes a great deal? 11311595 CTR-STRTE OF FLORIBR

- 2 - Is it a person who is reacting differently to strain or stress, because it is very clear that certain people Just can't take it as well as others~ And the fact that they are of this t_ype may very ~ell mean that they establish certain h~bits; and it's conceivable at least that lutensive and excessive use of any agent might be one of the habits that they established. QUESTION: Dr. Little, you are chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Tobacco Industry Research Co~ttee. What is the purpose of the Committee? DR. LITTLE: Well, the purpose of the Cow, tree is to study in every possible way the relations between smoking and hum2n health. The Tobacco Indust-~y Research Committee has put at the disposal of the Scientific Advisory Board the first $500,000 and then doubled that ~mnunt, and I have every reason to believe that as the SCientific Board finds projects and plans that are worthwhile, that that does not represent the final S~m~t of support. None of the research is done in any laboratories o~ned by the tobacco industry as such. It is al3 done at various colleges, institutions, medical schools, laboratories throughout the country. That's an important point, I thimk, because there might be an idea that the industry ~as trying to set up a li~ted or restricted piece of experimental work. QUESTION: Suppose the tremendous amount of research going on, including that of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, ~ere to reveal that there is a cancer-causing agent in cigarettes, ~hat then? DR. LTI~LE: Well, if it ~as found by somebody working under a tobacco industry research grant, it would be made public immediately and just as broadly as we could make it, and then efforts would be taken to attempt to remove that substance or substances. I'd llke to say this, however, that I have hear~ a sort of a point of vie~--and I'm not a~ng this again at any one individual o- but a point of view that says# "Let's e~m~n~te the agent in tobacco that is harmful." Well, it seems to me that ~ can't possibly eliminate an agent that hasn't yet been identified,, or the presence of which h~n't yet been proven. MR. MURROW: Last week, Dr. E. Cuyler ~a~nnd of the American Cancer Society reported on the statistical relationship of the smoking habits of 18%000 American males. Timothy Hartnett, Chairman of the Tobacco Industry Research Co~ttee, cba~ged that the report ignores important environmental, geographical, occupational, physical and emotional factors. Others insisted that the incidence of lung cancer in city d~ellers indicated air pollution as a primary cause. Yesterday, in presenting a new report to the AMA meeting in Atlantic City~ Dr. Hammond included a survey comparing city d~ellers to r~ral. 11311596 CTR-STRTE OF FLORID£

-3- DR. HAMMOND: The findio4~s are ~s follows: Of those men who never smoked -- we had 32~460 of them -- 12 died of 11~g cancer, 33 per 100,O00. The occasional smokers had about the same death rate. So did the cigar smokers. Men who smoked pipes only had a death rate about twice as high, but men ~ho had smoked cigarettes regularly at some time had a death rate of 245 per 100,O00, ~hich was about seven times as high as for th6se who never smoked. The question has been raised as to whether the association between ciga- rette smoking and lung cancer occurs in rural areas as ~ell as in urban areas. In order to determine this, %~ divided the men into four groups. . ~hose living in cities of 50j000 or more. in this group we included men from such cities as Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Chicagoj Detroit, Buffalo and Newark. The next group were men living in to,ms of 10-50,000. The next group ~re men living in towns and in suburban areas. And the final group were men 3_iving in strictly rural areas, such as farming districts in Iowa, or Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York, and other states. The t~]! bars on the chart indicate the death rate of the men who were smoking cigarettes regularly. Now, you will note that these tall bars are all about the same. The bar that is slightly the ts] ~est is for the big cities. There the death rate of the cigarette smokers ~as ~68.6 ~er lO0,O00. In rural areas it ~as a bit lower, 217. Agaln, the s~a~l bars indicate the death rates of the men who never smoked. All of them are very smal~ as compared with the cigarette smoking rate. In other ~ords, what m~tters is not where you llve, but how much you smoke. The question arises as to "~'nether the damage, if any, done by cigarette smoking to ~ particular man, has a]_~eady been done after he has smoked cigarettes for a number of years. If so, then giving up smoking ~ould not lower the risk of lung cancer to such a man. Now, in our study, there ~are 2,~03 men who had once been regular cigarette smokers, but had given it up at the time they were questioned. Twenty- t~o men in this group died of lung cancer during the next two and a half years. That is, i00 per 10%000 of them died. In other wards, the ex-cigarette smokers h~d only about h~]f the lung cancer death rate of the light cigarette smokers ~ho continued to smoke. This would seem to indicate that givi~ up_ cigarette smoking lowers the risk of lung cancer below that of men who continue to smoke cigarettes. MR. MURROW: A second report was read at Atlantic City yesterday. study had been conducted collaterally by the Sloan-Kettering Institute. Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, head of the Sloan-Kettering Institute and Mamorial Center, reports it for us. This DR. RHOADS: Mr. Murro~, the conclusion is inescapable to me and to my associates that a real relationship exists between the long, continued inhala- tion of cigarette smoke and the occurrence of caucer of the l~ug in man. This is not an exclusive relationship. There are some asses of cancer of the lung -- perhaps one in five --which are not associated with smoking, but probably 11311597 CTR-ST TE OF FLO IO

four out of five, from the ~elght of the evidence, do have such an association~ at least. Now, very much evidence backs this up. In the first place we're known for years that cancer of the lung ~as rare in non-smokers. Secondly, no less than 14 separate scientific studies have been made in a number of different countries, ~ll with the same results. There is a real relationship between the duration and the amount smoked and the rate of occurrence of lung cancer. Thirdly~ it is possible to ~e forward-looklng studies. That is, it has been possible in Great Britain and in this country to select large groups of the population, to classify them according to their smoking habits, to set up a prediction as to the rate of occurrence of lung cancer, and to see that prediction actus/_ly fulfilled in a very brief period of time. Yesterday., in Atlantic City, at the annual convention of the American Medical Association, Dr. Wynder presented a report on cancer of the voice box, the larynx. This report is the result of an international study involving three countries. The results indicate that there is the same relationship, though not an exclusive one, between the use of tobacco and cancer of the voice box as exists between cancer of the lung and the continued inhalation of cigarette smoke. Indeed, in 209 individ,~21 s ~ith cancer of the voice box, the larynx, there was only one non- smoker. Mr. Murrow, Dr'. Wynder w~ ]] summarize for you his studies dealing with the possibility of preventing cancer of the lung and the larynx, the voice box, in hi,man beings. DR. WI~NI~R: Mr. Mnrrow,: there are numerous ~spects of preventive measures as far as cancer of the lung and cancer of the larynx are concerned. Among these, however, those directed against tobacco are of particular importance because, as ~e pointed out yesterday in Atlantic City, we believe that some 80 per cent of all lung cancer and I a~ynx cancer cases now occurring in American males could be avoided if it were not for smoking. Among preventive measures directed against tobacco we list three: One -- moderation of smoking habits. Our data on relative risk indicate that those smokers smoking more than half a pack of cigarettes a day begin to have an increased risk of larynx and lung cancer. Two -- effective filtration. There has been in the litera- ture, and particularly in cigsrette advertisements, much concern about effective filtration, and the American public has started to smoke filtered cigarettes to a great extent during recent years. It remains to be shown, however, what effective filtration means. Only further research can show whether any of the filtered cigarettes now on the market w~]] effectively remove the ingredients in tobacco smoke responsible for the cancer-inducing action. In the meantime~ it is our huuch that a mechanical filter that removes~ let us say, ~0 per cent of the tar, is more effective than one that removes only lO per cent. At any rate, much more research must be directed along these lines before we can say what effective filtration can do. In medicine~ as in ~] other phases of life, ve cannot overcome a problem by de~ying its existence. Kowever, if the tobacco ir~ustry, together with private 11311598 CT#-ST£TE OF FLOR[DR

-5- researchers all over this country and all over the ~orld, ~ill concentrate on the problem at hand, I am sure that ~e can solve it~ and that practical means can be produced that will reduce the carcinogenic activity of tobacco on man. MR. MURROW: Part of Dz. Wynder's evidence is that he has grown skin cancer on mice using tobacco tar. For tan years, Dr. Harry S. N. Greene, head of Pathology~ Yale M~dical School# has been trying to use tobacco tar to grow cancer on human luug tissue, without success. Reporter Morse went up to New Haven to see Dr. Greene. DR. GREE~E: I do not attach any f~ndamental significance to the statis- tics linking cigarette smoking to human lung cancer. In fact, any statistics that purport to show a cause-and-effect relationship should be taken ~lth a grain of salt. QUESTION: Is a single agent likely to cause cancer? DR. GEEENE: ! don't believe a single agent is concerned in the cause of cancer at all. As a matter of fact, I thlnkthey are multiple in nature. Thus in the case of cigarette smoking, it's quite conceivable that the cigarette smoke may act as an irritant in the lung and bring about changes in the epithelium. But the conversion of this change to cancer is on]~vbrought about by constitutional factors, and most certainly cigarette smoke is not a constitutional factor. It is conceivable, of co~rse, that the constitutional factor that makes one a heavy cigarette smoker might also be the same constitutional factor concerned in the conversion of this focus of growth to a cancer. Q~IESTION: Dr. Greene~ do you believe that cigarettes play any role in the production of lung cancer? ~R. GEEKNE: No, I don't, certainly no more important a role than the eating of tomatoes. We've been much concerned in that question in our laboratory for the past ten years, and have tested a variety of tobacco products -- tobacco from a vs~iety of brands of cigarettes, cigarette papers# and cake and crud from my pipe. Our technique has been somewhat different from that used in other labora- tories. In testing for substances that might produce cancer, it has been customary to paint these substances on the skin of adult mice. Hovever, ~e have what i believe is a much more sensitive test object, and that is tissue from unborn mice. The technique we use is relatively simple. ~ne desired organ is dis- sected from an unborn mouse, impregnated or saturated with the suspected substsmce, aud then this fragment is placed under the skin of an adult mouse. It grows there. As a matter of fact, if one does not infiltrate it with any foreign substance~ it grows progressively and persists throughout the life of the animal to form an organ very much like its adult counterpart. 11311599 CTR-STRTE OF FLOR~OR

(Dr. Gree~- continued) -6- Now, if such tissue is saturated with one of the ordinary cancer-producing substances~ such as the coal tar products, cancer occurs in the fragment in about 30 to ~0 days in almost a hundred per cent of cases. But in the lungs that ~e've infiltrated or saturated with the tobacco products, there is no change whatsoever from normal. Now# there is an added advantage in using embryonic tissue. Embryonic tissue can be transplanted successfully into foreign species. It's possible, for example, to transplant any organ or tissue from ~ human embryo, if that is obtalne& before the f~h month of pregnancy. Thus, h~au tissue becomes available for experimentation. Now# Vnen we take embryonic human lung and saturate it ~ith these same substances and transplant it to laboratory cad_reals, nothing whatsoever happens to that lung that doesn't happen normally. Now# as I said# we have used a great variety of tobacco products in this test~ used a great maay a~l~ more tba~ 80% and have held the animals for more than a year, but not in amy s~gle case have we found anything in the transplants remotely resembling cancer. As a matter of fact, not only have we used the standard extracts of tobacco, but we've used some of the tar that Dr. Wynder successfully produced cancer with in adult mice in the Washington Unlversity experiment, but in no single instance has any e~_dence of cancer been found. MR. MORROW: This report on smoking habits and health will continue !mmediatelyafter this word from Alco&, the Aluminum CompanyofAmerica. (Commercial) If cigarettes cause cancer, it still must be ieterminedwhat it is in the cigarette that does the damage. Dr. Charles S. Cameron explains. IR. CAMERON: Of course, this is not to say that strenuous efforts should not be made to develop l~boratory evidence supporting or denying the staJ tlstical data, and the American Cancer Society has recently appropriated a half- million dollars to carry on such st~@ies. A research plan ~hich might be expected to give important ~nformation bearing on this subject is shown here. Using as the starting point the experiment of Dr. Evarts Graham and Dr. Ernest Wynder~ which showed that the tar derived from cSgarette smoke would produce cancer in the backs of mice, it becomes important to find out whether this same tar will produce cancer in the skin of animals other than the mouse and in tissues other than the skin. It is also important to find out whether the smoke itself will produce s~m~lar effects. In the meantime, it is necessary to break down the tar into its component chemical compounds to find out whether they~ individually, are responsible for this cancer-producing effect. Having demonstrated that they are, if that proves to be the result of the experiment, it is then necessary to isolate each of these compounds. Having identified and isolated them~ it would be necessary then to de- termine whether they are actually present in smoke. If so, are they present in the processed cigarette? If they are in the processed cigarette, are they in the CTR-ST~TE OF FLORr. D~

(Dro Cameron - continued) -7- wrapper, the paper %Tapper? If cancer-producing substances are present in the processed cigarette, are they present in the crude leaf? If so, are they present in the insecticide with which the leaf is sprayed? And, ~flnally, are they present in the ~ditlves which are put in to improve burning qualltyand flavor? MR. MURROW: As D~o Little said earlier, all of the research of the To- bacco Industry Research Committee is done independent of the cigarette companies. NoneTheless, each major cigarette producer has been conducting its ow~ experiments on this problem. This is the Richmond laboratory of one of the major p~oducers. M~.. DUlru-fS: i am Dr_. Robert N. DuPuls, chairman of the industry technical group of the Tobacco industry Research Cnmmittee. @0rprimaryWoJective is to analyze all of the components of smoke. Of co~rse~ we do a great deal of research on analysis and technology of tobacco itself. But even if ve knew all of the components of tobacco, we still would not know the c~mponsnts of smoke, and since smoke is what we sell, ~e feel that we sho-~id emphasize this phase of research. After we have produced the smoke and separated it into f~actlons, the next step is to identify these fractions. These are then identified eithe~photographically or on the oscilloscope. The oscilloscope is now demonstrating the means of identification of one of the smoke components. Using these instrm~ents, we have isolated and identified some three dozen components of smoke. Many more ~rill be identified. As we find these components, we publish+he results of our work in technical journals Vnich are available to any scientist in az~art of the world. So far we've fouod none that give us any cause for concern. If we do find any that we consider harmful, and so far we have not~ we'll remove these fr~n smoke and still retain the pleasure of your favorite cigarette. M~. N/£~OW: b~ to now there has been no statement from the Public Health Service on this probl~m. We asked Dr. John R. Holler, director, National Cancer Institute, U. So Public Health Serv~_ce~ to comment. DE. HET~,'~..: As directcr of the National Cancer Institute, I have been requested by the S~rg~on-Ge~neral of the United States Public Health Service to indi- cate ouz interest and actlvi~# in the increasing problem of lung cancer. There seams to be, without any doubt, a reasonableness that the risk of acquiring lung cancer is greater among smokers than in non-smokers. We do not say that smoking is a cause of cancer. There are other factors, such as air pollution, that maybe quite important in the causation of lung cancer. It is possible that hea,ry cigarette smokers or smoklngmzy be one of these factors. It is possible that hormonal imbalance may be still another factor~ and there maybe_ still additional ones about ~hich we know little or nothing. Only time will tell~ 11311601 CTR-STRTE OF FLOR rOR

(Dr. Heller - Continued m Some have advanced the idea that cigarette smoking, or heavy cigarette smoking in partlcu_lar~ m~y be compared to a trigger mechanism in which the individ~a! has a susceptibility to lung cancer, and the interaction of these forces may be in such a fashion that cigarette smoking may be the very one that pulls the trigger, and there results what w~ know as lung cancer. ~ter all, here at the National Cancer Institute, we have scientists who disagree about ~ny things. And in this problem of the relationship of the possible causation of lung cancer by cigarette smoking~ our scientists are pretty ~ell divided. MR. MUEROW: We have no credentials for reacb~ng conclusions on this subject. But in the course of our research we were impressed by the disposition of scientists of ~fering views to collaborate, to pool their knowledge, to whet their minds, one against another. There is controversy and a vast area of ignorance. And there is, as we hope you have seen~ a determination to acquire knowledge# which is the only ground upon which opinion and setion can be based. Next w~ek, w~ shall examine the subject of p~y-as-you-look television. Good night and good luck. 11311602 CTR-STFtTE OF FLORIDF1