Tobacco Documents Online

The report of the chief inedical officer of En;gland'ls Miniatry of Health received considerable attention in Eng.land, but xas noted in few U.S. papers. THE ECONWST Great Britain •December 23, 1961 LUNG CANCElit. Are You Giving Cig+arettes ? O`HE chiet medical otlicer of'the Ministry ~ ,~ of Health has some forthright things to sa?•. rbmut lung ctncer, in bis annual report ~ (Cmnd I5S©, 135.). Itt, I96o; 22,AOO peo I ~,~~ e p ' )) died from it (18,882 men and 3,118 wotne n)" 1, and the chart shows how the relkrtive imr ~ F+ortance of lung cancer and respiratory '" tuberculosis as causes of death in men has Sa altered since 1940- In that year, before the V) . Q 19401 ~ 1960 advent of' chemotherapy, which has been so successful in reducing the mortality of tuberculosis, the disease's high death rate was regarded as a grave national' probletn. The IUng, cancer death rate is now higher than the tuberculosis rate twenty years ago. And the British public hardly bats aneyalid. The only not actually dtscourag6-tg figure: given imthe repcnrristhatdeatihs from lung cancer in men increased last year„cotnparcd with r9S,9, by a~mere 7oo-the snsallest per- centage t,narease since i 9Sp, Qr, the other hand, the percentage inc.rta3e in the daths of women was higher than the average of' the last twenty years. But the most stLking, facts to which the report d'r~aws attention come from~ the modical oH'tccr of health far Jersey. The island has the highest hu* g cancer death rate for men i in the wur;d and an eaceptionalHv highi rate for women. There is no problem of air pollution there. BLt the amount of'tnbacca smoked per head is the highest in the unrld ; and' in the years 1957-59 no case of lurtg cancer was recorded in i a non-smoker. No one claims that hea'vy smoking is the soic cause of hmg canocc ;, air pollution is elmost oeotainiy another cause in Btitaia; as it is a cause of the h4hi deatfi rate from brohchitisi But ao aoe,, equally, after resdmg this tepert, c:n aerir.,us1iy majtntain t}iNC emrnlong is not an important cauw of canccr. It ie straage drdt people who ase aw w,orried ' aboUt fallout that thr}t will ttucryr t6erbsdres to ban the bomb vriA yet t" uotlii,ng of ofF+cfing their c*hildren, i:igancttti; ' _ Death rds p.r mit6on potwwlvlion-md.e 0 500 1000 500 2000 .~- . K1\ . f~ESPIR.GFOWY' ` "~ ~ NEW YORK POST ' New York, New York December 13, 1961 British Report Links ~Cancer And Smoking ' London, Dec. 13 (Ftreuters)- Jersey, vacation island in thd . E ng l i s h. Channel; has the world's highest male lung can• cer death rate-and Jersey people smoke more per head._ •._ thana nymne else-it was re- ported today. Dr. G. E. Godber, the ritish Health Ministry's chief medical officer, reported these facts in his first' annual report. "In Jersey there is, no. air pollution problem, and no case:w of lung cancer was reeorded in a non-smoker during the years 1957-1959," Gbdber said: "'The epidemic of cancer of' the'lung pursues a predictable course in~ men with an increase which can only be arrested in - the next few years by a gen- eral change in smoking, habits =in fact by stopping or markely reducing the excessive .smokiTog of cigarets," Godber