Tobacco Documents Online

,The symposium for science writers, sponsored by the American Cancer Society, received wide press coverage. Two statements were issued in connection with~stories relating to iobacco stories by both Tobacco Institute a.nd Tobacco Industry Research Conitn3;ttee. Th Mrkt -eae Louisville, Ky:, March 29 (AP) "Safer"' cigarets may al- ready be on the market, and a cancer researcher says he hopes to learn if they really are safer. These safer smokes may be those containing only one-fourth the nicotine and one-half the tar content of standard non-filter cigarets, said Dr. E. Cuyler Hammond, director of statistical research for the American Can- cer Society. No brand names were mentioned in- Dr. Ham- mond's report. A vast, six-year study of more than 1,000,000 Americans, now under way by the ACS, ex- amining many health factors and habit's, may shoyv whether those who switched to the "safer" cigarets actually live longer, Dr. Hammond told a seminar for science writers. • Dr. Hammond said: "It ap- pears pears that the majority of Americans want to smoke, but they want to do so without run- aing the risk of lung cancer or any of the other diseasez; asso- ciated with cigaret smoking." Safer cigarets would at least reduce the dangers he's worried about, the scientist said. [A -tobacco industry organiza- tion scoffed at the cancer re- searchers' reports and accused e the scientists of continuing "an pnti-smoking ca m p a i g n" al- though "a great deal of other scientific evidence and opinion doesn't back them up." [Edward F. Ragland, vice- president of the Tobacco Insti- tute, Inc., said the "talks about a 'safe' cigarer"' was not -new, "but what is new is the admis- sion by 'scientists at this same conference that they don't know of any compounds present in tobacco smoke in sufficient amounts to account for human lung rancer."] He praised the American Cancer Society for trying to inform teen-agers of the smok- ing hazards before they ac- '.;j quire the smoking habit. "Once one has begun smok- 1, ing, he declared "it t is ex 1V - s~,. tremely difficult and at times f Smol~n~ impossible to quit." ` ^'' [A spokesman for the To- bacco Indusfry Reseanch Com- E7 a Stiff Reoorter :.'LOUISVILLE, Ky:, Mar. 28 Dr. Alton Ochsner, noted lung surgeon, today charged the to- bacco industry with deliberate- ly trying to confuse the Amer- ican public on cigarette smok- ing hazards. The tobacco industry, he told an assemblage of science writers here, is ignoring sci- entific evidences, and is trying to put the blame for lung cancer's explosive Increase on other factors, such as air pol- lution. "If air pollution were a sig- nificant factor,"' Dr. Ochsner said, "one could not explain the difference in the sex inci- dence - w o m e n certainly breathe the same air as men." Primarily Male Disease Dr. Ochsner further pointed out that lung cancers occur with "tremendous frequency" in both London and Copen- hagen where "the inhabitants smoke excessively, but' where there is a wide variation in the degree of air pollution in the two cities." Cancer of the lung,-he said, is still primarily a disease of the long term cirgarette-smok- Ing male, but it' is beginning to increase among women. The male rate is disproportionately higher because men first took to smoking cigarettes heavily about 1917; the women didn't so indulge untill the mid and late 193015. The insidious part about lung cancer, he pointed out, is that by the time it is de- tected and diagnosed it is •usually too late to arrest it. mittee told the Associated l ~.. Press: " Our position is and has been that much more knowledge about cancer and especially lung cancer is necessary before pnsitive con-' clusions ahoiil Ihr. c,puw or causes - can be e~fah1Eshcd. This position is shared by outstanding scientists here and abroad ... Many doctors and scientists simply do not agree that the lung cancer question has been settlc+d."] Tissue Study Reported Another speaker, Dr. Oscar Auerbach, chief of laboratory services at the Veterans Ad- ministration Hospital, East Orange, N. J., reported on findings of a 5-year study in- volving nearly 20,000 tissue samples taken from the lungs of 402 men who died of lung cancer or other citIses. - " ~ The 402, he reported, 65 were' men who had never smoked regularly, and who died of diseases other than lung cancer. There was no sign of lung cancer in the 3324 tis- sue sections of their lungs, he said. Dr. Auerbach reported that evidence of lung cancer (which did not cause their deaths) wa4 uncovered in just 4 of 36 other men who smoked. less than half a pack of cigarettes a day.