Tobacco Documents Online

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I Who needs WHO? I am not surprised tb'at the World Health Organisation is reluctant to publish its study of passive smoking and lung cancer (Repor~ M~rch 8). It deserves to be embar. rassed ]/it can find oaiy 6,50 case~ of lung" cancer in centres ill seven cou.l~trles fewer than 55 pex centre-- ia a disease which kills ten~ of thousauds across Europe annually. An organlsafion with the resources which it commands should surely be able ~o carry out stud/es which are large enough to carry statistical validity. The fact tlmt it was only able to likely to be -w,~dstieally nificant speaks volumes about the WHO. (Dr) Gralmm ~ ConsuRant in Clinical Oncology ~t is no surprise that the WHO has found no staUsticai corretation between passive smoking and the incidence of lung cancer. Indeed, this (withheld) report co~ the finding of Doll and Hill in the LrK that were incorpo- rated into the report in9 and Health published by cians in the 1~o0s. Indepen-, dently and at about the same time, the Surgeon General of the USA published a similar r~port based on r~sea~h car- ried out there. Both reports concluded tha~, although ther~ was a strong statistic~ correlation between the incidence of lung cancer and smoking, no such correlation couh~ be ~und ~ non.smokers -- a finding consistently isnored over the years. The evidence o~ the two ori.~.~ was probably mu.ch more credible then because sm~k. ers.represented 60-plus per cent of the population, and non.smoking areas were Very rare. Thus the opportu. airy for "passive smoking" was greater then .than at any time since. • DR A/lm~ Stanmore, Mkldles~z Your report on passive smokinz wss misleading and ks~.sponsible.. You rd~r summary of a WHO-spon- ~ published ks the scien. subject to pe~r ~-~iew. hal article to which you refer, published ~on October 18 last year, reviewed all the avail- able evidence and confirmed that exposure to environ- mental tobacco smoke does cause lung can~er. (Dr) C $ Sehilli~ Lonclon E8 I I