Horn, Daniel
(Dir., U.S. Nat'l Clearinghouse for Smoking & Health, c. 1968) Born: 28 May 1916, d. October 7, 1992 Frenchtown, NJBorn: May 28, 1916 Fairport, N.Y.; Died: October 7, 1992 at the Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, N.J.
The son of Russian immigrants, Daniel Horn was born in Fairport, New York, in 1916, and graduated from Northeastern University in 1938. He then earned his master’s and doctorate in psychology from Harvard in 1942 and 1943, respectively. He taught at Northeastern and at Harvard before serving in the Naval Reserve from 1944 to 1946. In 1947, he joined the American Cancer Society as assistant director of statistical research under E. Cuyler Hammond. In 1952, the two men launched a massive prospective study that would become one of the most influential scientific studies ever conducted.
Between 1952 and 1957, with the help of 20,000 volunteers, the study surveyed nearly 188,000 white men between the ages of 50 and 70 to see how cigarette smoking affected their health and mortality rates. Their intention was to wait until at least 1955 to issue their first interim report, but by June of 1954, enough data had been collected and the results were striking enough for Hammond and Horn to deliver a paper at the American Medical Association’s annual convention and hold a press conference. Their announcement of a link between cigarettes and both lung cancer and heart disease caused cigarette stocks to plunge, while cigar stocks rose.
Hammond and Horn announced the final results of their study at the American Medical Association’s 1957 convention. Their findings showed that regular cigarette smokers were ten times more likely to die from lung cancer than non-smokers, and that the risk of premature death rose in heavy smokers. Moreover, while the original purpose of the study was to determine the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, it also revealed that the chances of a heart attack were 70 percent higher for smokers than nonsmokers. In addition, the findings suggested a relationship between smoking and several other diseases.
At a press conference to discuss the findings, Daniel Horn hazarded a “rough guess” that a heavy cigarette smoker would die seven to eight years earlier than a non-smoker. He added that lighter smokers were giving up an average of two to three years of life, while cigar smokers lost a year and a half and pipe smokers only two or three months. As though to illustrate these conclusions, both men, who were former cigarette smokers, puffed on pipes during the press conference.
The tobacco industry downplayed the results of the Hammond-Horn study, pointing out that the results were only statistical in nature. Nonetheless, the magnitude of the study made its findings difficult to ignore and Surgeon General Leroy Burney was prompted to make the Public Health Department’s first statement on smoking since 1954. Citing this study and others, Burney declared that “there is an increasing and consistent body of evidence that excessive cigarette smoking is one of the causative factors in lung cancer.”
Horn had continued to lecture in psychology and public health at Princeton and Yale during his ten years at the American Cancer Society. In 1957, not long after the release of the historic prospective study, he left the American Cancer Society and began a project that combined his newfound interest in smoking with his background in psychology. Horn conducted a study of 22,000 high school students in Portland, Oregon, and the results, released in 1958, offered one of the first important studies of the behavioral components of smoking.
Daniel Horn then moved to Washington and in 1964 became the first director of the U.S. Public Health Service’s Clearinghouse for Smoking and Health. His absent-minded habits and penchant for wearing bowties and Hush Puppies made him an improbable choice for the position, but he compensated with a deep understanding of the many complex issues involved in smoking. Under his leadership, the Clearinghouse focused on the issue of cessation and one of its most notable accomplishments was a pamphlet called The Smoker’s Self-Help Kit, which could be bought from the Government Printing Office for ten cents.
During his tenure in this position, Horn was frequently quoted as an authority by the press and either cited or attacked by interested parties on all sides. In particular, the tobacco industry dismissed Horn as an anti-smoking zealot when his views differed from theirs, but were quick to cite him on other issues. For example, a Tobacco Institute document (see below) maintained that Horn was responsible for exaggerated statistics about the number of smoking-related deaths. Yet the industry used Horn’s reluctance to accept that nicotine was addictive and his belief in low-key messages on warning labels to support its positions on these topics. Perhaps Horn’s best-known comment was his 1968 statement that, “You could stand on a rooftop and shout ‘smoking is dangerous’ at the top of your lungs and you would not be telling anyone anything that they did not already know.” This statement would likewise be used by the industry when confronted with personal injury lawsuits to support its contention that the public was aware of the risks of smoking.
In 1973, the Clearinghouse for Smoking and Health was eliminated from the federal budget, and only an emergency allocation kept it alive. The following year it lost federal funding for good, and it eventually was downsized and made part of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Disappointed, Dr. Horn spent a year on leave in Geneva working for the World Health Organization before moving to Atlanta and resuming the directorship of the Clearinghouse. He retired in 1978, the same year that the Clearinghouse received its current name of the Office on Smoking and Health.
During his career, Dr. Horn was a recipient of numerous awards, including the Superior Service Award of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the Edward W. Browning Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to Human Welfare and Prevention of Disease.
In retirement, Daniel Horn lived in Frenchtown, New Jersey, and indulged his passion for breeding Chesapeake Bay retrievers. He died in 1992; survivors included his wife of 55 years, two sons and two daughters, and eight grandchildren.
Sources: Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes (New York: Vintage, 1996); “Cancer Report Drops Stocks,” Dallas Morning News (UP), June 23, 1954, 13; AP coverage of release of Hammond-Horn study, carried in many newspapers on June 5, 1957; “More Evidence Links Cancer to Cigarettes,” Dallas Morning News (AP), July 13, 1957, 5; obituaries of Horn in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and other sources;