Terry, Luther Leonidas, M.D.
(Surgeon General, 61-65, U of Pennsylvania, Anti-Tobacco Expe) Luther Terry was former Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service from 1961 to 1965. Terry was emeritus professor of Research Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1984 (E. Whelan 1984).Biographical Information:
Luther Terry served as U. S. Surgeon General of the United States from 1961 to 1965 and was responsible for one of the most important public health documents ever written – the Surgeon General’s Report of 1964 that in the eyes of many Americans put an official stamp of approval on the research showing the health risks of smoking.
Luther Leonidas Terry was born on September 15, 1911, in Red Level, Alabama, where his father James was a general practitioner. Driving with his father in the family car to make emergency house calls imbued Luther Terry with a desire to provide similar relief to the sick. Those values would remain with him throughout his life; after his death, Terry’s son summed up his father as “a person of unquestioned moral integrity and genuine intellectual courage. He was never interested in money or personal fame. . . . The fame he got came to him because he worked for things he believed in. He was a very simple guy in so many ways. He was dedicated to public health and helping other people.”
Terry received a bachelor’s of science from Birmingham-Southern College in 1931 and an M.D. degree from Tulane University in 1935, then interned at the Hillman Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. After serving as chief resident at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Luther Terry moved to St. Louis in 1938 to do a one-year internship in pathology at Washington University. After completing the internship, he spent a year as an instructor at Washington University.
In 1940, Luther Terry got married and accepted a position as an assistant professor of preventive medicine and public health at the University of Texas at Galveston. After two years in Galveston, he moved to Baltimore to practice at the Public Health Service Hospital. He remained affiliated with the hospital for the next eleven years, becoming its Chief of Medical Services in 1953, and increasingly focusing his activities on cardiovascular research. In 1944 he added teaching responsibilities at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and then in 1950, he assumed the additional responsibility of serving as Chief of General Medicine and Experimental Therapeutics at the National Heart Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1953, Terry decided he could no longer juggle all three and resigned from the Public Health Service Hospital to concentrate his energies on his work for the National Heart Institute. He served as chairman of the board of the National Institutes of Health’s newly opened Clinical Center for two years and later served as assistant director of the National Heart Institute, all the while continuing to teach at Johns Hopkins.
On January 15, 1961, President John F. Kennedy designated Terry as his choice to become Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, a position in which he served from March 2, 1961, until October 1, 1965. During those four-and-a-half years, he used the prestige of his office to address and a plethora of public health issues, including measles, seat belts, insecticides, and vaccinations for polio, measles, influenza and smallpox. His most noteworthy accomplishment, however, was his role in raising awareness of the dangers of smoking.
Those efforts began in earnest in 1962 when he established a Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, of which he served as chair. On January 11, 1964, the committee released its report, entitled Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States, which concluded that lung cancer and chronic bronchitis are causally related to cigarette smoking and that there was suggestive evidence of a causative link between smoking and emphysema, cardiovascular disease, and other types of cancer. None of these assertions were new, and the report summarized previous studies rather than presenting new research, but it was the context that mattered – hearing these warnings from a source deemed authoritative forced many Americans who had previously been skeptical to finally take them seriously.
Terry accompanied the release of the report with a press conference and he gave many speaking engagements in the ensuing months. On the Today show, he explained that he himself had switched from cigarettes to pipes once he became convinced of the dangers of cigarettes, explaining that “I was not setting a good example for the American youth and the American public.” Whenever given the opportunity, he repeated a refrain: “No reasonable person, should dispute that cigarette smoking is a serious health hazard.” The combined effect of the report and the publicity was striking. As Terry later recalled, “The immediate impact was really quite bombastic. It really shook things up for the first time, even though the evidence had been accumulating for quite a few years.” With no immodesty, he characterized the report as “probably having the greatest impact of any government report ever issued.”
The report had also recommended “appropriate remedial action” to warn the public of these dangers and at Terry’s prodding, other branches of government began to take important steps in that direction. In June 1964, the Federal Trade Commission ordered the tobacco industry to begin prominently displaying warnings on their products. As of the first day of 1965, the manufacturers were obligated to print a warning on all cigarette packs that reflected the findings of Terry’s special committee, and by July 1, all cigarette advertisements had to include a similar wording. These landmark decisions were followed in 1965 by the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act.
By that time, Luther Terry was ending his tenure as Surgeon General, but he remained active in the crusade to make Americans aware of the health risks of smoking. He served as chaired of the National Interagency Council on Smoking and Health, and as a consultant to the American Cancer Society, while also speaking out on such issues as banning cigarette advertisements on radio and television and eliminating smoking from the workplace.
After ending his term as Surgeon General, Terry moved to Philadelphia and became affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania as Vice President for Medical Affairs and Professor of Medicine and Community Medicine. He remained affiliated with the university until 1981, then became Corporate Vice President for Medical Affairs for ARA Services of Philadelphia. During these years, Terry continued to devote much of his time to doing work for the public health. He served for many years as president and director of University Associates Inc., a Washington nonprofit consulting firm. He was also the unpaid director of medical affairs for Medic Alert Foundation International, which worked to promote medical bracelets. Always a believer in practicing what he preached, Dr. Terry himself wore a bracelet stamped with the words: “Mild hypertension; taking medication.”
He retired in 1982, but continued to do consulting work until his death on March 29, 1985, in Philadelphia of heart failure. He was survived by a wife and three children. As the result of a special exception granted by President Ronald Reagan, Dr. Terry and his wife (who died in 2000) are interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
Sources:
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
“Dr. Luther Terry, Surgeon General Who Issued Cigarette Warning in ’64,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 31, 1985.
Michael A. Flannery, “Luther Terry,” The Encyclopedia of Alabama (online resource: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/).
Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
W. H. Lawrence, “Kennedy Picks Four Health Aides; Under Secretary’s Post Open,” New York Times, January 16, 1961, 18.
Cristine Russell, “Twenty Years After the First Warning, Killer Habit Is Still Dying Hard,” Washington Post, January 11, 1984, A3.
Walter Sullivan, “Cigarettes Peril Health, U. S. Report Concludes,” New York Times, January 12, 1964, 1.
United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General, Official Biography of Luther Leonidas Terry.
Papers:
Terry’s papers are at the University of Pennsylvania (http://www.archives.upenn.edu/faids/upt/upt50/terryl.html)