Medicine: Cigarettes & Cancer (Cont.)

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A committee of Britain's top cancer specialists has taken a long, hard look at the connection between smoking and lung cancer, Health Minister Iain MacLeod told Parliament last week, and has reached these conclusions:

¶ The relationship is "established," and there is "a strong presumption" that it is a matter of cause and effect.

¶ It is not a simple relationship, because no factor that causes cancer of the lung has yet been found in tobacco tar, and some of the increase in lung cancer is probably due to other things, such as atmospheric pollution.

¶ The death rate would not drop dramatically if smoking ceased, because the disease seems to take many years to develop, but "it is desirable that young people should be warned of the risk apparently attendant on excessive smoking."

Britain's top cigarette manufacturers promptly snapped back: "There is no proof." But they did something constructive to help scientists find the proof: they offered $700,000 over seven years to the Medical Research Council for impartial studies.