Cancer: Adventists' Advantage

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The tens of thousands of Seventh-Day Adventists in Southern California suffer from most of the same diseases as their non-Adventist neighbors, including cancer. Yet on the average, the Adventist men live longer. Most conspicuously, they have only one-fourth as much lung disease as other Californians. Why?

Only part of the answer, say two of the Adventists' doctors in the A.M.A. Journal, may be found in their tendency to follow a modified vegetarian diet and their strict adherence to a regime of exercise and good hygiene. The major explanation for the Adventists' better health, say Dr. Frank R. Lemon and Dr. Richard T. Walden, is the fact that they do not smoke.

The doctors studied the five-year health records of 11,000 Adventist men over age 30. Among the 850 deaths, only nine were due to lung cancer, whereas 56 such deaths would have been predicted from statewide aver ages. Furthermore, none of the nine who had been killed by lung cancer had been a lifelong Adventist—all had joined the sect after years of smoking. Drs. Lemon and Walden have yet to find a single case of typical lung cancer in an Adventist who never smoked.