Medicine: Cold Turkey

In a 1971 comedy film called Cold Turkey, an entire Iowa town tried to give up smoking for 30 days and actually succeeded. This week the American Cancer Society will try to do Hollywood one better. It is asking all U.S. cigarette users, some 50 million people, to stop smoking for one day, Thursday, Nov. 16. The long-range objective of the third annual Great American Smokeout is even more ambitious: permanent withdrawal. That is not entirely a pipedream. Of the estimated 5 million people who gave up smoking for a day last year, a follow-up study showed some half million were still shunning their smokes two months later.

The A.C.S. last week backed its appeal with some pertinent statistics. In a 25-year overview of cancer mortality figures, it reported that cancer death rates seem to be leveling off and, for some forms of the disease, actually declining, as in the case of stomach cancer (down more than 60%), colon-rectum (down 5.6% for men, 22.5% for women) and uterine cancer (down 59.5%). But the death rate for lung cancer, which has been repeatedly linked to cigarette smoking, has grown by 200%. Cancer Society officials attribute at least part of that sharp rise to the great increase in the number of women smokers in the past few decades.

Despite the risks of cigarettes, many smokers seem all too willing to take the gamble. In a recent survey, the A.C.S. found that 52% of smokers believe they will get lung cancer. Even so, that fear did not make them kick the habit.