Smoke warning 50 years old

As smokers across the nation get used to braving the elements to indulge their habit - smoking is now firmly linked with health problems in the public’s mind - but it is easy to forget that this wasn’t always the case.

Smoking can cause tar build up in the lungs and lung cancer

Exactly 50 years ago, in 1957, the Medical Research Council issued the first official statement by any national research organisation in the world that smoking was actually an important cause of lung cancer.

MRC research into the great increase in UK lung cancer death rates began in 1947, showing smoking to be a major cause. Studies from other countries showed similar findings, but at that time the UK had the worst death rates from smoking in the world.

Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the MRC, said: “For more than 50 years, the Medical Research Council has been at the forefront of research on tobacco. We are now seeing the pay-off in widespread cessation and big decreases in UK death rates from smoking. Still, however, smoking causes one in five of all the premature deaths in Britain. Although the smoking ban is being brought in to stop smokers killing other people, its main effect on death rates may be to stop some smokers killing themselves.”

MRC-supported research, especially by Sir Richard Doll and Sir Richard Peto, measured the full eventual hazards of smoking.

Sir Richard Peto, now Professor of Medical Statistics at Oxford, said “Half of all smokers get killed by tobacco, and stopping works. If the ban on smoking in public places eventually helps a million smokers to stop, it will avoid nearly half a million tobacco deaths.”

For those that have yet to kick the habit, the silver lining to the toxic, carcinogenic cloud may be research that suggests long-term smokers half the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. Cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoking appear to offer similar anti-Parkinson's benefits, according to the report in the July Archives of Neurology.
However, author Beate Ritz of the University of California, Los Angeles said: “Nobody would ever recommend smoking in order to prevent Parkinson’s.”