Surgeon criticises tobacco booklet

Press, 7 April 1979, Page 6

Surgeon criticises tobacco booklet

New Zealand tobacco manufacturers have just “trotted out the same old arguments they have been using for 20 years,” according to a Christchurch heart surgeon, Dr D. R. Hay, commenting on a booklet that has been released by tobacco companies.

The booklet says that tar and nicotine damage to the smoker is not strongly supported by scientific fact, and that, because tar produced skin cancer in animals when applied to their skins, it did not mean the tar would have the same effect on a human lung. The booklet quotes several United States university re-j searchers who say that thej cigarette disease link has yet to be scientifically proved. I One researcher is quoted as! saying that unless data con-1 flicts were resolved, “the; current enthusiasm for ciga-| rette smoking as a major! risk factor in coronary! heart disease may become an outstanding fallacy of our time.”

The booklet also says it has not been proved that advertising starts young people smoking. “It might be expected that the number of young

smokers would decrease after the elimination of television radio and cinema advertising for cigarettes. No such decrease has occurred,” it says.

Dr Hay said he knew personally one of the American researchers quoted in the booklet as questioning the evidence relating smoking to heart disease. “I happen to know that he does believe in the data associating the two,” he said. The assertion in the booklet that evidence linking various diseases to smoking was “only statistical” did not disturb Dr Hay. ‘‘My answer to that is that I am glad that the evidence is so sound statistically because we depend on statistical! conclusions to draw con-1 elusions in medicine,” he! said.

He said the booklet quoted a 1960 study which compared the effect of smoking on the Japanese as opposed to Americans.

“The reason the Japanese are less susceptible to the cardiac effect of smoking is probably' that they have a lower fat diet and lower cholesterol intake than the Americans or New Zealanders,” Dr Hay said. “It has

:been established beyond doubt that humans "who smoke more heavily are at a greater risk from a variety of diseases, and that those who give up reduce this risk significantly.” Dr Hay quoted a British doctors’ study, which has just been completed after 20 years of observation of 50,000 or more British doctors. “One of the points observed was that the lung cancer rate in British doctors fell 38 per cent at a time when the rate in the general population rose 7 per cent. Half the doctors had stopped smoking, whereas the general population had continued to smoke at the same level,”. , The same survey also re-1 vealed that of the doctors) agfed between 35 and 44,; those who smoked 25 ciga-j jrettes a day had 15 times' the chance of a coronary; than those who did not! smoke. “Whatever the manufac-l turers say, whoever they care to quote, major bodies of medical opinion are unanimous that smoking is a major health hazard. They are interested in profit; we are interested in health,” Dr) Hay said.