Fraternity-Testvériség, 1962 (40. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1962-09-01 / 9. szám
16 FRATERNITY UNCHECKED POISONING OF OUR POPULATION A news item just received from Washington states that the Government "is advancing cautious plans to venture circumspectly" — (my, what a nice phrase that is) — into the troubled air of the smoking lung cancer controversy. And that if the Public Health Service strategy receives a White House okay, the suspected role of cigaret smoking as the primary villain in the dramatic rise in lung-cancer deaths will be subjected to new scientific scrutiny by a panel of non-Government scientists convened with this dual mission: To assess all the health hazards of smoking in light of the most recent evidence; and to recommend what steps, if any, the Government should take to combat them. Continuing, the article states that health service officials have determined to move slowly despite a recent flurry of anti-tobacco actions abroad: A report by the British Royal College of Surgeons that asserts cigaret smoking is a cause of lung cancer, with a recommendation that the Government act to discourage the practice, and a vote in the Italian senate to outlaw tobacco advertising. Recently, as personal which came to my home, I received some information from Mildred Hatch, a business woman in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, with regard to the three-year report (released on March 7th) by the Royal College of Physicians in Britain. (The American edition of this report is titled Smoking and Health and sells for $1.00.) The Royal College, a 444-year-old organization of the elite of British medicine, has stated that smoking is a major cause of cancer and of other ills. The report, backed by vigorous speeches in Parliament, has been endorsed by Britain’s leading medical journals, The Lancet and The British Medical Journal. It has resulted in a stepped-up campaign by the Government against smoking and also, due to the pressure of public opinion, by tobacco companies themselves. A major British tobacco company is reported to be withdrawing 6,000 vending machines, in an effort to make cigarets less accessible to children under 16 years of age. And the major companies have agreed not to show TV ads before 9 p. m. The British Admiralty has warned sailors on the dangers of smoking, and the Government has recently begun a country-wide poster campaign stressing the hazards of smoking . . . Effects of this report have apparently impressed Italy, for that Government has outlawed all tobacco ads. Really constructive efforts are being made to guard health in Britain, as proved by the fact that scientists, Government, the public and even the tobacco companies are all cooperating to try to curb smoking. In referring to the report, I understand some of the American companies are repeating their theme song of “no chemical proof”. And, according to one federal cancer researcher, the tobacco industry has
