The Health Menace Of Tobacco

Our plain-English summary of The Health Menace Of Tobacco, by A. Ochsner (1971).

The study

• Author: A. Ochsner
• Published: American Scientist 59:246-252, March-April (1971)
• Type of article: Journal article
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library, J-M no. 003542. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This article, a slightly revised version of a 1968 lecture by the author, was a narrative review of the health effects of tobacco use, chiefly cigarette smoking. It reported no new study and did not discuss asbestos. The author drew on other researchers' published studies of lung cancer; cancers of the larynx, mouth, esophagus and bladder; heart and blood-vessel disease; emphysema and chronic bronchitis; pregnancy outcomes; ulcers; disabling illness; and economic loss. For example, the article cited an American Cancer Society study in which lung cancer incidence, excluding adenocarcinoma, rose with the amount smoked, reaching 217.3 per 100,000 in people smoking more than two packs a day. The author described seeing nine lung cancer cases in six months at Charity Hospital in New Orleans in 1936. At that time the author proposed that cigarette smoking was responsible, and noted that such retrospective observations were criticized by biostatisticians. The author estimated the economic loss to the nation in 1965 at $18,800,000,000. The author ended by asking whether tobacco's presumed pleasure was worth that price in disabling illness and premature death.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Narrative review (a revised lecture) summarizing other researchers' studies of tobacco and health, with some personal clinical observations by the author
• Who was studied: No study population of the author's own. The article cites studies from the United States, Great Britain, Iceland, Israel and elsewhere. The author's own observation was of nine lung cancer patients seen in six months at Charity Hospital, New Orleans, in 1936.
• Exposure: Tobacco use, chiefly cigarette smoking, plus cigar and pipe smoking, chewing tobacco and snuff. No asbestos exposure is discussed.
• Main results:
  • From the author's 1936 observations of lung cancer patients, the author proposed at that time that cigarette smoking was responsible for the increase in lung cancer.
  • Cited, not the author's own data: in an American Cancer Society prospective study, lung cancer incidence (excluding adenocarcinoma) rose with the amount smoked. It was 143.9 per 100,000 in people smoking one to two packs a day and 217.3 in those smoking more than two packs a day.
  • The author was convinced, from clinical experience, that ulcer patients cannot be cured while they continue to smoke.
  • The author calculated the economic loss to the nation in 1965 from tobacco-related work days lost and disability at $18,800,000,000, about 3 times the estimated profit from tobacco.
• The authors' conclusion: The author questioned whether the presumed pleasure of tobacco was worth the price, which the author described as large increases in disabling illness and premature deaths.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author noted that the early observations linking smoking and lung cancer, including the author's own, rested on retrospective studies that biostatisticians criticized as being of relatively little value.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Lung Cancer, Emphysema, Adenocarcinoma.

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