Smoking & Cancer (Contd.)

The U.S. Public Health Service, usually encased in a plaster cast of bureaucratic caution, took a relatively bold step last week. On the smoking-and-cancer question, it advanced from its guarded 1954 position ("some evidence of a statistical association"), last week announced: "There is an increasing and consistent body of evidence that excessive cigarette smoking is one of the causative factors in lung cancer . . . and there is a direct relationship between the incidence of lung cancer and the amount smoked."

Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney made this statement because of PHS concern "with broad factors which substantially affect the health of the American people." He was careful to add that "smoking is not the only cause of lung cancer." Therefore, "more research is needed to identify, isolate and try to eliminate the factors in excessive cigarette smoking which can cause cancer."

The PHS added pointedly that Dr. Burney's statement, with supporting data, will be sent to state health officers and others in public health work "as a further step in bringing the matter of smoking and lung cancer to public attention."

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