1925 CANCER DATA
Showing The Link To
Toxic Tobacco Smoke (TTS)

Some people spread the myth that the discovery of the link between TTS and cancer is recent. Not so. Note the fact of a 1925 medical book covering the subject, by Frederick Hoffman, Third and Fourth Quarterly Report of the San Francisco Cancer Survey (Prudential Press, 1925).

Indeed, as early as in 1761, Dr. John Hill, a London physician, had recorded an early observation linking tobacco (specifically, snuff) and cancer. In his analysis, “Cautions Against the Immoderate Use of Snuff,” he said “snuff is able to produce . . . swellings and excrescences” in the nose.

By 1836, it was well-established “that thousands and tens of thousands die of diseases of the lungs generally brought on by tobacco smoking. . . . How is it possible to be otherwise? Tobacco is a poison. A man will die of an infusion of tobacco as of a shot through the head.”—Samuel Green, New England Almanack and Farmer's Friend (1836).

Even the tobacco lobby warns on the subject. See Philip Morris' "Smoking & Health Issues" saying "Philip Morris USA believes that the public should be guided by the conclusions of public health officials regarding the health effects of secondhand smoke."

"Cigar smoking causes cancer of the oral cavity, larynx, esophagus, and lung. It may also cause cancer of the pancreas." Reason: "Cigar smoke has: A higher level of cancer-causing substances . . . More tar . . . A higher level of toxins," says "Cigar Smoking and Cancer" (Cancer.gov, 27 October 2010).

See also data at
American Cancer Society
National Cancer Institute
National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences

Cigarettes contain and emit Toxic Tobacco Smoke (TTS) and impair the immune system. This combination makes cigarettes dangerous across-the-board, and specifically, a risk factor in cancer.

This type data rebuts the myth that the discovery of the link between TTS and cancer is recent. Not so. Note the 1925 medical book covering the subject by FrederickHoffman, Third and Fourth Quarterly Report of the San Francisco Cancer Survey (Prudential Press, 1925).

A chart-form summary was published three years later by Drs. Herbert L. Lombard and Carl B. Doering, "Cancer Studies . . . Habits, Characteristics and Environment of Individuals With And Without Cancer," 198 New England Journal of Medicine (#10) 481-487 (26 April 1928). The 1925 data showed already then existing data on premature deaths among smokers at a higher rate than among nonsmokers. Here are key words Drs. Lombard and Doering reprinted from the 1925 chart (Table 19, p 485):

CANCER
SMOKERS' EXCESS
DEATH RATE
Bladder
   60%
Cheek
100%
Esophagus
   77%
Intestines
100%
Jaw
100%
Leg
   50%
Lip
   92%
Lung
100%
Miscellaneous
   60%
Neck
   83%
Pancreas
   33%
Prostrate
100%
Rectum
   88%
Stomach
   82%
Throat
   54%
Tongue
100%
"The use of tobacco has long been considered a factor in the incidence of cancer of the buccal cavity . . . Heavy smoking is more common in the cancer group than among the controls," say Lombard & Doering, 198 N Eng J Med 485, 487, supra.

We thus see that data in 1925 linked TTS to cancer, refuting the myth that the discovery was long thereafter. Tobacco companies knew, but by media misconduct promoting disinformation, have suppressed the knowledge from the public.

"Pancreatic cancer is a highly fatal malignancy, and the main causal factor associated with this disease is tobacco smoking." Medically, "the most important overall risk factor in the general population for developing this cancer is tobacco smoking. Many patients are dead within months of diagnosis and less than 1 in 100 people with this disease will be alive 5 years after the diagnosis is established," says Hung Fan, Ph.D., in "Novel therapy for pancreatic cancer" (1997). And see P. J. Villeneuve, et al., "Environmental tobacco smoke and the risk of pancreatic cancer" in Can J Public Health," Vol. 95 (Issue # 1) pp 32-37 (Jan-Feb 2004), on data "suggestive of [some] association between pancreatic cancer and ETS. Perhaps more importantly, [the data] suggest that ETS smoking exposures may confound the risk of pancreatic cancer associated with active smoking measures commonly used in epidemiologic studies."

Note also that "Smokers With Advanced Colon Cancer May Face Higher Odds Of Disease Recurrence" (Science Daily, 2 June 2008).

Pro-tobacco forces like to pretend that other factors, other variables, are responsible for cancer and all other tobacco effects, alcoholism, crime, suicide, etc. Doctors are, of course, skilled in assessing the merits, if any, of such "alternative cause" notions. Alternative variables, "lurking variables," being alleged at that time, the 1920's, to pretend to explain cancer, e.g., housing conditions, constipation, height, weight, salt, alcohol, laxative use, were ruled out.

Doctors had long before learned the medical research process, and how to detect and avoid misuse of statistics. See TCPG's overview site, especially the exposé data.

Of course, such facts do not deter the disinformation types. Count on them to invent new alleged causative factors!! or to pretend that cancer is something genetic [hereditary]! or to pretend the alternative, that the cancer causative process is unknown!!

Contradictions are a specialty of the disinformation lobby. The genetic / heredity causation story is a particularly malicious scam; it begs the question. What caused the first cancer in the first generation that got it? Deal with that, then we won't be creating new first generations of the causation!

To understand the motive of the disinformation types, read our legal definitions website.

Due to the media tobacco taboo and disinformation advertising, smokers are still unaware of the hazard: "Most smokers do not view themselves at increased risk of heart disease or cancer."—John P. Ayanian, M.D., M.P.P., Paul J. Cleary, Ph.D., "Perceived Risks of Heart Disease and Cancer Among Cigarette Smokers," 281 J Am Med Ass'n (#11) 1019-1021 (17 March 1999). Wherefore cigarette advertising must be deemed illegal.

Media malice obscures the long-cited-by-doctors tobacco hazard, from being known to laymen.

"The idea that smoking tobacco was deleterious to health and that it could . . . lead to cancer and particularly to cancer of the lip and tongue, was already 200 years old when a few articles were published reporting that patients suffering from cancers of the upper respiratory and digestive tracts, including in particular those suffering from cancer of the lung, were much more likely to have smoked large numbers of cigarettes than patients suffering from other diseases."—Sir Richard Doll, "Smoking and Death Rates," 251 J Am Med Ass'n (#21) 2854-2857 (1 June 1984).

Sir Richard Doll was referring to articles "published before or during the [Second World] war" (1939-1945), meaning the data of which he was aware, went back to the 1730's.

Judicial notice of cigarettes' deleteriousness was taken as long ago as pursuant to an 1897 Tennessee law. When challenged by the tobacco lobby, the law was upheld in the case of Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563; 566-7; 48 SW 305, 306; 70 Am St Rep 703; 50 LRA 478 (1898) affirmed 179 US 343 (1900). Indeed, even before 1897, aspects of the hazard had been shown in the medical profession, and it was so well documented before Tennessee banned cigarettes in 1897, that aspects of the hazard had already repeatedly received judicial notice. Examples:
* It is deleterious due to the fire hazard, e.g., Commonwealth v Thompson, 53 Mass 231 (1847); Heard v Flannagan, 10 Vict Law Rep 1 (1884).

* It delivers a drug, Carver v State, 69 Ind 61; 35 Am Rep 205 (1879), Mueller v State, 76 Ind 310; 40 Am Rep 245 (1881), and State v Ohmer, 34 Mo App 115 (1889).

* In 1889, the Michigan Legislature received a report on some cigarette hazards.

* Due to the second-hand smoke aspect, it is deleterious to nonsmokers, State v Heidenhain, 42 La Ann 483; 7 So 621; 21 Am St Rep 388 (1890).

1885 Data on The Tobacco-Cancer Connection

The above judicial notice of the hazard occurred because the tobacco hazard, including the tobacco-cancer connection, was already known. Dr. Benjamin Rush had alluded to it a century earlier, Essays (Philadelphia: T & W. Bradford, 1798), p 264.

Tobacco-caused cancer was already known in 1882. It is repeatedly cited as already known, in the book by Meta Lander, The Tobacco Problem, 6th ed. (Boston: Lee and Shepard Pub, 1885). Lander wrote "Surgeon-General-style," i.e., quoting what others had already previously said. Examples include the following:
"Professor Bouisson, of France: 'Tobacco . . . is the most common cause of cancer in the mouth.'" (Data on "cancer of the buccal cavity" was found "[in] 1859" in a "well-documented clinical study" by a "French physician," "M. Bouisson," a fact repeated in 1962 by E. C. Hammond, 207 Scientific American (#1) 39-51 (July 1962). Bouisson "suggested that the cancer resulted from irritation of the tissue by tobacco products and heat [an analysis] confirmed repeatedly over the next half-century. . . .")

"Dr. William Hardwicke, coroner for Central Middlesex, England: 'Certain forms of cancer in the lips and tongue are clearly traceable to the use of tobacco.'

"Dr. Charles E. Drysdale, of London: 'Cancer of the lip is rarely seen, except in men who smoke.'

"Professor Lizars, of Edinburgh: 'I have had under my own treatment several cases of ulceration of the lips, tongue, and cheek, some of them incurable, all of which occurred in persons greatly addicted to smoking,'" Lander, supra, p 143.

"One of the first surgeons of New Hampshire said that every person who came to him to be treated for cancer of the lip and tongue were tobacco users," p 175.

"Dr. Anderson of the McAll Mission, member of the Royal College of Surgeons, England: 'All the cases of cancer of the mouth that I have come across, and they are pretty numerous, have been started by the pipe, cigar, or cigarette . . . ," p 363.

Lander included the then recent case of General later President Ulysses Grant (1822-1885). He had died that year, in his early 60's, so young, due to tobacco-caused cancer. His Dr. Douglas stated, "Smoking was the exciting cause of this cancer . . ." His Dr. Shrady said, "It is quite probable that the irritation of smoking was the actual cause of the cancer; or at least it is fair to presume that he would not have had the disease if his [smoking] had not been carried to excess," Lander, supra, pp 141-142.

Soon Iowa banned cigarettes. Tennessee did similarly.

Tennessee's above cited law made it illegal

"for any person, firm, or corporation to sell, offer to sell, or to bring into the state for the purpose of selling, giving away, or otherwise disposing of, any cigarettes, cigarette paper, or substitute for the same."

Tobacco pusher William B. Austin violated this law, was arrested, and convicted. He appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court. It upheld the law and made the following modern-sounding judicial finding of fact:

". . . cigarettes . . . are . . . wholly noxious and deleterious to health. Their use is always harmful, never beneficial. They . . . are inherently bad, and bad only . . . widely condemned as pernicious altogether . . . impairment of physical health and mental vigor. . . ." Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563, 566-567; 48 SW 305, 306; 70 Am St Rep 703 (1898).

Austin appealed to the US Supreme Court, and lost again. Austin v State, 179 US 343 (1900), as cigarette selling bans are indeed constitutional. Tennessee's law, due to its well-aimed focus, banning sale, was wiser and easier to enforce than modern no-smoking laws, criminalizing vast numbers unnecessarily, as our better-educated ancestors knew.

Michigan's 1909 Reaction

Soon Michigan went a step further than Tennessee. Pursuant to the already existing medical facts showing the cigarette hazard in 1909, Michigan in passed a law banning manufacture as well as sale and giveaway of unsafe cigarettes, law number MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216.  This three-part ban was appropriate. If something should not be sold, it should not be manfactured, lest temptation to sell or give away arise, and corruption allowing same.

This type of reaction (banning the dangerous product) is cited as evidence of the hazard long being known, thus refuting recent disinformation to the contrary.

By the time Michigan acted in 1909, circumstances had changed since the various tobacco-hazard-warnings, e.g., the 1836 warning by Samuel Green. Americans had taken heed, and there was declining U.S. tobacco use, reported by J. B. Neil, 1 The Lancet (#1740) 23 (3 Jan 1857). What changed after this decline in use, to bring use back up? Answer: The tobacco taboo and pro-death media advertising and resultant intended "natural and probable consequences" which they foresaw would foreseeably occur.

Let's emphasize that during the nineteenth century, a number of physicians had noticed the tobacco-cancer link, even lung cancer incidents. By 1900 lung cancer had become the most common organ cancer in men. Soon there were so many such incidents that in 1912, a book elaborating this was published: Isaac Adler, Primary Malignant Growths of the Lungs and Bronchi (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1912). Thousands of articles on the tobacco link to conditions including lung cancer have been published since.

Re lung cancer, "I think that in almost every case I have seen and known of, the patient has been a regular smoker, generally of cigarettes," said Dr. Frank E. Tylecote, The Lancet (30 July 1927). The length of lifespan began to decline, as reported by Prof. Raymond Pearl a few years later.

"Tobacco is by far the most important direct or indirect factor in the production of leukoplakia [mouth cancer]," notes Francis P. McCarthy, M.D., 34 Arch Derm and Syph (#4) 612-623 (Oct 1936). And see S. Tappeiner, "Leukokeratosis of Palate Due to Nicotine," 187 Arch f Dermat u Syph 449-464 (1949). This type data was not new information. In a study (cited in 1915) "of men aflicted with the disease . . . all of them were smokers," notes Truman W. Brophy, M.D., D.D.S., LL.D., Sc.D., F.A.C.S., Oral Surgery (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son & Co, 1915), p 314.

See also David Moyer, M.D., "The Tobacco Reference Guide: Chapter 8 Other Cancers: Leukemia and Childhood Cancers" (2000). (Background).

"Smoking significantly increases the risk for head and neck cancers for both men and women, regardless of the anatomic site. . . . a large, prospective study confirmed strong associations between current and past cigarette smoking and malignancies of the head and neck in both genders," as reported in the article “Prospective Investigation of the Cigarette Smoking-Head and Neck Cancer Association by Sex,” by Neal D. Freedman, Christian C. Abnet, Michael F. Leitzmann, Albert R. Hollenbeck, and Arthur Schatzkin, in CANCER, published Online 27 August 2007 (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.22957) with print issue date of 1 October 2007. "Cancers of the head and neck include cancers of the larynx, nasal passages/nose, oral cavity, and pharynx. Worldwide, more than 500,000 people are diagnosed with these cancers every year." The authors conclude, "To reduce the burden of head and neck cancer, public health efforts should continue to aim at eliminating smoking in both women and men. "

Cigarettes contain toxic chemicals. Cigarette-caused adverse effects including deaths are therefore "natural and probable consequences." Pursuant to standard lawbook definitions, nonsmokers' involuntary foreseeable deaths constitute murder. The high number of deaths is a "holocaust" according to the Royal Society of Physicians' 1971 criteria, and is part of the total genocide problem. This is a politically caused genocide, as shown by Prof. Robert N. Proctor, Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know About Cancer (New York: Basic Books, 1995). As our anti-genocide site shows, the culpable politicians should be criminally prosecuted.

Gov. John Engler

Michigan Governor John Engler (1991-2002) and staff were paper supportive of action to enforce the 1909 law, issuing five pertinent memoranda.
Exec Order 1992-3 Law Support Letter # 1 Anti-Cigarette Smuggling Finding Law Support Letter # 2 Governor's Overview


Three Related Background Web Sites
Cigarettes' Toxic Chemicals Coumarin Medical Statistics

See also the
  • ASH site on smoking and increased stomach cancer
  • ACS site on smoking and cervical cancer ("Women who smoke are about twice as likely as non-smokers to get cervical cancer. Smoking exposes the body to many cancer-causing chemicals that affect more than the lungs").

    •           According to the Rhode Island State Attorney General Web Site, "A $15,000 fine was paid to the Department of Attorney General by United States Tobacco Company (UST). The fine is part of the settlement with the AG for making misleading claims about the lack of scientific facts to establish smokeless tobacco to be a cause of oral cancer. The comments, a violation of the Consent Decree and Final Judgement between the State of Rhode Island and the Tobacco Companies, were made by a UST spokesperson to the Providence Journal in an article published April 7, 1999."

    Twenty Five Matters In Which Tobacco Has A Role
    ABORTION ADDICTION AIDS ALCOHOLISM
    ALZHEIMER'S
    		Birth Defects BRAIN DAMAGE
    Bronchitis (Chronic)
    Breast Cancer CRIME DIABETES
    DIVORCE
    DRUGS Emphysema
    FIRES
    HEARING LOSS
    Heart Disease Lung Cancer Macular Degeneration Mental Disorder
    Seat Belt Disuse
    SIDS
    SUICIDE
    TOTAL LIST

    And, Sadly, Bribery

    Discussion Group: More Participants Welcome

     

    To Return To Top of Page

    This site is sponsored as a public service by
    The Crime Prevention Group.  Please visit our tobacco effects list.

    Copyright © 1999 Leroy J. Pletten