Also Linked To Other Ailments
Cigarettes Called Principal Cause Of Lung Cancer IN Panel's Report
WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 (AP) ─ Heavy cigarette smoking is the principal cause of cancer of the lungs and the larynx and a health hazard to grave as to call for remedial action, a blue-ribbon government science panel concluded Saturday.
The nature of possible action was not spelled out. However, Surgeon General Luther Terry of the U. S. Public Heath Service said his agency will move promptly to recommend specific steps of the kind urged by the science group.
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"I would advise anyone to discontinue smoking cigarettes," he told a news conference.
The 10-man special advisory committee on smoking and health took 14 months to evaluate more than 8,000 studies of the effect of smoking on health. It undertook no fresh research but decided available evidence shows that cigarette smoking far outweighs all other causes of lung cancer and cancer of the larynx in men and perhaps in women.
It had no such clear-cut indictment of cigarette smoking in the area of heart and blood vessel disease or lesser ailments sometimes associated with smoking. But the panel took the view that the more you smoke the more you risk early death.
The report, which ran to about 150,000 words and several hundred pages, hit hardest at cigarette smoking as being what it termed a significant cause of lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, and cancer of the larynx, or voice box.
"Male cigarette smokers also have a higher death rate from coronary artery disease than nonsmoking males, but it is not clear that the association has causal significance."
It said the risk of developing lung cancer for pipe smokers and cigar smokers is greater than for nonsmokers "but much less than for cigarette smokers."
But while it found much physical menace in smoking, the committee reported that there are benefits in the area of mental health and ease, saying "the habit originates in a search for contentment."
As regards other diseases, the box score of the report ran this way:
Cancer of the esophagus--there is evidence of an association with smoking, but cause and effect have not been decided on the basis of present evidence.
Cancer of the urinary bladder ─ an association with cigarette smoking but not enough evidence to establish a cause and effect link.
Stomach cancer ─ no relationship established.
Peptic ulcer (including ulcers of the stomach and of the duodenum which links the stomach with the intestines) ─ an association with cigarette smoking but no cause and effect yet established.
Amblyopia, dimness of vision unexplained by any bodily defect ─ an apparent relationship between this ailment and pipe and cigar smoking ─ but no cause and effect link yet made.
Cirrhosis of the liver ─ there is increased mortality from this among smokers, but the evidence is not sufficient to establish the cause and effect link.
Infant birth weight ─ women who smoke cigarettes during pregnancy tend to have babies of lower than usual birth weight.
As to mortality among cigarette smokers, the report declared that one study has shown that the death rate for smokers of cigarettes only is about 70 per cent higher than that for nonsmokers, and it added:
"The death rates increase with the amount smoked."
