sample="rhetorical" bates="060-02" isource="ctr" decade="1960" class="ue" date="19610322" FOR: TOBACCO INDUSTRY RESEARCH COMMITTEE FO RELEASE WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 1960 RESEARCH ON SMOKING AND HEALTH DISCUSSED BY SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD TO T.I.R.C. New York -- The Scientific Advisory Board to the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, in a report to the industry group made public today by T.I.R.C., called for expanding health research in 22 specific areas. The Board of independent doctors and scientists has directed the T.I.R.C. research program since mid-1954. In making its research recommendations, the Board's report discussed changes in scientific knowledge about smoking and health over the last seven years and said: "Perhaps the most significant development has been the general recognition that we do not yet have the answers; that an association between the extent of tobacco use and the incidence of lung cancer does not prove a causal relationship; that experimental verification is essential, and that there are a number of other factors which need to be considered." The Scientific Advisory Board, whose Chairman is Dr. Kenneth Merrill Lynch, Chancellor of the Medical College of South Carolina, also said: "We are not satisfied to let the problem rest with statistical reports suggesting that heavy smoking increases the risk of cancer of the lung; we are interested also in knowing why the overwhelming majority of heavy smokers do not contract the disease despite their smoking." The Board specified expanded research into cancer causation, especially lung cancer, the study of differences among people who smoke and those who don't, and more intensive study of the factors involved in heart disease. The Board's report will be included in the 1960 Annual Report of the T.I.R.C.'s Scientific Director, Dr. Clarence Cook Little, to be published soon. In reviewing the progress of research, the Board said: "Major effort has been devoted to the independent investigation of the two great fields of cancer and of cardiovascular disease. There have been definite advances in knowledge and improvements in technique. "So far as concerns a final solution of the problems, scientific honesty requires acknowledgement that, in the absence of greater knowledge of the fundamental processes concerned, a simple answer to what are not simple questions is unlikely in the near future... "The important thing is to keep on adding to knowledge until the accumulative facts provide the basis for a sound conclusion." The Board noted it has recommended grants-in-aid to more than 100 independent scientists in about 70 medical schools and other research institutions through 1960; and that the T.I.R.C. has made all grants thus recommended "without question." Among the 22 research areas being expanded or under consideration for expansion are: the possible role of previous infections and viruses in the origin of lung cancer; better diagnosis of early lung lesions; methods for experimental testing of various substance for cancer-causing properties; comparison of physical, emotional and psychological characteristics of smokers and non-smokes; studies of ethnic, social and cultural differences among people and differences in tobacco use; comparison of the psychological and physiological effects of smoking with those of tranquilizers, and response to smoking among persons with existing heart trouble. To date, T.I.R.C. has made research grants for over $4 million. The members of the Scientific Advisory Board are: Chairman, Kenneth Merrill Lynch, M.D., Sc.D., Ph.D., Chancellor of the Medical College of South Carolina, Charleston. Richard J. King, M.D., Professor and Chairman, Department of Medicine, Wayne State University College of Medicine, Detroit. McKeen Cattell, Ph.D., M.D., Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology, Cornell University Medical College, New York City. Leon O. Jacobson, M.D., Professor of Medicine, University of Chicago; Director, Argonne Cancer Research Hospital, Chicago. Paul Kotin, M.D., Paul Pierce Professor of Pathology, University of Southern California, School of Medicine, Los Angeles. Clarence Cook Little, Sc.D., LL.D., Litt.D., Scientific Director, Tobacco Industry Research Committee; Director Emeritus, Roscoe R. Jackson Memorial Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine. Stanley P. Reimann, M.D., Sc.D., Director Emeritus, The Institute for Cancer Research, Philadelphia. William F. Rienhoff, Jr., M.D., Associate Professor of Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore. Edwin B. Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor Emeritus of Vital Statistics, Harvard University, Cambridge. (A copy of the Scientific Advisory Board's full report is attached.)