sample="quota" bates="1005038370" isource="pm" decade="1960" class="ui" date="19621229" RADIO TV REPORTS, INC. 15 WEST 47TH STREET, NEW YORK 36, N.Y. COLUMBUS 5-7680 FOR: HILL & KNOWLTON, INC. PROGRAM: Barry Guy Show STATION WMCA DATE December 19, 1962 11 05 P.M. CITY New York CANCER EXPERTS DISCUSS SMOKING AND LUNG CANCER Gray listed his guests as Dr. Emerson Day, president of the New York City Cancer Committee and chairman of Department of Preventive Medicine, Memorial Hospital, and chief of division of preventative medicine. Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, director of the Strang Cancer Prevention Clinic, an authority on cancer detection and diagnosis: Dr. R. P. Mason, vice president for research of the American Cancer-Society, an authority on basic cancer research; Dr. Herbert Volk, assistant professor of surgery, coordinator of cancer teaching, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, an authority on female cancer, Dr. Elliott Frederick Osserman, associate professor of medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, an authority on the biology of cancer. GRAY "I'm trying to get from you what your--what your personal supposition is, each of you, as to why we in America have a particular kind of cancer. Now we've been at research for a long time. Has it told us anything? FIRST DOCTOR I think it's told us a great deal. If we can get back to this cigarette problem, why don't we just lay this thing out on the table and express our own feelings and convictions about this. GRAY "My sponsor will be here in a minute in his pajamas and flail me with a big cigar. FIRST DOCTOR: I think we should really turn the discussion to Dr. Day, who's certainly done a great deal fo the legwork in this area. I would just like to say for my own part that--this is a very real hazard. We've talked about the hazard of proprietary medicine, we've talked about the hazard of a poor physician and what he can do to falsely allay our fears, but here we are now in possession of really very incontrovertible, wholly incontrovertible evidence with respect to the potential hazard of cigarettes and to this point, as far as I know, the cigarette industry has refused to label their products as potentially hazardous although there certainly has been considerable discussion of this in the lay press. "I-- this is one of the things that has been accomplished in this country with respect to the delineation of a very real and very important cause of a specific cancer and one which is really quite difficult to treat. So I think that this is progress, and I would like at this point to turn it over to Dr. Day who certainly can carry it better than I can." GRAY "Who smokes. A pipe. DAY "This is not an easy assignment, but I'd like-- may I take three minutes. GRAY Put in 15 minutes, doctor. DAY "There isn't any question but that you can smoke yourself to death. There isn't any question but that you can drink yourself to death, and before we panic and think that this is going to close down a major industry and all, it seems to me we ought to take a fairly objective look at this, and talk in terms of what are the facts as known, and then assume that we are fairly intelligent Americans and that certain things need to be done to keep this think in its proper place. This is not a place for a lot of panic, it seems to me. "The evidence is as Dr. Osserman said, incontrovertible that there is a major part of the lung cancer problem is specifically related to the smoking particularly of cigarettes. There are this year going to be very close to 40,000 Americans who die of this disease. This number is increasing at the alarming rate of 2000 more Americans every year--this is only part of the cancer problem, but it's a dominant epidemic form of cancer, particularly in me, and research in a number of places throughout the country and abroad would lead one to a statement that about three quarters--and this may be conservative--about three quarters of those deaths are specifically attributable to the habit of long-term, and I think it's fair to say excessive cigarette smoking. The hazards to the person who limits their cigarettes to a half pack a day is hard to measure. It's the person smoking at the low level of two packs or more a day, and it's alarming how many are at that level, who get into trouble. GRAY: "I've had that for breakfast." DAY 'There are many I don't believe, but there are many patients that say doctor, if I can't continue my present pattern it's got to be--I cut it out. In other words I can't possibly moderate, and he's very right, and this is one reason why I think the largest, the most encouraging approach to doing something about this epidemic of sarcomas (?) is to target those individuals who haven't yet started to smoke, because they have a very precious thing going for them, and that is they don't like it. There isn't anybody who likes smoking before they start it. GRAY: Doctor you are--you have now joined the battle with the cigarette companies. I must talk in terms of my personal knowledge. My son, who is 14, a big boy, big physically and if he wanted to smoke it's his decision, he doesn't like it, he's not interested and I'm delighted.' DAY He's got a very precious thing. GRAY "Very precious thing, but you are talking to a generation who are badgered on every side by the cigarette companies--when I see the ads show springtime in the Rockies and a young lady of 21 sitting back with a young fella 23 I say hogwash. The cigarette company did not make that commercial for the age group that they are showing. "By the time he's 21 or 22 it's over they've either got him or they've lost him. They are aiming at the team teen group, trying to sell cigarettes to the first-time smokers and get their business before anybody else has staked out the claim. SECOND DOCTOR: Well Barry there are Intaka (?) campaigns that are being initiated now to attempt to prevent this from happening in the secondary schools. An interesting experiment with reported, a preliminary report at a meeting in Los Angeles just last month, meeting one month go practically to the day, where the coordinated cancer teaching at Stanford University was approached by a group of the medical students and they are attempting to on their own--this is without coercion from the faculty, but that the Stanford undergraduate medical school body to undertake a vow to give up cigarette smoking and not to smoke in order to attempt to dramatize, as it were, the problems that Dr. Osserman and Dr. Day just discussed. Surprisingly enough, when this was reported the coordinator from Duke, of all places, got up and said that there's a similar movement getting under way at Duke University and this really surprised us." GRAY Dr. Volk that's already avanced--with the advanced age group. I'm trying to figure out how you can get to the youngsters of 14, 15 and 16 which I think facts will prove is when most of them begin to smoke, first sneaking behind their parents' back or doing it openly, because they are attempting to cross the line from being kids to grown ups, and it becomes the smart thing to do. "Most kids start to smoke not because they like, as Dr. Day has pointed out, because nobody enjoys smoking at the beginning it's a terrible--it's a hard habit to acquire. it's very difficult to inhale in the beginning--it's just not fun. But the other kids do it, and that's where the problem lies. How do you get them to understand that it's just a dirty and expensive and filthy habit and regardless of what the other kids do, they will be unique by not smoking. I've seen it happen a hundred times in my own youth and seeing the kids that my children go with, and they think it's smart to smoke. Now, lick that problem." VOLK "Well there is--let's face it, there is an increasing awareness of this problem, there is increasing publicity..." GRAY "By the parent... VOLK Well by the parents and by the (All speak at once) I know what my own children, who are a bit younger than yours and their friends who are not exposed to this area of discussion at home are also aware today that cigarettes are a health hazard. MASON ...with you Barry. I think a great deal is being done at the level of secondary schools particularly, in the showing of movies, holding free discussions among the high school kids and junior high school kids, with the teachers and with visitors such as any one of us here, I think a great deal is being done and I think some progress is being made." GRAY "I noticed, Dr. Day that you leveled your barrage at cigarette smoking and no emphasis at all on cigars and pipes. DAY: 'Well the cigar and pipe smokers is at less risk, very substantially less risk of lung cancer, not because of substantially different chemicals coming off the end of the cigar but because the smoking habit is different. 'I think it's true that the cigar and pipe smoker does not inhale the way the cigarette smoker does. I don't know whether you agree with that in your case. Once you're a cigarette smokers maybe the pattern changes but... GRAY: I think that most cigarette smokers that I know who enjoy an occasional cigar from habit inhale the cigar as well. DAY: But I think basically there tends to be a difference I think that's true in my case anyway. I don't inhale and I look funny when I smoke cigarettes, just because I don't inhale. GRAY Well why do you smoke a pipe? DAY I--I. GRAY: "This diagnosis is going to cost you ten dollars, but go ahead. DAY: I tell you, it has a familial meaning to me; a pipe was given to me on my 21st birthday by my father. I had lived for three years in college with a man who smoked heavily and I didn't want to smoke at all, but once it had this significance I followed through and finally got to like a pipe. 'If I had known then what I know now, I don't think I'd have started and I don't think I'd have been given one. GRAY: "What happens, what's the chemistry that occurs when you smoke a pipe? DAY: "Oh--probably more psychology and biology than chemistry. I suppose there's some lift I get. GRAY: "Well I--what happens--I, I'm quite serious doctor. When someone smokes a pipe and just not inhale but just has the smoke in his mouth, what happens within the mouth? Does he get... DAY: "I can tell you one thing, when a pipe's right--we getting into a promotional campaign for pipe smoking--when a pipe..." GRAY: "You won't get a quarter." DAY: "...and it's good tobacco it tastes good." GRAY: "Yes." DAY: "It really does. To me a cigarette is a different proposition, but I have a bias, let's face it." GRAY: "I've never had a cigarette taste as good as a good cigar. I love a good cigar. DAY: "Can't afford them." GRAY: "It's--no, cigars are--well they're bulky. If you're a cigar smoker you start carrying around suitcases in effect and it's a big deal to be an intelligent cigar smokers." DAY: "Well I think it's important that we do point out that there are certain places in a man's life where tobacco is his friend; there's no question about it. At the end of a good meal, as you point out, a good cigar's a very fine ally, and the same may be said for the cocktail before dinner at the end of a hectic day. I mean this is an asset to the good life. "It's when it gets over the point where it is abused--where it's dominating. You know the cigarette smoker who has one going and lights another and doesn't even know it and everything is..." FIRST DOCTOR: "Subcortical (?)." DAY: "No. Comfortable, leisurely use of the product at that point; this is driving it." VOLK: "In a sense it's like when you're using the product or when the produce begins using you. And that's what's happened, and you're unfortunately an example of that, with your pack of cigarettes practically, not quite but... GRAY: "I've had three in an hour--in almost two hours. Is that bad?" VOLK: "Well that isn't too bad. GRAY: "No? Well all right. I just saved a couple of bucks and gentlemen, you haven't said anything about alcohol--does that give you cancer, in your opinion.