Tobacco Documents Online

t . . NEWS' Indiarapolis, Indiana March~ 9, 1967 LISTS CONDITIONS Book Disputes Smoking Danger By Ral ph de T oled ano A WASHINGTON press conference is frequently an exercise in futility. Reporters show up-some because they are assigned, some because they are interested, and almost all of them hopeful that . drinks will be served: Ques- tions are asked, with varying degrees of interest' and hostility. Then the reporters leave with a bunch of handouts, and~ a few of them write stories. This was roughly the pattern when Lloyd Mallan, a dis- Toledano tinguished writer and researcher of scientific subjects, and Dr. William B. Ober, director of laboratories at New York's Knickerbocker Hospital and professor of patholbgy at the New York Medical College, held a press conference in Washington MALLAN HAD written a book called "It IS Safe to Smoke"-which he wanted to discuss with the press- and Dr. Ober had journeved to Wash- ington to urge the public to read this book. Most reporters were interested in what Mallan and Dr. Ober had to say about the U.S. surgeon general's re- port on: "Smoking and Health," a document they did not know was held in fairly low repute by an overwhelm- ing majority of the medical authori- ties who testified at Senate hearings on the dangers of tobacco. One reporter, who tried to dominate the press conference, was out to prove that both Dr. Ober and Mallan were tools of the tobacco industry an& mo- tivated by greed or malevolence in their dissection of the surgeon gen- eral's report. It was a little frightening to wat& this performance. Time after time, the arguments the reporter presented - they were hardly questions-were de- molishe& by Dr. Ober or Mallan. This merely increased the reporter's hostil- ity and failed to budge him from his preconceptions. - YET NEITHER Dr. Ober, a pathol- ogist of high reputation who has done heavy research in the field of smoking, nor Mallan, a painstaking journalistic analyst of scientific data, had any ax to grind. They had severali points to make. As a scientist4 Dr. Ober condemned the surgeon general's report as a col- lection of unrelated statistics pointing to unwarranted and unsupported' con- clusions. After careful study of the report, 39 of the 49 medical experts and sta- tistical mathematicians who testifie& before the Senate committee disagreed strongly with the surgeon general's "findings." Of the 10 who agreed with it6 one was the surgeon general him- self and two ~ were associates in pre- paring the report. Dr. Ober, who has conducted an uncounted number of autopsies, exam- -ine& the lungs of smokers and non- smokers, then referred back to their life histories. He could detect no re- lationship between the condition of the lungs of smokers and non-smok- ers, though supporters of the surgeon general's report have always insisted that damage to lung tissue by cigarette smoke is always visible under the microscope. Mallan, while taking no sides on the question of the hazards of smok- ing unfiltered cigarettes, made one major contribution: From the medical experts-leading men in their fields- he learned that the danger in ciga- rette smoking, if danger it is, comea mainly from the gases produced in burning the tobacco or whatever- they are now making lettuce-leaf cigarettes-which paralyze the cilia of the cells in our air passages. These cilia sweep upwar& those particles of tar and other presumably carcinogenic matter in cigarette smoke. As long as the cilia: are healthy, most of these particles are kept out of the lungs. IT IS THE contention of Mallan's book that these gases are filtere& out by activated charcoal. A combination of the usual cellulose acetate and ac- tivated charcoal filters out most of the gases and the particles, which - in effect-would seem to justify the title of Mallan's book. It may be that, smoking causes lung cancer, emphysema, and heart trou- ble. But the surgeon general did not prove it by issuing a loaded report. 27