Smoking still kills, stopping still works
29 June 2007
Exactly 50 years ago today, in 1957, the Medical Research Council issued the first official statement by any national research organisation in the world that smoking was actually an important cause of lung cancer. (BMJ 29 June 1957 pp 1523-4)
MRC research into the great increase in UK lung cancer death rates began in 1947, showing smoking to be a major cause of it. Studies from other countries showed similar findings, but at that time the UK had the worst death rates from smoking in the world.
In an immediate response in Parliament to the 1957 MRC statement, the Health Ministry accepted that smoking was a major cause of lung cancer and deemed it the Government’s responsibility to inform the public of the dangers of smoking.
Subsequent MRC-supported research, especially by Sir Richard Doll and Sir Richard Peto, has measured the full eventual hazards of smoking, showing that half of all persistent smokers are killed by their addiction but that stopping smoking works. Since the first major MRC publication in 1950, about 7 million people in the UK and 100 million people in other countries have been killed by smoking. In Britain, however, the death rates are falling fast because half the smokers have stopped (10 million have stopped, while 10 million still smoke). Most who have not stopped say they wish they had.
Sir Richard Peto, Professor of Medical Statistics at Oxford, said “Half of all smokers get killed by tobacco, and stopping works. If the ban on smoking in public places eventually helps a million smokers to stop, it will avoid nearly half a million tobacco deaths.”
Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council, added “For more than 50 years, the Medical Research Council has been at the forefront of research on tobacco. We are now seeing the pay-off in widespread cessation and big decreases in UK death rates from smoking. Still, however, smoking causes one in five of all the premature deaths in Britain. Although the smoking ban is being brought in to stop smokers killing other people, its main effect on death rates may be to stop some smokers killing themselves.”
Notes to Editors:
- For more information from Sir Richard Peto about deaths from smoking in the UK, the EU and in more than forty other populations since 1950, please visit www.deathsfromsmoking.net. The site contains facts and figures on smoking and deaths for the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, FYR Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia & Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States.
- Sir Richard Peto is also involved in major MRC-funded research projects in China, India and Russia.
- For more information about the smoking ban, please visit: www.smokefreeengland.co.uk
- For more information on the harms of smoking and second-hand smoke, please visit: www.ash.org.uk
- The Medical Research Council is dedicated to improving human health through excellent science. It invests on behalf of the UK taxpayer. Its work ranges from molecular level science to public health research, carried out in universities, hospitals and a network of its own units and institutes. The MRC liaises with the Health Departments, the National Health Service and industry to take account of the public’s needs. The results have led to some of the most significant discoveries in medical science and benefited the health and wealth of millions of people in the UK and around the world. www.mrc.ac.uk
Phone: 0207 670 5139
press.office@headoffice.mrc.ac.uk
