Smoking, Statistics, and Death
The interim report on the relationship between smoking and cancer presented to the American Medical Association by Dr. Cuyler Hammond will probably cause many a smoker to gasp and reach faintly for his favouirite brand of cigarette. Some of the main findings of Dr. Hammond and his assistants are briefly as follows . After the age of fifty cigarette smokers have almost twice as high a death-rate as non-smokers. The death- rate from heart attacks is about half as high again among cigarette smokers as among non-smokers. There is a definite cause and effect relationship between cigarette smoking and all kinds of cancer." This is depressing news, and no one who likes his cigarettes will find much comfort in the fact that cigar and pipe smokers appear to be immune from these dis- tressing after-effects of indulgence in tobacco. Yet perhaps Dr. Hammond's interim results are not quite so devastating as they seem. Statistics are notoriously treacherous things, and, looking at all the possibilities involved, the non-expert feels inclined to fall back on Hume's scepticism as to the possibility of proofs of cause and effect. At any rate, so abstruse a Memento mori is unlikely to keep anyone from smoking cigarettes. The large coloured pictures of cirrhosed livers, With which temperance societies used to try to frighten incipient alcoholics, were remarkably unsuccessful in weaning them from their glass of beer, and, though Dr. Hammond provides stronger and more scientific meat, there is a pious opinion Widely held to the effect that figures can prove anything.
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