by Allan Brandt
67 Floyd De Eds and Robert H. Wilson, “III. Effect of Nicotine-Containing Diets on the Estrus Cycle.” Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics 59, no. 3 (March 1937): 260-263.
68 J. M. Essenberg, Justin V. Schwind, and Anne R. Patras, “The Effects of Nicotine and Cigarette Smoke on Pregnant Female Albino Rats and Their Offspring,” Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine 25, no. 4 (1940): 716.
69 Ibid., 715.
70 A. H. Roffo, “Tobacco-Induced Carcinoma in Rabbits,” Bulletin of the Institute of Experimental Medicine for Cancer Research & Treatment 7, no. 24 (1930); and A. H. Roffo and L. B. Smith, “Tobacco as a Carcinogenic Agent,” Deutsche Medezinische Wochenschrift 63 (1937): 1267-1271. For more on Roffo, see Robert N. Proctor, “Angel H. Roffo: The Forgotten Father of Experimental Tobacco Carcinogenesis,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 84, no. 6 (2006): 494-496.
71 Rowland V. Long and William A. Wolff, “The Effect of Tobacco on Estrus, Pregnancy, Fetal Growth, and Lactation,” North Carolina Medical Journal 9, no. 10 (1948): 522. On animal models, see Angela N. H. Creager, The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930-1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); and Karen Rader, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
72 On the broader question of proof and science, see, among others, Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, eds. Thaddeus J. Trenn and Robert K. Merton, tr. Fred Bradly and Thaddeus J. Trenn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); and Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).
73 Macfarlane Burnet, The Natural History of Infectious Disease (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972); Harry Filmore Dowling, Fighting Infection: Conquests of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); and Charles-Edward Amory Winslow, The Conquest of Epidemic Disease: A Chapter in the History of Ideas (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1943).
74 K. Codell Carter, “Koch’s Postulates in Relation to the Work of Jacob Henle and Edwin Klebs,” Medical History 29, no. 4 (1985): 353-374; and Bernard Dixon, Beyond the Magic Bullet (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).
75 Rene J. DuBos and Jean DuBos, The White Plague: Tuberculosis, Man and Society (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952): 88.
76 G. M. Cochran, P. W. Ewald, and K. D. Cochran, “Infectious Causation of Disease: An Evolutionary Perspective,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 43, no. 3 (2000): 406-448; M. C. Sutter, “Assigning Causation in Disease: Beyond Koch’s Postulates,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 39, no. 4 (1996): 581-592; Alfred S. Evans, “Causation and Disease: The Henle-Koch Postulates Revisited,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 49, no. 2 (1976): 175-195; and Richard F. Shope, “Koch’s Postulates and a Viral Cause of Human Cancer,” Cancer Research 20, no. 8 (1960): 1119-1120.
77 James J. Walsh, “Cigarettes and Pathology,” Commonweal (1937): 665.
78 The figures are from the United Nations, Statistical Yearbook 1948 (New York: UN Statistical Office, 1949), 52-60, and Statistical Yearbook 1973 (New York: UN Publications, 1974), 80-85. In all these cases, life expectancy rate trends for women were comparable but always a few years higher than for men. On the epidemiologic transition, see especially, A. R. Omran, “The Epidemiologic Transition: A Theory of Population Change,” Millbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 49, no. 4 (1971): 509-538; and John C. Caldwell, “Toward a Restatement of Demographic Transition Theory,” Population and Development Review 2, no. 3/4 (1976): 321-366.
79 On this debate, see Jerome Cornfield, William Haenszel, E. Cuyler Hammond, Abraham M. Lilienfeld, Michael B. Shimkin, and Ernst L. Wynder, “Smoking and Lung Cancer: Recent Evidence and Discussion of Some Questions,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 22, no. 1 (1959): 173-203; and Milton B. Rosenblatt, “Relation of Smoking to Lung Cancer” [presentation before the Society of the New York Medical College], March 16, 1954, Bates No. 501876160/6183, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/gjw29d00.
80 On scurvy, see James Lind, An Essay on the Most Effectual Means on Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy (London: D. Wilson, 1779). On cholera, see John Snow, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (London: John Churchill, 1849); and Peter Vinten-Johansen, Howard Brody, Nigel Paneth, Stephen Rachman, and Michael Rip, Cholera, Chloroform, and the Science of Medicine: A Life of John Snow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). On pellagra, see Alan Kraut, Goldberger’s War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader (New York: Hill & Wang, 2003); Joseph Goldberger, C. H. Waring, and W. F. Tanner, “Pellagra Prevention by Diet Among Institutional Inmates.” Public Health Reports 38, no. 41 (1923): 2361-2368; Joseph Goldberger, “Considerations on Pellagra,” Public Health Reports 29 (1914): 1683-1686; and Daphne A. Roe, A Plague of Corn: The Social History of Pellagra (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973).
81 Herbert L. Lombard and Carl R. Doering, “Cancer Studies in Massachusetts. 2. Habits, Characteristics and Environment of Individuals with and Without Cancer,” New England Journal of Medicine 196, no. 10 (1928): 481-487.
82 Ibid., 486.
83 Ibid., 487.
84 Morton Keller, The Life Insurance Enterprise, 1855-1910: A Study in the Limits of Corporate Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963).
85 Robert N. Proctor, Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don’t Know About Cancer (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 21-24.
86 Frederick L. Hoffman, “Cancer and Smoking Habits,” Annals of Surgery 93, no. 1 (1931): 50-67.
87 Frederick L. Hoffman, America Prudential Insurance Company, Company Pacific Mutual Life Insurance, and Company John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, San Francisco Cancer Survey, 1st-9th (Final) Preliminary Reports (Newark, NJ: Prudential Press, 1924-1934).
88 Ibid. (1931), 56.
89 Ibid., 62.
90 Ibid., 65.
91 Ibid., 65-66.
92 Raymond Pearl, “Tobacco Smoking and Longevity,” Science 87, no. 2253 (1938): 216-217.
93 Ibid., 216.
94 F. H. Müller, “Abuse of Tobacco and Carcinoma of the Lungs,” JAMA (Zeitschrift fur Krebsforschung, Berlin) (1939): 1372. The ideology of the Third Reich, with its deep commitments to bodily purity and race hygiene, attracted considerable attention to the toxic effects of tobacco. The work of Müller, which utilized rudimentary epidemiological techniques, drew attention in the United States in the period just prior to the war. Subsequent work within Nazi science confirmed the harms of smoking, but these investigations had little impact following the war, when they would be viewed as tainted by their political and cultural origins. I have relied on Robert N. Proctor’s The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999) for my assessment of German tobacco science. See also Robert N. Proctor, “Nazi Medicine and Public Health Policy,” Dimensions 10, no. 2 (1996): 29-34; and E. Schairer and E. Schöniger, “Lung Cancer and Tobacco Consumption,” International Journal of Epidemiology 30, no. 1 (2001): 24-27 (with commentaries by Richard Doll (30-31), Robert N. Proctor (31-34), and Susanne Zimmermann, Matthais Egger, and Uwe Hossfeld (35-37)).
95 Alton Ochsner and Michael DeBakey, “Symposium on Cancer: Primary Pulmonary Malignancy, Treatment by Total Pneumonectomy: Analysis of 79 Collected Cases and Presentation of 7 Personal Cases,” Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics 68 (1939): 435-451.
96 Burnham, 18; Evarts A. Graham to Alton Ochsner, October 29, 1940, Evarts A. Graham Papers, Washington University School of Medicine Library Archives, St. Louis, MO. “You, in my opinion, have presented better evidence in favor of the effects of cigarette smoking as an etiological factor in bronchogenic carcinoma tha
n anybody else. My facetious remarks about the silk stockings should not be taken too seriously. On the other hand, I think that there are still some things about bronchogenic carcinoma which are difficult to explain on the basis of cigarette smoking.”
97 Later, Ochsner and DeBakey, in 1941, graphically posed the cigarette-cancer hypothesis when they compared the rising curves of cigarette consumption and the growing prevalence of cancer of the lung.
98 Fritz Lickint, Tabak and Organismus: Handbuch der Gesamten Tabakkunde (Stuttgart: Hippokrates, 1939).
99 It was widely noted that randomization could be achieved experimentally only under certain clear conditions that did not place experimental subjects or controls under undue risk. A. B. Hill, “The Clinical Trial,” New England Journal of Medicine 247, no. 4 (1952): 113-119.
100 Evarts A. Graham, “Remarks on the Aetiology of Bronchogenic Carcinoma,” Lancet 263, no. 6826 (1954): 1305-1308.
Chapter 5
1 Alton Ochsner, Smoking and Cancer: A Doctor’s Report (New York: Julian Messner, 1954), viii.
2 Tobacco Industry Research Committee, A Scientific Perspective on the Cigarette Controversy, 1954, Bates No. 961008152/8172, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/wye21a00.
3 E. Cuyler Hammond, “Cause and Effect,” in The Biological Effects of Tobacco, ed. Ernest Wynder (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955), 193-194.
4 Peter D. Olch, “Evarts A. Graham: Pivotal Figure in American Surgery,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 26, no. 3 (1983): 472-485; Arthur E. Baue, “Evarts A. Graham and the First Pneumonectomy,” JAMA 251, no. 2 (1984): 261-264; Carl E. Lischer, “Evarts A. Graham (1883-1957), Surgeon and Educator,” American Journal of Surgery 133, no. 6 (1977): 733-736; and C. Barber Mueller, Evarts A. Graham: The Life, Lives, and Times of the Surgical Spirit of St. Louis (Hamilton, Ontario: B. C. Decker, 2002).
5 Evarts A. Graham to Alton Ochsner, October 28, 1940, Box 69, Folder 494, Evarts A. Graham Papers, Washington University School of Medicine Library Archives, St. Louis, MO [Graham Papers].
6 Evarts A. Graham to Alton Ochsner, February 18, 1949, Box 69, Folder 494, Graham Papers.
7 Ernst L. Wynder, “Tobacco and Health: A Review of the History and Some Suggestions,” Public Health Reports 103, no. 1 (1988): 8-18; Ernst L. Wynder, “Tobacco as a Cause of Lung Cancer: Some Reflections,” American Journal of Epidemiology 146, no. 9 (1997): 687-694; and Ernst Wynder to Evarts A. Graham, July 16, 1949, Box 103, Folder 762, Graham Papers.
8 Ernst L. Wynder and Evarts A. Graham, “Tobacco Smoking as a Possible Etiologic Factor in Bronchiogenic Carcinoma: A Study of 684 Proved Cases,” JAMA 143, no. 4 (1950): 334.
9 For example, see Ernst Wynder to Evarts A. Graham, July 17, 1949, Box 103, Folder 762, Graham Papers; and Evarts A. Graham to Ernst Wynder, July 25, 1949, Box 103, Folder 762, Graham Papers.
10 Wynder and Graham (1950), 331.
11 David Lilienfeld, personal communication to author, April 17, 1996. The State Institute was later renamed Roswell Park Memorial Institute. Levin also had an article linking cigarettes to lung cancer in the same JAMA issue where the Wynder and Graham article appeared. See Morton L. Levin, “Cancer and Tobacco Smoking: A Preliminary Report,” JAMA 143, no. 4 (1950): 336-338.
12 Wynder and Graham (1950), 334.
13 Ibid.
14 Ernest L. Wynder to Evarts A. Graham, August 27, 1949, Box 103, Folder 762, Graham Papers. In this letter, Graham discusses visits to Denver, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco.
15 Evarts A. Graham to Dickinson W. Richards, October 5, 1949, Box 103, Folder 762, Graham Papers.
16 N. Fields and S. Chapman, “Chasing Ernst L. Wynder: 40 Years of Philip Morris’ Efforts to Influence a Leading Scientist,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 57, no. 8 (2003): 571-578; “Wynder, Ernest L(udwig),” Current Biography Yearbook (1974): 448-450; and Richard Doll, “Ernst Wynder, 1923-1999,” American Journal of Public Health 89, no. 12 (1999): 1798-1799.
17 Evarts A. Graham to Alton Ochsner, February 18, 1949, Box 69, Folder 494, Graham Papers.
18 See Charles Webster, “Tobacco Smoking Addiction: A Challenge to the National Health Service,” British Journal of Addiction 79, no. 7 (1984): 7-16.
19 “Obituary: Sir Austin Bradford Hill, 1897-1991,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 154, no. 3 (1991): 482-485.
20 Austin Bradford Hill, Principles of Medical Statistics (London: Lancet, 1937).
21 Ibid.
22 See Harry M. Marks, The Progress of Experiment: Science and Therapeutic Reform in the United States, 1900-1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
23 Medical Research Council, Streptomycin in Tuberculosis Trials Committee, “Streptomycin Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis,” British Medical Journal 2 (1948): 769-783; Austin Bradford Hill, Principles of Medical Statistics (London: Lancet, 1937); and A. B. Hill, “The Clinical Trial,” New England Journal of Medicine 247, no. 4 (1952): 113-119.
24 Richard Doll, “Conversation with Sir Richard Doll (Journal Interview 29),” British Journal of Addiction 86, no. 4 (1991): 367-368.
25 Robert A. Aronowitz, Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society, and Disease (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 111-144. See also William G. Rothstein, Public Health and the Risk Factor: A History of an Uneven Medical Revolution (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003).
26 Doll, 368.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 369.
29 Raymond Pearl, “Tobacco Smoking and Longevity,” Science 87, no. 2253 (1938): 216-217.
30 See Marks, 139-148.
31 Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill, “Smoking and Carcinoma of the Lung: Preliminary Report,” British Medical Journal 224 (1950): 742-743, 747.
32 Ibid., 745.
33 Ibid., 747.
34 Ibid., 741.
35 Doll, 370.
36 Doll and Hill (1950), 747.
37 See Evarts A. Graham to Alton Ochsner, December 21, 1950, Box 69, Folder 464, Graham Papers; Ernst Wynder to Evarts A. Graham, July 11, 1951, Box 103, Folder 762, Graham Papers; Evarts A. Graham to A. Bradford Hill, January 5, 1951, Box 45, Folder 354, Graham Papers; A. Bradford Hill to Evarts A. Graham, January 19, 1951, Box 45, Folder 354, Graham Papers; and Evarts A. Graham to A. Bradford Hill, February 13, 1951, Box 45, Folder 354, Graham Papers.
38 Mervyn Susser, “Judgment and Causal Inference: Criteria in Epidemiologic Studies,” American Journal of Epidemiology 105, no. 1 (1977): 1-15; and Abraham M. Lilienfeld and David E. Lilienfeld, “Epidemiology and the Public Health Movement: A Historical Perspective,” Journal of Public Health Policy 3, no. 2 (1982): 140-149.
39 Levin, 336-338; R. Schrek et al., “Tobacco Smoking as an Etiologic Factor in Disease I: Cancer,” Cancer Research 10, no. 1 (1950): 49-58; C. A. Mills and M. M. Porter, “Tobacco Smoking Habits and Cancer of the Mouth and Respiratory System,” Cancer Research 10, no. 9 (1950): 539-542; and D. A. Sadowsky, A. G. Gilliam, and J. Cornfield, “The Statistical Association Between Smoking and Carcinoma of the Lung,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 13, no. 5 (1953): 1237-1258.
40 R. Doll, A. B. Hill, P. G. Gray, and E. A. Parr, “Lung Cancer Mortality and the Length of Cigarette Ends: An International Comparison,” British Medical Journal 1 (1959): 322-325.
41 Sadowsky et al., 1254.
42 J. Berkson, “The Statistical Study of the Association Between Smoking and Lung Cancer,” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 30 (1955): 319-348; and J. Berkson, “Smoking and Lung Cancer: Some Observations on Two Recent Reports,” Journal of the American Statistical Association 53, no. 281 (1958): 28-38. Berkson would argue that the American Cancer Society study was also affected by selection bias. But he had erroneously compared never-smokers with the overall lung cancer rate. See Jonathan M. Samet, “Reflections: Testifying in the Minnesota Tobacco Lawsuit,” Tobacco Control 8, no. 1 (1999): 101-105.
43 R. A. Fisher, letter to the editor, British Medical Journal 2 (1957): 43; and R. A. Fisher, “Cigarettes, Cancer, and Statist
ics,” Centenary Review 2 (1958): 151-166.
44 Paul D. Stolley, “When Genius Errs: R. A. Fisher and the Lung Cancer Controversy,” American Journal of Epidemology 133, no. 5 (1991): 416-436.
45 Ernst Wynder to Evarts A. Graham, July 11, 1951, Box 103, Folder 762, Graham Papers.
46 Richard Doll and A. Bradford Hill, “The Mortality of Doctors in Relation to Their Smoking Habits: A Preliminary Report,” British Medical Journal 228 (1954): 1451-1455.
47 Richard Doll and A. Bradford Hill, “Lung Cancer and Other Causes of Death in Relation to Smoking: A Second Report on the Mortality of British Doctors,” British Medical Journal 230 (1956): 1071-1081.
48 Doll and Hill (1954), 1455.
49 Graham to Ochsner, December 21, 1950, Box 69, Folder 264, Graham Papers.
50 E. Cuyler Hammond and Daniel Horn, “Tobacco and Lung Cancer,” in Proceedings of the National Cancer Conference, Volume II (American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute and American Association for Cancer Research, 1953), 871-875; E. Cuyler Hammond, Daniel Horn, Lawrence Garfinkel, Constance L. Parcy, and Craig Leonard. “The Relationship Between Human Smoking Habits and Death Rates,” JAMA 155, no. 15 (1954): 1316-1928; and E. Cuyler Hammond and Daniel Horn, “Smoking and Death Rates—Report on Forty-Four Months of Follow-up of 187,783 Men,” JAMA 251, no. 21 (1958): 1294-1308.
51 E. Cuyler Hammond to Evarts A. Graham, March 26, 1954, Box 3, Folder 26, Graham Papers.
52 Evarts A. Graham to Alton Ochsner, September 15, 1954, Box 69, Folder 464, Graham Papers.
53 Hammond to Graham, 1954.
54 Hammond et al., “Smoking, Cancer and Heart Disease,” New England Journal of Medicine 251, no. 14 (1954): 583-584; and R. W. Buechley, R. M. Drake, and L. Breslow, “Relationship of Amount of Cigarette Smoking to Coronary Heart Disease Mortality Rates in Men.” Circulation 18, no. 6 (1958): 1085-1090.
55 E. Cuyler Hammond to the ACS Board of Directors, “Results of Smoking Study,” June 16, 1954, Box 3, Folder 26, Graham Papers.