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The prospects are for a bristling fight in the House, where debate will intensify from now until the end of June. While the outcome is by no means certain, the industry's cause has been damaged by the retirement of some effective friends in Congress, notably Kentucky's Senator Thruston Morton. Nor have tobacco men particularly helped themselves by their response to the issue of smoking and health. The Tobacco Institute refuses to concede that much more than a health "controversy" exists. One reason for the industry's reluctance to concede a link between smoking and disease is its fear of health-hazard liability suits.*
The industry's rather elaborate public relations effort has been something less than smooth. Manhattan's Hill & Knowlton, the world's largest public relations firm, had been tending the industry's image for 15 years, but it quit a few months ago in disagreement over fundamental tactics. Hill & Knowlton had engineered the defensive, low-profile approach, under which the industry minimized its public involvement in the health controversy. That put the firm at odds with some industry chiefs, who thought that it was time for a more aggressive approach in promoting the case for cigarettes.
The tobacco industry's main medical spokesman, Dr. Clarence Cook Little, is an 80-year-old retired biologist who headed the predecessor of the American Cancer Society in the 1930s. As chief of the industry's Council for Tobacco Research since 1954, he has steadfastly maintained that evidence linking smoking and disease consists largely of statistical associations, which cannot "prove" a causal relationship. The tobacco men ridicule the notion that cigarettes alone could be responsible for the two dozen or so diseases with which they have been associated. Much more research, they say, must be done on such factors as air pollution, urbanization and the stressful emotional environment that goes with it. Genetic and behavioral factors may be involved in causing disease, they contend. The Tobacco Institute cites surveys showing that smokers are unusually energetic, marry more often and drink more liquor and black coffee than nonsmokers. Smokers, the Institute concludes, are a "different kind of people" who are perhaps more susceptible to sickness. Supporters of the industry also point out that cigarette smoke has never induced lung cancer in laboratory animals, and that no one knows the mechanism by which smoking causes cancer.
Effects of a Blackout
While that is true, other medical men point out that the statistics have reached an impressive total and continue to grow. They are backed up by laboratory evidence. Experiments, often sponsored by the industry, are continuing with mice, dogs, baboons and other animals. Tests on chickens at Arthur D. Little Co. in Boston have shown that smoke gases temporarily paralyze the tiny, hairlike cilia that normally keep foreign matter clear of the lungs. Other animal research has identified a number of suspected carcinogens in cigarette smoke. At the House hearings last week, U.S. Surgeon General William Stewart repeated his conviction: "I think we have established cause and effect in lung cancer. I don't think there is any question about it."