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Date Posted: 04:42:21 07/29/04 Thu
Author: J.R.Smith,c.f.t.,s.p.n.,s.s.c.
Subject: Smoking Cuts 10 Years Off Life

Smoking Cuts 10 Years Off Life


Reuters Health

By Richard Woodman

Tuesday, June 22, 2004



LONDON (Agence de Presse Medicale for Reuters Health) - Smokers die ten years younger on average than non-smokers, according to new findings from the British study that first proved smoking causes lung cancer.

Oxford professor Sir Richard Doll, who has tracked 34,000 British doctors, published his initial results in the British Medical Journal in 1954, triggering the birth of numerous anti-smoking campaigns around the world.

Now, a new follow-up 50 years later by the 91-year-old epidemiologist shows that the overall risks of smoking are even greater than originally suspected, wiping out the impact of health improvements.

"Over the past few decades prevention and better treatment of disease have halved non-smoker death rates in the elderly in Britain," Doll said in a statement. "But these improvements have been completely nullified by the rapidly increasing hazards of tobacco for those who continue to smoke cigarettes."

The new findings released Tuesday (and again published in the British Medical Journal), show that among doctors born between 1900 and 1930, about half of the cigarette smokers died of causes related to the habit. However a unique group of men born around 1920 faced even worse odds. Smoking killed two-thirds of those who continued to smoke cigarettes.

The study authors attribute the peculiarly high risk for this particular generation to conscription into the British army from 1939 onwards. The armed forces provided low cost cigarettes to conscripts, which established the addiction with an intense early exposure to smoking.

The findings also highlight the benefits of stopping smoking.

Sir Richard Peto, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Oxford, who has collaborated on the study for 30 years, said: "On average, those who continue to smoke lose 10 years of life but stopping smoking at ages 60, 50, 40 or 30 gains 3, 6, 9 or the full 10 years of life expectancy."

He added: "Partly because of earlier results from this 50-year-long study, many people in Britain gave up smoking, and this country now has the best decrease in tobacco deaths in the world. But, in many countries tobacco deaths are still going up. In Britain, tobacco has caused six million deaths over the last 50 years. But, worldwide, tobacco will soon be causing six million deaths each year."

SOURCE: British Medical Journal, June 26 2004.

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