Smoking: Still a Killer

By January 23, 2016 Health Care, Life No Comments
Smoking Still a Killer

Lung cancer stays put as the No. 1 cancer killer.

Warning: Smoking may be hazardous to your health. You know that. But a half-century ago, many people didn’t—until the landmark surgeon general’s report on smoking and health was published in January 1964.

“Few medical questions have stirred such public interest or created more scientific debate than the tobacco-health controversy,” Surgeon General Luther Terry wrote in the foreword to his advisory committee’s report.

While smoking rates have dropped by more than half as a result of successful anti-smoking campaigns and education, the total number of smokers in the U.S.—about 43.8 million adults, or one in five—remains about the same because the total population is larger, says Lewis Foxhall, M.D., vice president for health policy at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

“Still,” he says, “lung cancer remains the No. 1 cancer killer and the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.”

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