Sin,—I feel that it is necessary to help Mr. Keller
to get some facts clear. Thus he says, rightly, that the figures for inhalers and non-inhalers are much the same. Confusion has arisen by the use of the expression 'lung cancer' whereas, in fact, the disease under discussion is cancer of the bronchus, malignant tumours of the lung-tissue itself being great rarities. The intensity of carcinogenetic action on the bronchi will be the same in the two groups of cigarette smokers. If Mr. Keller had asked why cigarette smoking should be supposed to predispose to cancer of the bronchi whereas the incidence of cancer of the mouth and throat is not appreciably higher in smokers than in non-smokers, I should only have been able to invoke the nebulous concept of 'tissue predisposition.'
Much as I should like to explain the 'parallel data,' it is scarcely possible in your columns because it would involve a long discussion of industrial medicine and toxicology. I have no wish to 'blind your readers with science,' although I have before me a precedent for doing so, viz, the letter in the BMJ, which Pharos imagines, quite erroneously, that I have not read.
Smokers (of which class I am one) find it difficult to accept the evidence. 'Croire que la religion dams laquelle on a ere eleve est fort bonne et pratiquer sous les vices qu'elle defend sont des choses ex-
tremement compatibles. . . .' (Pierre Beyle, Pensees sur la Comore, 1682.)—Yours faithfully, 152 Harley Street, WI
A. PINEY
Previous page
