Cambridge Journals Online

THE POLICY RESPONSE TO THE SMOKING AND LUNG CANCER CONNECTION IN THE 1950s AND 1960s ¹

Abstract

A key current concern is how scientific knowledge may inform policy in relation to major environmental and health concerns. There are distinct schools of analysis about this relationship between science and policy. They stress rational relationships; denial and delay; or the role of networks. History is important in modifying such perspectives: smoking policy in the 1950s and 1960s is the case study here. The initial response in the 1950s to the link between smoking and lung cancer was in part conditioned by the role of the tobacco industry and the financial importance of tobacco: the British tobacco industry had closer relationships with government than the American one, and did not rely on public relations. Public health interests worked with the industry. But politicians were concerned also about the fluidity of the epidemiological evidence; the dangers of stirring up further pressure over air pollution; the financial and ideological implications of health education and its location; and the electoral dangers of intervening in a popular mass habit. In the 1960s the British and American medical reports stimulated the growth of a public health ‘policy community’. The initial political considerations began to weaken and these years marked the beginning of a new style of public health.

Footnotes

¹ This paper was given at a conference on Cancer at the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health Washington DC in November 2004. Thanks are due to participants in the conference, to colleagues at the Centre for History in Public Health at LSHTM, and to Ingrid James for secretarial assistance. Thanks also to Suzanne Taylor for combing industry online archives and to Colin Talley for some online references. Professor Walter Holland has provided valuable advice on the history of epidemiology and Peter Mandler’s careful editorial comments have improved the article. The research on which the article is based was originally funded by the Wellcome Trust.