http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=00Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer -
official
By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent
THE world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a
study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive
smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect.
The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive
smoking health risks. The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the
12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings
public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an
internal report.
Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would
comment on the findings last week. At its International Agency for Research
on Cancer in Lyon, France, which coordinated the study, a spokesman would
say only that the full report had been submitted to a science journal and no
publication date had been set.
The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent
years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is
one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - or
environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly
awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups.
Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that
passive smoking caused lung cancer. The research compared 650 lung cancer
patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to
smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and
those who grew up with smokers.
The results are consistent with their being no additional risk for a person
living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke
having a protective effect against lung cancer. The summary, seen by The
Telegraph, also states: "There was no association between lung cancer risk
and ETS exposure during childhood."
A spokesman for Action on Smoking and Health said the findings "seem rather
surprising given the evidence from other major reviews on the subject which
have shown a clear association between passive smoking and a number of
diseases." Roy Castle, the jazz musician and television presenter who died
from lung cancer in 1994, claimed that he contracted the disease from years
of inhaling smoke while performing in pubs and clubs.
A report published in the British Medical Journal last October was hailed by
the anti-tobacco lobby as definitive proof when it claimed that non-smokers
living with smokers had a 25 per cent risk of developing lung cancer. But
yesterday, Dr Chris Proctor, head of science for BAT Industries, the tobacco
group, said the findings had to be taken seriously. "If this study cannot
find any statistically valid risk you have to ask if there can be any risk
at all.
"It confirms what we and many other scientists have long believed, that
while smoking in public may be annoying to some non-smokers, the science
does not show that being around a smoker is a lung-cancer risk." The WHO
study results come at a time when the British Government has made clear its
intention to crack down on smoking in thousands of public places, including
bars and restaurants.
The Government's own Scientific Committee on Smoking and Health is also
expected to report shortly - possibly in time for this Wednesday's National
No Smoking day - on the hazards of passive smoking.
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