Paper: Daily Appeal - 42 days to the millennium - Thursday, July 19, 1957
Editor and Publisher: Neal Van Sooy
Advertising: William Dolan
City Editor: Bob Smith
Circulation: Olive Newton
An independent newspaper published evenings except Saturday and Sunday at 102 S. Division Street.
Telephone: GR2-3461
Leased wire: United Press
1957: Expert says cigarettes cause cancer, other ills
By Kelli Du Fresne
In July 1957 an expert in Washington, D.C., made a claim that it took another 41 years to litigate.
The headline in the Nevada Appeal read "Cigarettes Cause Cancer, Other Ills Expert Declares."
Over the next four decades, the numbers making that claim grew while tobacco companies denied it and lawmakers and judges looked away.
However, in December 1998, Washoe County District Court approved the terms of a nationwide settlement with tobacco companies.
Nevada's share is a total of $1.2 billion which comes to about $48 million a year for the next 25 years.
The money is to be used on tobacco education programs, to help pay the costs of illness associated with tobacco use and to fund a scholarship to all Nevada children with a B average who wish to attend a Nevada university or community college.
The penalty for tobacco companies is huge, but so are their profits.
Each day they spend $16 million to advertise their products.
In 1957 United Press reported:
Washington -(UP)-An American Cancer Society expert told congressional investigators today that cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer and has a severe effect on a number of other diseases.
Dr. E. Cuyler Hammond, the society's research director, said "evidence that smoking is a serious health hazard has been accumulating slowly since about 1915."
He said recent studies have produced "overwhelming" evidence that cigarette smoking "is a causative factor of great importance in the occurrence of lung cancer."
He said there has been an "alarming trend in the death rates from lung cancer," with the number of deaths rising from 2,500 in 1930 to an estimated 29,000 in 1956.
Hammond said cigarette smoking "causes an increase in deaths from heart disease" and has a "severe effect" on patients with peptic ulcers and Buergers Disease.
He also said "there is evidence that smoking has an effect on death rates from respiratory diseases other than lung cancer."
Hammond was the opening witness at a house government operations subcommittee investigation of filter cigarettes.
Dr. Clarence Cook Little, chairman of the scientific advisory board to the tobacco industry's research committee, challenged the claims of a cause-and-effect relation between smoking and lung cancer.
In prepared testimony, Little said:
"Non-smokers get lung cancer. The vast majority of heavy smokers never get lung cancer. Obviously there is no simple cause-and-effect mechanism resulting from cigarette smoking."
In 1999, on the eve of the Great American Smokeout, the American Cancer Society reported that 1 million children begin smoking each year and that one-third of them will die from their addiction.
Cigarettes kill more Americans than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, murders, suicides, drugs and fires combined about 390,000 people each year. A total of46 million Americans smoke.
Other facts from the cancer society include:
-- Cigarette smokers have more than twice the risk of heart attack.
-- Cigarette smokers have two to four times the chance of cardiac arrest
--Giving up smoking rapidly reduces the risk of heart disease.
-- A pregnant woman who smokes increases her baby's chance of infant crib death.
-- Tobacco use is responsible for nearly one of every five deaths in the U.S. The Great American Smokeout turned 23 years old Nov. 18.
The idea began five years earlier when Arthur P. Mulvaney created an event in Massachusetts to raise money for his local high school.
Mulvaney asked that people give up cigarettes for one day and give the money they saved to his high school in Randolph.
The idea spread in in 1976 one million smokers in California quit for a day in the first ever Great American Smokeout.
Today, the event is held on the third Thursday in November.
Other news bites from 1957 included a report that two young men from Nevada were top model car builders.
The headline read: "Nevada Boys Rank High In Model Auto Design" and was followed by the following report from Michigan:
Two Reno boys today were named among the nation's best model car designers and builders.
Franklin Bell, 19, and Bobby Thomas, 15, won first place in the state for their age divisions in the 1957 Fisher Body Craftsman's guild model car competition. They receive $150 in cash.
Chester Kahn, 20, Stewart and Robert M. Bell, 15, McGill, won second place in their age divisions and receive $100 in cash.
Gordon Butler, 16, Hawthorne and Douglas Shumaker, 15, Babbitt, won third place and $50 in cash.
The picture of Vincent Gigante was run below the headline "Police Want Him." The international new bulletin said Gigante, an ex-boxer was being sought in connection with the shooting of Frank Costello, New York under-world czar.
Bill Dolan's column Pages from the Past was showing tidbits from the news of 1877, 1907 and 1932.
For 1877, Dolan wrote: FIRE-on C Street, Virginia City, yesterday afternoon, destroyed three buildings-Burn's lodging house, Lefevre's drug store and the Burlington house. The conflagration threatened for some time to become general. Much time was wasted with the bursting of hose which seemed to have been tampered with. No wind. $20,000.
For 1907, he wrote: THERE-is not likely to be any more wood famines on the V&T R.R. The oil system is now fully installed and is working like a charm. There is a 25,000 gallon tank south of the car shops and it distributes the oil wherever it is needed. Atomizing burners.
For 1932, Dolan wrote: ALVY-Miller-watchman at the capitol is driving a new sedan, having taken delivery of an eight-Oldsmobile.
EDDIE-Miller, son of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Miller, who underwent an operation for appendicitis some ten days ago, has been brought home and is making a fine recovery.
