Smoking and Cancer

[Page 13]

     On July 19, the Associated Press released a statement from Dr. Ernest L. Wynder, of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, to the effect that about 25,000 persons will die of lung cancer this year, and at least 80 per cent of the deaths could have been prevented if the patients had not smoked. In plain terms, this means that 20,000 persons will go to their graves this year as the result of lethal poison administered by their own hands. That is suicide!

     In the face of this, the editor of "The Gospel Guardian" also released a statement about the same time to the effect that he had never been much concerned about the moral aspects of smoking, although he was becoming increasingly disturbed about the reports of the physical aspects as relates to tobacco as a causative factor in cancer. Is there no "moral aspect" about self- murder in gratification of physical lust? If it be argued that out of the millions of smokers, only 20,000 will thus die at their own hands, does that eliminate the moral aspect? If some foreign agent were to plant germs in the food of millions of our citizens would we exonerate him from guilt if only 20,000 suffered death?

     Of the 20,000 who die this year from the habit of smoking, the great majority will be husbands and fathers. They will leave behind a vast retinue of weeping wives and crying children. Many of these will follow in the pattern of the life of the deceased, so that they will continue to inhale the same noxious fumes which deprived them of their loved ones. Even before some depart from the cemetery they will light up their cigarettes and inhale the toxic tars which deprived them of a husband or father, and may eventually spell their own doom. Is there no "moral aspect" in this?

     Beloved brethren in the Lord, do not permit your conscience to be soothed by smooth editorials or by pussyfooting preachers. While puffing away on your "Lucky Strike" look at your sweet little children or grandchildren playing about your feet. The day may come when you will weep scalding tears if one of them is taken into surgery and his body slashed open to have a bloody, cancerous lung cut from its moorings in the chest. If lung cancer strikes your family as a result of your folly, it will not be a "lucky strike." Why don't you quit today? Now is the accepted time! Throw off the chains of slavery. Be a man!