Over the last sixty years, doctors, scientists and clinical
researchers have established what many observers have long felt
was the case: a causal link exists between smoking cigarettes
and the incidence of lung cancer. Lung cancer occurs when the
cells within the lung tissue are altered at a genetic level to
mutate and multiply at an aggressive rate. The results of many
studies on the effects of tobacco have shown that cigarette
smoke carries numerous chemicals, called “mutagens”, that cause
lung tissue cells to mutate. Substances such as carbon monoxide,
hydrogen peroxide and benzopyrene contained in cigarette smoke
affect how cells change and grow. One of the earliest studies
into the relationship between smoking and lung cancer came from
the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.
Ernst Wynder, a first-year medical school student, started the
first research efforts into the causes of lung cancer in 1948.
He examined the cadaver of a man who had died of lung cancer to
find that the lungs