It seems an obvious point now, but in the 1940’s Alton Ochsner, a surgeon in New Orleans, observed that nearly all of his patients he operated on for lung cancer were also smokers (Ochsner 1941). It was a startling conclusion that smoking could be linked to cancer.
On this day 50 years ago, the Surgeon General released their report that definitely linked smoking to cancer. Reports say it was one of the biggest news stories of 1964. Click the link below to view CDC’s page on this milestone.
Ochsner A, DeBakey M: Carcinoma of the lung. Arch Surg 42:209-258, 1941.