smoking and cancer

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Recommended: Research about tobacco use and lung cancer

The smoking and cancer relationship has for so long been an argument between the manufacturers, consumers, and public health experts/scientists. The Doll and Hill (1950) report was an eye opener,1 that made the cigarette manufacturing companies admit but not completely concede to the cause and effect. Because of these companies flip flopping, there is still confusion about the link between smoking and its effects with respect to causing cancer.2 The experiments that have been performed so far have not been definitive in proving that smoking causes cancer, even though they do show a likelihood. The fact that the studies have been limited can be attributed to several dynamics.
The number one limitation in an experiment/study that would evaluate cause and effect between smoking and cancer would be, meeting the Favorable Risk-benefit code. This code of ethics in research requires that individuals be subjected to minimal harm, and that the individual benefits should supersede the potential risks from the experiment/study.3 The latter is difficult to achieve since the experiment’s main goal would be determining cause and effect, rather not finding a cure. What this means is that in the experiment, individuals would have to be subjected to smoking and they would have no hope of ever being relieved from the dangers that would come as a result of the exposure. This kind of study would turn into another Tuskegee saga were individuals were exposed to Syphilis and even though a cure became available later in the study, it was never administered to the subjects.4
Another huddle in conducting and experiment to reveal a profound cause of cancer from smoking, would be duration of experiment. The known cancers associated with smoking, have been de...

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...rld Health Organization. Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI). http://www.who.int/tobacco/research/cancer/en/. Accessed February 7th 2014.

2. Milberger et al. Tobacco Manufacturers' Defense Against Plaintiffs' Claims of Cancer Causation: Throwing Mud at the Wall and Hoping Some of It Will Stick. National Library of Medicine, Tobacco Control. 2006; 15:iv17–26. Doi: 10.1136/tc.2006.016956. Accessed February 7th 2014.

3. Emanuel et al. What Makes Clinical Research Ethical? JAMA. 2000; 283(20):2701-2711. doi:10.1001/jama.283.20.2701. Accessed February 7th 2014.

4. Angell, Marcia. The Ethics of Clinical Research in the Third World. The New England Journal of Medicine. http://columbiauniversity.us/itc/hs/pubhealth/p9408/readings/angell_1997.pdf. Accessed February 7th 2014.

5. Trochim, WMK, Donnelly JP. The Research Methods Knowledge Base. 3rd ed. Mason, OH: Thomson; 2007.

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