http://www.tobacco.org/newsfeed/category/obit.rss Latest top tobacco news headlines en-us http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/pageoneplus/corrections.html http://tobacco.org/news/265355.html Obituaries An obituary on Tuesday about Dr. Murray Jarvik, whose research helped lead to the nicotine patch to fight smoking addiction, misstated the year in which he learned he had lung cancer, although he was a nonsmoker. It was 1992, not 1982. (Go to Article) New York Times nytnews@nytimes.com Fri, 16 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/health/13jarvik.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=smoking&st=nyt&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/265223.html Murray Jarvik, a psychopharmacologist who was among the first to study the hallucinogenic drug LSD and whose later research on the physiology and psychology of smoking was instrumental in the development of the nicotine patch, died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 84. The cause was pulmonary edema from congestive heart failure, said his son Jeffrey. . . . "It is strange that people should go to such lengths to burn and then inhale some vegetable matter," Dr. Jarvik wrote in an introduction to a 1977 report for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, "Research on Smoking Behavior." "We must find out what is rewarding about it." New York Times Tue, 13 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/11/AR2008051102103.html http://tobacco.org/news/265219.html Nuala O'Faolain, 68, an Irish journalist who in midlife turned an introduction to a collection of columns into a best-selling memoir and then quickly wrote a novel, another memoir and a biography, died of cancer May 10 at the Blackrock Hospice in Dublin. . . . She also began a long-term but ultimately unsatisfying relationship with a man whom she followed to London. There, she became a BBC producer, making community access programs, traveling extensively, writing and teaching. Her relationship ended and, drinking and smoking heavily, she returned to Ireland in 1977 The Washington Post Ireland Mon, 12 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jDdrigSu4_gRhO4T70Zhf5Ooeo_Q http://tobacco.org/news/265043.html A pioneer in the fight against tobacco and the co-inventor of the nicotine patch, Murray Jarvik, died this week of congestive heart failure, the University of California said Saturday. He was 84. Jarvik, a professor emeritus at University of California-Los Angeles, was a leader in the field of psychopharmacology, the study of the effect of drugs on human behavior. Born in New York in 1923, he was among the first to examine the effects of LSD on memory and addiction. Later in his career, he turned his attention to tobacco and was "instrumental in establishing the field of nicotine research," UCLA said. . . . "I would say that Murray's greatest impact was advancing the proposition that nicotine was the key addictive component in tobacco. In short, he was able to largely answer his question." Agence France Presse Sat, 10 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/william-stewart-crusader-against-smoking-818682.html?r=RSS http://tobacco.org/news/264580.html "Caution - Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health." By today's explicit and bloodcurdling standards the warning that appeared for the first time on cigarette packs in the United States in 1966 was quaint in its understatement. But with those words William Stewart helped turn smoking - in the West at least - from emblem of cool into, almost literally, a deadly social sin. Stewart was Surgeon General of the United States, the country's most senior public health official, between 1965 and 1969. In recent years, under the dominance of the conservative doctrine of "small government," the post has lost much of its former importance. But in that era, as President Lyndon Johnson pushed through his groundbreaking civil rights and public health legislation, the Surgeon General was a power in the land. . . . Today the cigarette packet health warnings he helped pioneer in the US are positively tame by international standards. Across the EU, packets proclaim that "Smoking Kills", while many countries either have already, or are about to have, packets carry pictures of body organs damaged by smoking. In America, by contrast, there are merely rotating warnings printed on the side of the packet only, and in colours that do not clash with those of the product - with no updating since 1984. The Independent Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.pr-inside.com/new-york-times-obituary-is-wrong-on-dr-stewart-s-role-regarding-cigarette-health-warnings-the-cigarette-warnings-als-r563651.htm http://tobacco.org/news/264343.html Contrary to the obituary in today's New York Times, former Surgeon General Dr. William H. Stewart did not "put the first health warnings on cigarette packs," notes the public interest law professor who caused the first decline in US smoking by getting free time for antismoking messages on radio and TV. "Although Dr. Stewart urged health warnings, he had no authority to order them," notes law professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University. In fact, the story is somewhat more complicated, he explains. . . . Unfortunately, something that Stewart could not have anticipated -- but which Congress should have foreseen -- occurred. Years later the major tobacco companies were successful in defending themselves from law suits claiming that they failed to adequately disclose the dangers of smoking by arguing that they put on their packs exactly the warning Congress had required. None of this should detract from Stewart's legacy, however, says Banzhaf. PR Insider Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/health/29stewart.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=cigarette&st=nyt&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/264246.html eneral in the Johnson administration who put the first health warnings on cigarette packs and integrated the United States Public Health Service and many Southern hospitals, died on April 23 in New Orleans. He was 86. His death was announced by the L.S.U. Health Sciences Center, including the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, which he directed from 1969 to 1974. . . . Dr. Stewart also prepared an influential three-part report, "Health Consequences of Smoking," released from 1967 to 1969, as the second salvo in a series of surgeon generals' reports that helped change smoking from social norm to social stigma. Dr. Luther L. Terry, Dr. Stewart's predecessor, began the campaign with the 1964 report that the death rate from lung cancer for men who smoked cigarettes was almost 1,000 percent higher than it was for nonsmokers. New York Times Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/26/AR2008042602246.html?sub=AR http://tobacco.org/news/264206.html William H. Stewart, 86, who as U.S. surgeon general from 1965 to 1969 led the federal anti-smoking crusade and called for warning labels on cigarette advertising and who used the introduction of Medicare to desegregate hospitals throughout the country, died April 23 of kidney failure at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. Dr. Stewart was a career Public Health Service officer who became surgeon general one year after his predecessor, Luther L. Terry, released a landmark report that drew an explicit link between smoking and lung cancer and other diseases. Expanding on the 1964 report, Dr. Stewart commissioned studies that hammered the tobacco industry by spelling out the toll that cigarettes exacted in lost productivity, disease and early death. Many of his recommendations, including stricter warning labels on cigarette packages and advertising, were adopted despite fierce opposition. . . . He fought to toughen the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965, which affixed a warning on cigarette packages saying that smoking could be "hazardous to your health." He maintained that it was "indefensible" for the tobacco industry to advertise cigarettes "in a context of happiness, vigor, success and well-being without even a hint appearing anywhere that the product may also lead to disease and death." The Washington Post Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Health/2008/04/27/former_us_surgeon_general_stewart_dies/1257/ http://tobacco.org/news/264190.html Former U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart, who used his tenure to condemn cigarette smoking, has died in New Orleans at the age of 86. The Washington Post reported Sunday that Stewart, who was among the first to demand health warnings be placed on cigarette packs, died of kidney failure at Ochsner Medical Center. In addition to his anti-smoking efforts during his term between 1965 and 1969, Stewart used his influence to bring attention to racial discrimination in the U.S. healthcare system. UPI Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/20/AR2008032003413.html http://tobacco.org/news/261696.html Diane Hedgecock, 63, an international health professional with John Snow Inc., a public health and research consulting firm, died March 8 at her home in Herndon. She had lung and brain cancer. . . . She was a staunch public health advocate and opponent of smoking during her career, her family said. . . . She served on committees of the American Public Health Association and the Global Health Council. This year, Ms. Hedgecock received the Sidney S. Chipman Award from the UNC School of Public Health for her contributions to the field of maternal and child health. Ms. Hedgecock was a member of the Community of Faith Methodist Church and was active in its women's group. The Washington Post Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/dr-keith-ball-antismoking-campaigner-796286.html http://tobacco.org/news/261659.html Keith Ball, a consultant cardiologist at the Middlesex Hospital, was an early campaigner against smoking and was among those who persuaded the Royal College of Physicians to expose the dangers of tobacco, leading to the 1962 report Smoking and Health. He collaborated with Tom Hurst, Secretary of the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, in galvanising the National Society of Non-Smokers as a campaigning lay group, and when Hurst went on to form the International Network Towards Smoke-Free Hospitals, he supported this too. Ball was co-founder in 1971 of the group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) and in 1987 of the National Heart Forum. . . . Keith Percy Ball, medical practitioner and anti-smoking campaigner: born Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire 8 December 1915; OBE 1985; married (three daughters, and one son deceased); died London 10 January 2008. The Independent UK Sat, 15 Mar 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/us/06seitz.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=smoking&st=nyt&oref=slogin&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/260878.html Frederick Seitz, a renowned physicist who led both the National Academy of Sciences and Rockefeller University and became a prominent skeptic on the issue of global warming, died Sunday in Manhattan. He was 96 and lived in Key West, Fla. . . . From 1978 to 1988, Dr. Seitz was a member of the medical research committee of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. His work for the company was the subject of a 2006 article in Vanity Fair magazine that criticized what it called an "overlap" between scientists who deny climate change and "tobacco executives who denied the dangers of smoking." The article, by Mark Hertsgaard, said that Dr. Seitz had helped R. J. Reynolds "give away $45 million to fund medical research in the 1970s and 1980s," studies that "avoided the central health issue" of smoking and "served the tobacco industry's purposes." Dr. Seitz called the charges "ridiculous, completely wrong." In an article for the technology journal TCSDaily, he wrote, "The money was all spent on basic science, medical science," citing in particular research on mad cow disease and tuberculosis and for the work of the Nobel Prize winner Stanley B. Prusiner, the discoverer of prion, an agent that causes brain and neural infections. New York Times Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/44762/ http://tobacco.org/news/260579.html --"He was simply my friend's dad, the guy who plied me--a 20-year-old college kid when we first met--with expensive brandy and Cuban cigars ("You should definitely inhale," he mischievously advised). Grove studiously ignores the prominent role cigars played in Buckley's emphysema and untimely death, a role Buckley bitterly bemoaned in a widely-circulated column he wrote just 3 months ago: "Half a year ago my wife died, technically from an infection, but manifestly, at least in part, from a body weakened by 60 years of nonstop smoking. I stayed off the cigarettes but went to the idiocy of cigars inhaled, and suffer now from emphysema, which seems determined to outpace heart disease as a human killer. "Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You'd get a solemn and contrite, Yes." --Buckley, William F. Jr., "My Smoking Confession" NY Sun, Dec. 3, 2007. http://www.nysun.com/article/67349 I hope Grove never took Buckley's advice. Report By geneb5 on 03/01/2008 at 6:19pm New York Magazine intel@nymag.com (Lloyd Grove) Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-buckleyobit0228.artfeb28,0,5866276.story?track=rss http://tobacco.org/news/260505.html William F. Buckley Jr., whose impish smile and rich diction defined American conservatism for half a century, died Wednesday at his waterfront home on Wallacks Point in Stamford. . . . Little's last sailing junket with Buckley was on Long Island Sound, about five years ago. Buckley was beginning to slow down physically, but had not lost his plucky, contrarian wit. "I remember Bill sitting in the back of that boat with a martini in one hand and a cigar in the other and he told us that he had been to see his doctor that day," Little said. "Buckley said: 'The doctor said no more smoking, no more drinking, no more stress. So don't [expletive deleted] stress me out." Hartford Courant rbuck@courant.com (Rinker Buck * Courant Staff Writer ) Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/william-f-buckley-jnr-hero-of-modern-american-conservatism-who-founded-the-influential-national-review-magazine-789318.html?r=RSS http://tobacco.org/news/260500.html Much of this writing took place in Switzerland, where he wintered for six weeks every year near Gstaad, producing 1,500 words a day. There he lunched daily at a local inn, before skiing in the afternoon. Every evening in his study, he would host a cocktail-and-cigar hour for his house guests – a wide circle given Buckley's huge gift for friendship, not only with conservatives, but liberals like Norman Mailer and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith. The Independent Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT