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Portrait image of Richard Doll

Doctor who revealed cigarettes were a smoking gun

Central Middlesex Hospital’s ambulatory care and diagnostic centre (ACAD) celebrates its 20thanniversary next week. We’ll taking a look at some of the staff past and present who have helped shape the hospital.

Dr Richard Doll was one of the first people to link lung cancer with smoking and was president of ASH, the anti-smoking lobby that regularly locked horns with the tobacco industry.

Doll was one of a group of clinicians working at Central Middlesex Hospital in the post war years who became leaders in their respective fields.

The majority of men smoked at the time thinking it a harmless habit with the high incidence of lung cancer blamed on coal fires and traffic fumes.

Doll was no exception and smoked despite his father’s objection.

He quit after overseeing a study of more than 600 lung cancer patients which found the majority were smokers.

A report in the British Medical Journal was largely ignored by the Government who thought smoking was to ‘normal’ to be dangerous.

Doll also received a personal visit from the Chairman of Imperial Tobacco who derided his claims as groundless, while a Harley Street physician said the link between smoking and cancer was a ‘staggering and most unscientific claim.”

Doll and his colleague Bradford Hill remained adamant that their role as scientists was to present the facts and let others act upon them.

A glittering career which included numerous awards and a nomination for the Nobel Prize almost didn’t happen.

Mathematics loss was medicine’s gain when Doll flunked his entrance exam after overindulging the previous evening in the university bar.

He had no regrets later recalling that Cambridge Trinity Ale was the ‘best drink I’ve ever had.’

His love of numbers never left him and he became a pioneer in the field of epidemiology which sought the cause of disease(s) by using statistics rather than chemistry or biology

His other achievements included proving the link between smoking and cardiovascular disease, the risks and benefits of the contraceptive pill, the dietary treatment of peptic ulcers and benefits putting fluorine in drinking water.

Richard Doll died in 2005.

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