Outliers: Surgeon general's habit had to be snuffed out

Fifty years ago, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry had a dilemma. He was due to release a landmark report showing smoking causes illness and death. The problem: The nation's top public health official himself smoked cigarettes.

It took a persistent underling to persuade Terry to kick the habit a few months before the report's release.

“I told him, 'You gotta quit that. I think you can get away with a pipe—if you don't do it openly,' ” Dr. Eugene Guthrie, Terry's assistant surgeon general recalled in a recent interview with the Associated Press. “He said, 'You gotta be kidding!' I said, 'No, I'm not. It just wouldn't do. If you smoke any cigarettes, you better do it in a closet.' ”

At the time, Terry had a lot of company as a physician who also indulged in tobacco. Surveys indicated a third to a half of all physicians smoked tobacco products then. And half of the 10 members of the committee convened to create the report were smokers who puffed away during committee meetings.

But on Jan. 11, 1964, Terry released an emphatic and authoritative report that said smoking led to illness and death—and the government should do something about it.

“It was the beginning,” said Kenneth Warner, a University of Michigan public health professor who is a leading authority on smoking and health.

Warner recalled teaching at the University of Michigan in 1972, when nearly half the faculty members at the school of public health were smokers.

He was one of them.

“I felt like a hypocrite and an idiot,” he said.

Today, a lot fewer doctors have to chastise themselves about smoking. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated only 2% of docs smoked in 2010-11, compared with 18% of the general population.

Another JAMA study found that anti-smoking measures have saved about 8 million lives since 1964.

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