To the Editor.—
The voice of the American Cancer Society on NBC indicated that cigarette smoking was a cause of pulmonary emphysema; the warning continued, "emphysema eventually causes suffocation" (Jan 31, 1970).
Patients with respiratory disease have been frightened by pronouncements of this nature, whether they smoke or not. Is this kind of menacing propaganda justified on television?
According to Jacques Barzun, Already the citizen is assailed with pictures and slogans about crippling and killing ailments, but this is apparentlly not enough. And the point here is not whether lives can and should be saved. It is whether the fear and duty inculcated by the propaganda are consistent with a tolerable life. When British Television broadcast medical and surgical programs, suicides followed. This is not complete evidence, but it is a sign that perhaps we have reached a peak of admonition beyond which it is not sane to go. No
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
