This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Mark J. Popp, MD
Tucson

JAMA. 1988;260(18):2664.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The article entitled "The Fire-Safe Cigarette"¹ (an excellent example of an oxymoron) in the July 8, 1988, issue of JAMA should receive the Golden Fleece Award from Senator Proxmire.

How much of my tax money is going to be spent on research to come up with a fire-safe cigarette when fires caused by cigarettes accounted for only 1500 deaths last year? Cigarettes now carry a warning that they may cause cancer of the lung and may complicate pregnancy. The American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association tell me that 136 000 Americans died of lung cancer last year.

Is it really true that we are going to spend a lot of research money to determine how to make a cigarette safe to save 1500 people a year from dying and not do anything about the 136 000 that are dying of lung cancer from that . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?