British Doctors Study

This approach to medical questions was fairly new: in the 1954 "Preliminary report",[4] the researchers felt it necessary to offer a definition of the prospective principle.

The study, when it was published in 1956, heralded a new type of scientific research, showed the relevance of epidemiology and medical statistics in questions of public health, and vitally linked tobacco smoking to a number of serious diseases.

The respondents were stratified into decade of birth, sex and their cause-specific mortality, as well as general physical health and current smoking habits, followed up in further questionnaires in 1957, 1966, 1971, 1978, 1991 and finally in 2001.

The result was, that both lung cancer and "coronary thrombosis" (the then-prevalent term for myocardial infarction, now commonly referred to as "heart attack") occurred markedly more often in smokers.

Nevertheless, the British Doctors' Study was to provide conclusive evidence of linkage between smoking and lung cancer, myocardial infarction, respiratory disease and other smoking-related illnesses.

Survival from age 35 of non-smokers, cigarette smokers and ex-smokers who stopped smoking between 25 and 34 years old [ 1 ]
Survival from age 40 of non-smokers, cigarette smokers and ex-smokers who stopped smoking between 35 and 44 years old [ 1 ]
Survival from age 50 of non-smokers, cigarette smokers and ex-smokers who stopped smoking between 45 and 54 years old [ 1 ]
Survival from age 60 of non-smokers, cigarette smokers and ex-smokers who stopped smoking between 55 and 64 years old [ 1 ]