"THERE IS NO EPIDEMIC OF CANCER IN THE UNITED STATES"

. . . there is no increase in the death rate ("mortality incidence") from cancer during the last 44 years; this despite constantly improving medical diagnosis and reporting procedures. The rate has hovered at about 131 cancer deaths per hundred thousand persons per year. If deaths from lung cancer are subtracted (and the conservative assumption is made by experts that 85 percent or more of them are due to cigarette smoking), the overall "incidence" of death from cancer would be less today than in 1933, by about 10 percent.

So there is no epidemic of cancer in the United States, but there is a disproportionate number of cancer deaths due to cigarette smoking. Given our current economic problems, provision of more tax money to the National Cancer Institute for more "research" should lie low on the list of our national priorities. Tax money should instead be substantially diverted from the "cancer establishment" and be channeled into a nationwide action program about the dangers of cigarettes, a program which ought to start in kindergarten.

Cigarettes cause not only lung cancer but a host of other, more numerous and debilitating diseases; many clinicians estimate that 25 percent or more of hospitalization, doctor and prescription drug bills are generated directly or indirectly by cigarette smoking. If we could save one-half of the $150 billion currently being spent each year on these items, the nation would enjoy a windfall profit.

I see no governmental leaders taking any bold, effective action to expurgate what is so obviously and offensively scandalous.