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The comparable percentage for Greenwich, viz. 25% is even less
favourable. Moreover, mortality figures themselves are just the
"tip of the iceberg" for they give not the slightest indication of the
disability occasioned by such diseases.
One quarter of the cost of all sickness benefits is accounted for
by respiratory diseases which were responsible for a loss to industry
of 32 million "man days" during 1968, some 7 times the figure
for industrial disputes.
The tragedy of the situation is that the bulk of these deaths,
estimated at three-quarters of the total, and the permanent disability
so often preceding them are the direct or indirect results of cigarette
smoking, a limitation of which could reduce the enormous physical
and financial burden carried by the country's medical and welfare
services. Cigarettes can be made safer but elimination of all danger
can never be achieved.
Of the body's organs only the lungs receive the whole of the
heart's output which makes them especially prone to blood-borne
disorder. To add to this hazard, therefore, by defiling the lungs
with tobacco smoke, especially on such a large scale, merely
demonstrates a human capacity for self-immolation. What is clear
and unmistakeable is that, apart from all other disabilities arising
from smoking, one in every 8 persons consuming 40 or more
cigarettes per day will die of lung cancer. It is illuminating to
point out that in only one group of people in the country is lung
cancer becoming less common—doctors; a fact which speaks for
itself.
Chronic bronchitis, an almost inevitable sequel to cigarette
smoking, reduces resistance and leads to complicating bacterial
infections which, because of limited knowledge of the causal
agents, are very difficult to treat. Although the duration of exacerbated
chronic bronchitis is reduced by antibiotics, the frequency
of the attacks seems to be unaffected suggesting that other factors
such as mycoplasmas or viruses may be involved.
Certain viruses which appear to have a predilection for the
young include the respiratory syncytial virus and the perainfluenza
virus type 3 which affect the majority of pre-school
children thus contrasting with measles which tends to be more
prevalent after the age of 5 years.
Over 100 viruses exhibiting great diversity in their manifestations,
are known to affect the respiratory tract and slowly but
surely these are being classified. In the main there appears to be
two types—those which, like influenza, enter the cells of the
respiratory tract and give rise to local disease and those which,
like measles and chickenpox, merely use the tract as a portal of