A Friend of Ours I Never Met Died

Health/Medicine
A Friend of Ours I Never Met Died
By Dr. Gerry Lower
Aug 8, 2005, 00:25

Acknowledging Sir Richard Doll

Sir Richard Doll died on July 24, 2005 at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England (David Rising, Scientist Who Linked Smoking, Cancer Dies, Washington Post/AP, July 24, 2005). I never met Sir Richard. I never shook his hand. I never heard his voice. I never saw anything of him except what he had written down on paper in the field of cancer epidemiology.

Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill published the first study exposing the now long-established relationships between smoking and lung cancer. Their report was published in the British Medical Journal in 1950. It found that smoking was the only factor overwhelmingly implicated in lung cancer, and that it was rare for non-smokers to suffer from the disease. In other words, the cause of lung cancer was earthbound and tobacco-related. Lung cancer was, therefore, almost entirely preventable.

The work of these men would ultimately lead to the health movement against the tobacco culture. It is likely that these men have saved literally millions of lives and that the knowledge they have made available to the people will save literally millions more through prevention. It puts therapeutic medicine to shame for its feeble efforts to provide even a 5 year "cure" for lung cancer (Capitalism, Cancer and Intellectual Corruption, Axis of Logic, September 24, 2004).

Great scientists oftentimes serve as scientific father figures for young scientists, mostly because great scientists are honest, down to earth and successful in their search for answers to human problems. As much, however, great scientists become father figures because they also have a secondary agenda that is not hidden at all.

Great scientists want the people to understand not only the empirical facts of the matter but also how one thinks about those facts in reaching legitimate conclusions and taking effective action. In other words, great scientists have a message about reality and a message about how to think about reality at the same time. In that regard, Richard Doll and A. Bradford Hill were truly inspirational. They were not just scientists, they were scientist's who led the way.

Both scientists shared a trait with Thomas Jefferson, in the sense that Jefferson was a lawyer with an honest grasp of the limitations of the law. Sir Richard Doll and A. Bradford Hill were epidemiologists with an honest grasp of the limitations of statistics. They both saw statistics as a tool of the sciences, not as a stand-alone branch of science in which numbers make decisions.

Relevant epidemiology and statistical analyses begin with good biomedical theory, a conceptualization embracing causation and course. One must know the biology and medicine of the issue before one can ask relevant questions, no matter how much one knows about epidemiology and statistics. In other words, epidemiological theory begins with biomedical theory.

Without those larger viewpoints, epidemiology is lost from knowing what relationships deserve investigating and how to prioritize its efforts. Statistics, of course, can be easily corrupted to defend or disparage whatever view one wants. If we have the biomedical view correct, such that observed cause and effect relationships are strong, statistics become proportionately less important to establishing those relationships as a basis for action.

Observations are properly interpreted within causal frameworks over historical and evolutionary spans of time, e.g., lung cancer as a function of exposure to tobacco smoke. A remedial course of action is elaborated, e.g., minimization of human exposures to tobacco smoke, and recommendations are made on behalf of public health. Doll and Bradford Hill accepted this course "no matter what hangs on it and no matter who hangs for it."

This kind of dedication to the honest human truth on behalf of the people does have a profound impact on young minds in science. It helps young scientists better appreciate productive approaches to thought, and to better understand what science is all about, the Why of science.

The fact that it took several decades and several dozen confirming studies before the tobacco industry gave up its indefensible defense of itself helps young scientists better understand the nature of the conflict between democracy and greed-driven capitalism and the conflict between science and religion.

Under religious capitalism's dominion, there are few, if any, scientists left in America with adequate dedication to honesty and integrity, few with adequate awareness that democracy is the political philosophy of science and natural philosophy, few with adequate outrage at the efforts of the Bush administration and religious capitalism to dominate human knowledge and denigrate human rights, and few with adequate courage to confront the lack of honesty and integrity in America under religious capitalism.

We must acknowledge great scientists when they are gone, because they leave great science behind them. They do their best to help the rest of us stay on an honest and intelligent human course. The world has never been a case of black versus white. When great science enters the cultural arena, it is more a case of black and white transcended by light.

Dr. Lower is an Axis of Logic Columnist, residing in Eugene, Oregon. He can be reached at: tisland@blackhills.com.

Biography and more articles by Dr. Gerry Lower