The Policy Response to the Smoking and Lung Cancer Connection in the 1950s and 1960s
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8958902 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Virginia Berridge (0000-0001-8011-8348, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1185-1209 |
| Publication date | 2006-11-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x06005784 |
| PMID | 20200590 |
| PMCID | PMC2829889 |
| OpenAlex | W2125071955 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 9 |
A key current concern is how scientific knowledge may inform policy in relation to major environmental and health concerns. There are distinct schools of analysis about this relationship between science and policy. They stress rational relationships; denial and delay; or the role of networks. History is important in modifying such perspectives: smoking policy in the 1950s and 1960s is the case study here. The initial response in the 1950s to the link between smoking and lung cancer was in part conditioned by the role of the tobacco industry and the financial importance of tobacco: the British tobacco industry had closer relationships with government than the American one, and did not rely on public relations. Public health interests worked with the industry. But politicians were concerned also about the fluidity of the epidemiological evidence; the dangers of stirring up further pressure over air pollution; the financial and ideological implications of health education and its location; and the electoral dangers of intervening in a popular mass habit. In the 1960s the British and American medical reports stimulated the growth of a public health 'policy community'. The initial political considerations began to weaken and these years marked the beginning of a new style of public health
Denial · Government (linguistics · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Public health · Public policy · Tobacco industry · Historical Medical Research and Treatments · Law · Medicine · Pharmaceutical industry and healthcare · Psychology
To Place or Not to Place
To Know or Better Not to
‘Give people work, and the blood pressure will sink’
No need for nanny
Inhaling Democracy
Smoking, information, and education
Understanding the Influence of Evidence in Public Health Policy
Local leadership in public health
Defining an epidemic
Medicine and the Public
Policy Networks in British Government
Model or Metaphor? A Critical Review of the Policy Network Approach
Tobacco
Discourses of Smoking, Health, and the Just Society
Research and policy
Smoking and health promotion in Nazi Germany
Smoking and the New Health Education in Britain 1950s–1970s
Lung Cancer, Chronic Disease Epidemiology, and Medicine, 1948-1964
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,53 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2023 (17) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |