Talk:Richard Doll

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About German scientists' studies of tobacco and health before WWII

In the 1920s there were already several German studies proving a link between first-hand smoke and lung cancer, yet the article does not mention it (see [1]), only mentioning that in the 1930s German scientists discovered this link, which is misleading.--RekishiEJ (talk) 05:54, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The paper which you cite says "In the 1920s, several German studies suggested a link", which is rather different from proving a link. I've amended the lead and added a ref cited by the paper you cited. Qwfp (talk) 22:55, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think more should be made of the inexplicable failure to learn from the previous German work, which was not hidden, there was a German Journal of Cancer Research. The epidemiological work did not involve evil experiments. (Erich Schoeniger, one of the authors of the culminating paper, seems to have lost his life because he defied the Nazi party by insisting on giving evidence against a senior Nazi in a traffic accident case.) Robert Proctor's book The Nazi War on Cancer documents all this. Had the German work been properly been taken account of many lives might have been saved. Seadowns (talk) 12:59, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

More useful sources

See [2], [3], [4] and the book Our Daily Poison by Marie-Monique Robin. Please utilize these sources, since they all offer sound critique of Richard Doll.--RekishiEJ (talk) 13:56, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment

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In the current entry on Richard Doll, it says:

German researchers had established this association in the 1930s, although that work was not widely appreciated until recently (Robert Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer, 1999).

Yet a review of this book in the BMJ of 11 March 2000 says:

Indeed, as early as 1936 - the year that the young Richard Doll was attending the lectures in Frankfurt of the SS radiologist Professor Hans Holfelder - they had gathered sufficient statistical evidence to prove the cancerous hazards of what they labelled "passive smoking" (passivraucher).

If this is indeed the case, it would suggest that Doll knew a great deal about, and perhaps also appreciated, Nazi research into smoking, long before his post-war researches.

However, Doll's Independent obituary says:

The growing failure of capitalism pushed Doll further to the left - he described himself as a "democratic Communist" - and while still a student he walked part of the way with the Jarrow marchers in 1936, treating the bruised and blistered crusaders.

Did Doll both study in Frankfurt under Holfelder, and also join the Jarrow marches?--Idlex 12:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 12:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 21:56, 26 June 2016 (UTC)