Richard Doll and Bradford Hill published their prospective study on lung cancer in 1956—the very year that the fraction of smokers in the adult American population reached its all-time peak at 45 percent. It had been an epochal decade for cancer epidemiology, but equally, an epochal decade for tobacco. Wars generally stimulate two industries, ammunition and cigarettes, and indeed both the World Wars had potently stimulated the already bloated tobacco industry. Cigarette sales had climbed to stratospheric heights in the mid-1940s and continued to climb in the ’50s. In a gargantuan replay of
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