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Quitting works, and it works even in middle age. Men who stopped at 30 had a 2 percent lifetime risk of dying of lung cancer, at 40 it was 3 percent, at 50 it was 6 percent, and those who carried on had 16 percent.
Peto, Darby, Deo, Silcocks, Whitley and Doll related United Kingdom national trends in smoking, cessation and lung cancer since 1950 to two large case-control studies, one centred around 1950 and one around 1990: 1,465 case-control pairs in the 1950 study, and 982 cases with 3,185 controls in 1990.
The paper is the reason cessation, rather than prevention alone, became a health service activity. It is also the cleanest demonstration in the literature that the risk from a cumulative exposure is not fixed at the moment of exposure: stopping changes the future even after decades of smoking.
The single most quotable number in tobacco control: quitting at 30 avoids almost all the risk, quitting at 50 avoids half of it, and it is never not worth stopping. It is also the argument for putting cessation support inside a lung screening appointment rather than beside it.
Shares Sir Richard Peto, Fifty years of the British Doctors Study: smokers lose ten years of life, quitting gives most of it back, BMJ, Cancer prevention roadmap: tobacco control and vaccines → biomarker-guided chemoprevention → interception in carriers and the tag lung-evidence.
Shares Cancer prevention roadmap: tobacco control and vaccines → biomarker-guided chemoprevention → interception in carriers, Prevention we already have is not deployed, Lung cancer (all types), Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag lung-evidence.
Shares Cancer prevention roadmap: tobacco control and vaccines → biomarker-guided chemoprevention → interception in carriers, Prevention we already have is not deployed, Lung cancer (all types), Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag lung-evidence.
Shares BMJ, Lung cancer (all types), Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag lung-evidence.
Shares Most of the world has almost no cancer care, Lung cancer (all types), Small-cell lung cancer, Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag lung-evidence.
Shares Prevention we already have is not deployed, Most of the world has almost no cancer care, Lung cancer (all types), Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag lung-evidence.
Shares Most of the world has almost no cancer care, Lung cancer (all types), Small-cell lung cancer, Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag lung-evidence.
Shares Cancer prevention roadmap: tobacco control and vaccines → biomarker-guided chemoprevention → interception in carriers, Prevention we already have is not deployed, Lung cancer (all types), Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag lung-evidence.