The study, which at first was viewed skeptically, was the first of its kind in the world to show that smoking could cause not only lung cancer but also heart attacks and emphysema, later becoming the foundation for the reports on the dangers of tobacco.
Eventually it was only after seven years that the Ministry of Health took Doll's findings seriously.
It was a spectacular success of epidemiological method, the results so startling that Iain Macleod, the Health Minister, called a press conference. He announced: “It must be regarded as established that there is a relationship between smoking and cancer of the lung.”
Almost everyone at the meeting was smoking — as did 80 per cent of the population.