Tobacco use may have been a kick for humans starting way back in 4000 BC, and the first commercial cigarettes were made in 1865.

But it was on July 12, 1957, that Dr Leroy Edgar Burney - after organising a group of scientists to appraise 18 studies on smoking and health - said that there was a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

He was America's first surgeon-general to officially declare that 'increasing and consistent evidence' indicates that 'excessive cigarette smoking' is one of the causative factors of lung cancer - the first time the United States Public Health Service cited a definite cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

Initially, the Scientific Advisory Board to the Tobacco Industry Research Committee shot down Dr Burney's claims. Nevertheless, the evidence against smoking was mounting.

Dr Burney's first declaration - and a subsequent, more powerful statement in 1959 - paved the way for Luther Terry, the surgeon-general under President Lyndon B. Johnson, to issue a landmark report on smoking and health in 1964.

The ironic thing is, Dr Burney himself was a smoker. And there was no doubt that he was right: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says tobacco causes nearly six million deaths annually worldwide - and that would balloon to eight million by 2030.

Source: Khaleej Times