Smoking out a killer
University researchers are demystifying tobacco's role in causing cancer
here is a reason why people have labeled cigarettes "cancer sticks." When smoked, tobacco products cause 87 percent of lung cancers and account for about 30 percent of all cancer deaths. In the 1980s, the U.S. surgeon general declared that cigarette smoking is the "major single cause of cancer mortality in the United States." Each year in the United States, tobacco smoke kills 400,000 smokers and about 50,000 nonsmokers — more deaths than those caused by alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined.
Researcher Stephen Hecht, Ph.D., can confidently recite the sobering statistics linking cancer with smoking. He has steeped himself in tobacco-related cancer research for more than 30 years, almost a decade of which has been at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center. And if someone tells him he is obsessed, he is unlikely to deny it.
By knowing which steps in the cancer development process are most important, one can come up with drugs or find naturally occurring substances that can influence those stepsand eventually, perhaps, prevent tobacco-related cancer in those exposed.— Stephen Hecht, Ph.D., University of Minnesota Cancer Center
"You can't come up with new research questions and findings unless your mind is prepared, and preparing your mind doesn't happen by sitting under an apple tree," explains Hecht, who holds the Wallin Land-Grant Chair in Cancer Prevention and the American Cancer Society Research Professorship and codirects the University's Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center. "It happens by thinking about this stuff every single day, not to mention in your sleep."
Hecht and his colleagues, many of whom work within the Cancer Center, have committed their careers to identifying and staving off the threats that tobacco poses to health, particularly when it comes to cancer. It is a mission that is both multifaceted and mind-boggling.