Richard Doll, 92; helped establish link of smoking, lung cancer
WASHINGTON -- Richard Doll, the British scientist who was among the first researchers to show a dramatic connection between lung cancer and smoking, died yesterday at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England. He was 92.
When Dr. Doll began his research, smoking had long been considered a vice and a contributor to numerous ailments. But scientific warnings were tepid and widely ignored. After World War II, British male doctors smoked nearly as much as anyone else.
As an epidemiologist -- a scientist who studies the roots of a disease through statistics rather than chemistry or biology -- Dr. Doll became involved in postwar British efforts to determine the cause of the worrying, unexplained leap in lung cancer cases.
His seminal 1950 study, which he wrote with Austin Bradford Hill, showed that smoking was ''a cause, and a major cause," of lung cancer.
During the research, he and colleagues interviewed about 700 lung cancer patients to establish a common thread.
He himself had enjoyed cigarettes since youth, but he came to consider the habit foolish (''a mug's game"). His research would change his habit.
''It was not long before it became clear that cigarette smoking may be to blame," Dr. Doll. ''I gave up smoking two-thirds of the way through that study."
The public reaction in the early 1950s was muted, but he gradually was honored for his work.
Dr. Doll released a follow-up study in 2004 that showed at least half, and perhaps as many as two-thirds, of people who begin smoking in their youth are eventually killed by the habit.
''Richard Doll's work has prevented millions of premature deaths in the 20th century and will prevent tens of millions of premature deaths in the present century. He was unique in medical history," said Sir Richard Peto, his close colleague for more than 30 years.
William Richard Shaboe Doll was born in Hampton, west of London. His father, a general practitioner, once promised him 50 pounds if he shunned cigarettes until he was 21. But a younger brother taunted him whenever they saw adults smoke. ''When I was about 18, I said: 'I cannot stand this any longer. Give me a cigarette.' And I started smoking."
After finishing his schooling at St. Thomas Hospital Medical School in London, Dr. Doll served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He saw action at Dunkirk.
At war's end, he became a researcher, focusing on epidemiology.
The British Medical Research Council, similar to the US National Institutes of Health, began funding research into high rates of lung cancer. Working under Hill, Dr. Doll helped sift through an assortment of theories.
''My own guess was that it had something to do with motorcars," Dr. Doll told the
They eventually took their study beyond the thousands of patients they reviewed in London, spending nearly three years on their research before publishing their findings in late 1950.
Meanwhile, similar studies appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association focusing on smoking and lung cancer.
Dr. Doll was regarded as one of the most eminent scientists of his generation. He published hundreds of papers on topics as varied as oral contraception, peptic ulcers, and electrical power lines. He also helped show that aspirin could protect against heart disease.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this obituary. 
