“Tobacco Truths”: Health Magazine, Clinical Epidemiology, and the Cigarette Connection

Abstract

In the 1950s, Health, a magazine published by the Health League of Canada, was nonchalant about the risks of smoking and largely ignored early epidemiological studies of lung cancer. In the 1960s the magazine stopped accepting cigarette advertising and began to oppose smoking. Health’s writers adjusted to new knowledge; the magazine gradually accepted clinical epidemiology as a source of medical knowledge and recognized smoking as a public health risk. As Canada’s only devoted health publication for a lay audience at the time, Health provides a unique window into ways that smoking and health were portrayed to its readers.