Ernst Wynder

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Ernst Ludwig Wynder
Born(1922-04-30)April 30, 1922
Robert Koch Prize
(Gold, 1990)

Ernst Ludwig Wynder (April 30, 1922 – July 14, 1999) was an American

Journal of the American Medical Association. It was one of the first major scientific publications to identify smoking as a contributory cause of lung cancer.[2]

Biography

Wynder was born in

Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. In 1969, he founded the American Health Foundation. In 1972, he founded the academic journal Preventive Medicine and served as the founding editor. Wynder died from thyroid cancer on July 14, 1999.[4][5]

Scholarship

Smoking and Lung Cancer Studies

Wynder began collaborating with his coauthor on the article, Evarts Ambrose Graham, as a medical student at Washington University in St. Louis in 1947. The previous summer he had conducted epidemiological studies of smoking behavior among 146 lung cancer patients in New York City. The project was funded by the American Cancer Society. Now, with Graham, Wynder collected extensive data on 604 patients with lung cancer at hospitals across the United States. Departing from a tradition of using anecdotal evidence (e.g., clinical interviews) to develop explanations of disease causation, Wynder and Graham applied rudimentary statistical methods to their study. They divided patients into crude categories of "moderate" or "heavy" smokers, based on retrospective interviews of each patient's smoking behavior over a twenty-year period. They also measured and controlled for important confounding factors (e.g., age, types of tobacco use, inhalation level). Most importantly, with regard to an ability to demonstrate causation, Wynder and Graham also studied a control group of cancer-free individuals in hospitals. They systematically compared the lung cancer patients to the control group.[6]

On May 27, 1950 the Journal of the

benzopyrenes, arsenic
), but was unable to identify the contributions of these chemicals to cancer.

Wynder's studies of tobacco smoke were timely and important. Whereas laboratory studies of tobacco tar had been conducted elsewhere, Wynder's findings supported the growing epidemiological data. "The production of tumors in lab animals offered a powerful indicator that something in cigarette smoke could account for the epidemiological findings," writes Allan M. Brandt, a historian of medicine.[9]

Other Research

Wynder published nearly 800 papers during his lifetime.

bladder, larynx, colon and rectum, stomach, ovary, prostate, pancreas, and kidney, as well as numerous experimental studies. Many of these papers were the first or most comprehensive studies ever published, especially the massive 1960 coauthored study of the epidemiology of breast cancer.[11]

See also

References and notes

  1. ^ The New York Times Biographical Service. A compilation of current biographical information of general interest. Volume 30, Numbers 1-12. Ann Arbor, MI: Bell & Howell Information & Learning Co., 1999.
  2. PMID 15415260
    .
  3. ^ Angier, N. 1988. Natural obsessions: striving to unlock the deepest secrets of the cancer cell. Houghton Mifflin, page 46.
  4. ^ Saxon, Wolfgang (July 16, 1999). "Ernst Wynder, 77, a Cancer Researcher, Dies". The New York Times.
  5. ^ Brandt, Allan M. 2007. The Cigarette Century. New York: Basic Books, pages 133-134.
    Also see "Wydner's obituary". Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 48 (43): 987.
  6. ^ Brandt, Allan M. 2007. The Cigarette Century. New York: Basic Books, pages 131-132.
  7. PMID 15415260
    . Also see Brandt, Allan M. 2007. The Cigarette Century. New York: Basic Books, pages 132-133.
  8. PMID 13116124
    – via cancerres.aacrjournals.org.
  9. ^ Brandt, Allan M. 2007. The Cigarette Century. New York: Basic Books, page 147.
  10. PMID 17007915
    .
  11. PMID 13846284
    .

Further reading

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