Warning: smoking takes 10 years off your life
The results were unveiled by Richard Doll one of the researchers who first alerted the public to the link between tobacco and cancer back in 1954.
This week, approaching the 50th anniversary of the publication of that research on June 26, the final verdict of the mammoth study was launched, with some uncomfortable messages for smokers.
Doll, now aged 91, and colleague Richard Peto said they hoped the results would inform smokers of the full risks they face and encourage them to kick the habit. Since 1951 the study has followed the lives of almost 35,000 male doctors born between 1900 and 1930.
By analysing their smoking habits and health, the researchers were able to show that smokers die an average of 10 years younger than non-smokers.
They also confirmed that at least half of the cigarette smokers, and perhaps as many as a two-thirds, were eventually killed by their habit.
About a quarter of smokers were killed while still in middle age between the ages of 35 and 69.
The research showed that medical advances in the past 50 years had no benefit to smokers.
The probability of a 70-year-old lifelong non-smoker reaching the age of 90 increased from 12% in the 10 years to 1961 to 33% in the most recent decade.
But in smokers, survival to 90 decreased from 10% to 7% in the same period.
Doll said smoking had "totally nullified medical progress".
Among the doctors studied, 81% of non-smokers lived to the age of 70, compared to only 58% of smokers. While 59% of non-smokers lived to 80, only 26% of smokers lived this long. Doll said the study, unique in following such a large group over so long a period, had now reached its natural end.
"There are about 5,900 in the original population we studied still alive, but only 134 are still smoking cigarettes," he said.
He said that because many doctors had given up smoking after the original research, they were also able to assess the benefits of quitting.
He said they had found that giving up at the age of 60 added three years to your life expectancy, quitting at 50 added six years and at 40 nine years were gained.
For those who gave up at 30 the risk was almost totally removed, with 10 years added to their life expectancy.
Doll, emeritus professor of medicine at the Clinical Trial Service Unit at Oxford University, said he hoped the research would persuade more smokers to quit the habit.
"I can only say if you enjoy life like I do then it is damn silly to smoke. If you smoke you are not going to have so much life," he said.
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