Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Medical researcher who discovered that smoking causes lung cancer; former Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
Isaac Stern, Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy
I'd like to have a Mendelssohn violin concerto, because uh violin is such a beautiful instrument, but I particularly would like one with Isaac Stern playing it, because he's the only brilliant musician that I have met personally, and I have very happy memories of having met him, so that will double the pleasure of it.
I'd like to have some Grieg because my mother was a professional pianist and Grieg was her specialty, but uh I won't have a piano concerto because I want this on Desert Island and I want something to liven me'cause it's pretty dull, I should think, by myself on a desert island, so g some peer gint would be just the thing to wake me up when I was feeling really bored.
Rhapsody in BlueFavourite
Columbia Jazz Band, Michael Tilson Thomas, George Gershwin
this has meant a lot to me, because it was the first piece of music which I, without being told that I should enjoy it, suddenly realised I was enjoying it. It was played in the dormitory when we were getting up at school. Before then I'd had musical appreciation and been told to enjoy, for example, Bach's fugues and the more I was told this was good music, the less I enjoyed it. So I discovered Rhapsody in Blue for myself.
When I was in Africa during the war, we had Marlene singing Lili Marlena. This was our favorite bit of music, so I'd love to hear this again.
Jimmy Edwards, Dick Bentley, June Whitfield
It's going to be a a fairly dull life, I'm afraid, on the Desert Island. I would like to laugh occasionally and I'd like to have one of the records of The Glums.
Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel
First ballet I ever went to was Petrushka, and this just opened my eyes to some new art form. It's a memory that I I treasure and I I think of that ballet every time I hear this music, so please can I have Stravinsky's Petrushka.
Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major
Wynton Marsalis, English Chamber Orchestra, Raymond Leppard
Now I'd like some good classical music that was exciting, so let me have some of Hummel's trumpet concerto.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral'
Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Frans Brüggen
Have to have some Beethoven. And it's difficult to choose what Beethoven, because it's it's all such wonderful music, but the Beethoven Ninth Symphony I think would be my choice.
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:53How did you eventually make the link [between smoking and lung cancer]?
we drew up a questionnaire which included uh asking about all the things that we could think of that had increased which might result in some more exposure to the lungs and … naturally we put in cigarette smoking. … I used to keep a a record of the … principal replies to our questionnaire that patients had given. Then I used to have to go and check the diagnoses after people left hospital because we were studying people who were admitted to hospital with a suspicion of having lung cancers. It was when I went round the hospitals afterwards and looked at the notes and what I found was that if someone has been described as a non-smoker, the diagnosis always turned out to be wrong. Whereas if they were a heavy smoker, it seldom turned out to be wrong. It was that that made me realize that there wa was something in it.
Presenter asks
9:30Did your mother give up her career as a concert pianist for you?
Yes, in in those days I'm afraid women had to. They they had children, they couldn't continue with their career. … as a small boy, I was jealous of it. I can remember myself climbing under the piano and trying to hold the pedals down in order to really get her to pay more attention to me than to the piano.
Presenter asks
11:35What went wrong with your Cambridge scholarship exam?
The keepsakes
The book
David A. Warrell, Timothy M. Cox and John D. Firth
because that'll take me years to finish, and I might actually learn something from it. I don't suppose I'd remember much, but that's what I'm going to take.
The luxury
I want something which will last me, and so I'm going to take a down pillow and have a comfortable night's sleep.
As a a a boy the uh only s thing that I really enjoyed at school was mathematics. And I went up to Cambridge to take a scholarship in mathematics. On the last night but one … Some so-called friends of mine took me to dinner and uh gave me some of the Trinity Audit Ale, especially brewed in the college. This was eight per cent beer and I had three pints of it. Well, for an eighteen-year-old that uh was not a good preparation for uh examination the next day and uh I really felt pretty poor the next day. And the examiners rang my father up and said, Well, they'd give me the scholarship on the first three days' work, but they couldn't on the last day. And uh would I take an exhibition? And I was so cross with myself, I said, I won't go to Cambridge, father, I'll do as you want me to do, I'll study medicine instead and go stay in London.
Presenter asks
20:23Why did you decide immediately after the war that you weren't going to be a clinical practitioner, and turned to statistics instead?
Well, the alternative was to become a general physician, but to do that you had to get on the staff of one of the major hospitals. And I found it so unpleasant the way people were sucking up to their seniors to try to get appointments. It was the old boy network, really. … Anyway, I thought I'd like to strike out on my own, and I was fortunate enough to have my attention drawn to the possibility of doing some research with Sir Francis Avery Jones. I took that, and it turned out to be an epidemiological study of the causes of peptic ulcer. And whilst doing that, I met Professor Bradford Hill, who's Professor of Statistics at the School of Hygiene, and he offered me the chance of working with him on studying the causes of lung cancer, and I never looked back.
Presenter asks
23:04Which of these fields [asbestos, radiation, power cables] has given you most professional satisfaction?
Early work on radiation was really very pleasing because this was back in the nineteen fifties. It was just after they'd had the explosion of the first hydrogen bomb, and there was fallout throughout the world, and I think governments suddenly realized that they had no idea what effect this might be having. … And the conclusion we came to was that … The risk was proportional to the dose and that there was no completely safe level below which no effect would be produced. … And it was quite a shock to conclude that um smaller doses could have an effect as well.
“If you give up ten or fifteen years smoking, no really detectable effects. I won't say none, but uh trivial effects, if you give up soon enough.”
“I came back from that trip with uh absolutely firm determination that uh Hitlerism had to be opposed in every possible way.”
“my view is, as far as smoking is concerned, find out what the tobacco industry supports and don't do it. Find out what they object to and do it.”