Fieser, Cochran Join Government Study On Lung Cancer

Two Harvard professors are among ten scientists recently appointed to make a government study of the impact of smoking and air pollution on health.

Louis F. Fleser, Sheldon Emory Professor of Organic Chemistry, and William Cochran, professor of Statistics, will participate in the first broad government study on the subject, Fleser's specialty is chemistry of tobacco smoke, and Cochran's is mathematical statistics, especially as applied to biologic problems.

Surgeon General Luther L. Terry of the Public Health Service, committee chairman, chose the ten scientists from a list of about 150 names submitted by Federal agencies, voluntary health organizations, and the tobacco industry. Immediately eliminated were anyone who had previously expressed an opinion on the problem in public, and anyone from Southern states in which tobacco is a principal cash crop.

The first meeting of the committee will be held Nov. 9 and 10 in Washington.

The Government has refused to take an official stand on the relationship between smoking and lung cancer up to this time. The advice of the Public Health Service, which has long contended that smoking is a highly probable cause of lung cancer, prompted President Kennedy to sponsor the study.

According to the New York Times Dr. Terry called his committee "a composition of specialists covering the broad range of medical sciences involved in evaluating the complex relationship between tobacco smoking and health."