2002 Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Health

The Selection Committee of the Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Health is pleased to announce that Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr, MD, Assistant Surgeon General and Rear Admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service and David M. Burns, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have been selected to share its 17th Annual Award. Both honorees have been long-standing U.S. Public Health Service workers.

Doctor Fraumeni founded the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1975, a program that has become the premier cancer epidemiology research group in the world. He is the central figure who developed the U.S. Cancer Mortality Atlases, which reveal the key geographical areas of malignant diseases in this country. These maps have identified not only the major centers of lung cancer in this country, but revealed clusters of elevated rates of cancers, relating them to tobacco consumption and to key gene/environmental interactions.

Doctor Burns has worked on tobacco-related issues for 30 years, initially as a medical officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1974, he was the major interface between science and the formation of public policy, particularly developing the major statements for the 1975 and 1976 Surgeon General's Reports on the Health Consequences of Smoking; and he was the author, editor, or reviewer for each of the subsequent Surgeon General's Reports. His research work focused on the risks and consequences associated with tobacco, developing risk models of smoking behavior. One model explained the paradox of low-yield cigarettes demonstrating that the number of such cigarettes increased to that of high-tar cigarettes. His work demonstrated that increased rates of taxation and comprehensive tobacco control programs were associated with increased rates of cessation.

Prior recipients of the Ochsner Award have been honored for work demonstrating important relationships between tobacco consumption and nicotine addiction with lung cancer, other malignancies, emphysema, abnormal lung function, and other diseases including atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.

Supported by the Ochsner Clinic Foundation, the Alton Ochsner Award recognizes exemplary scientific achievements that provide major insights into the biological mechanisms that relate tobacco consumption and human disease. The $15,000 award will be shared this year between both recipients. They will also receive a special medallion and scroll to be presented at the Annual Convocation of the American College of Chest Physicians during its scientific sessions to be held in San Diego on November 3, 2002.

The Selection Committee is comprised of a blue ribbon panel of academicians, clinicians, and scientists who reviewed a large number of nominations in the selection process. The Award is named for the late Alton Ochsner, MD, one of the founders of the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans. Doctor Ochsner was the first person to recognize that cigarette smoking is the major causative factor underlying lung cancer. These seminal findings led to a succession of scientific studies that ultimately resulted in the identification of the underlying mechanisms associated with tobacco addiction and smoking related diseases. This led to the major efforts presently aimed at reducing tobacco consumption by federal and state governments to reduce disability and deaths resulting from this devastating scourge.