Short Essay On Muckraking

1055 Words5 Pages

In a world in which social change seems only to be achieved through modern and electronic mediums, the question of whether or not muckraking is still an effective form for creating social progress must be pondered. In the recent decades, muckraking has time and again proved to create profound advancements in the society we live in. Muckraking is still an effective means of creating change as evidenced by Richard Doll and Richard Peto’s work titled “Cigarette Smoking and Bronchial Carcinoma; Dose and Time Relationships Among Regular Smokers and Lifelong Non-Smokers.” One of the most renowned muckraking studies is that of Richard Doll and Richard Peto, and their work in discovering the incontrovertible connection between smoking and cancer. The study was conducted in Oxford, England over the course of 20 years, ending in the year 1969. In this period of time, the pair examined 34,440 men, their smoking habits, and later the …show more content…

The discovery linking smoking to cancer left society dumbfounded, taken back, and in disbelief. Despite this, the results of the clinical trial stood up to international scrutiny and eventually became validated as a source of truth. According to the results of the study, of the 34,440 men recorded in the 20 year period of study, 10,072 subsequently died of smoking related maladies (Doll and Peto). An overwhelming majority of the fatalities were attributed to illnesses such as lung cancer and heart disease, giving these lethal diseases a newfound source and preventability. The clinical trial eventually showed Peto and Doll that between ½ and ⅓ of all regular smokers will die from cigarette related illnesses (Doll and Peto). Once this information was released to the public, it slowly began a strong movement in the following decades to change the societal stigmas surrounding

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