Richard Peto

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Sir Richard Peto began work with the late Richard Doll fifty years ago, the UK had the worst death rates from smoking in the world. Smoking was the cause of more than half of all premature deaths of British men. The fact that this country now boasts the biggest decrease in tobacco-linked mortality is in no doubt partly due to Doll and Peto's thirty year collaboration. Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and until last year co-director of the Clinical Trial Service Unit with Professor Sir Rory Collins, Richard Peto pioneered "big data", setting up enormous randomised clinical trials and then, in a novel approach, combining results in what became known as meta-analyses, amassing unequivocal evidence about how early death could be avoided. He showed how asprin could prevent heart attacks and how the oestrogen-blocking drug tamoxifen really did affect survival rates for breast cancer patients. Results on paper saves lives in the real world, he says, and he's famous for catchphrases like: "death in old age is inevitable, but death before old age is not" and "you can avoid more deaths by a moderate reduction of a big cause, than by a big reduction in a small cause" as well as "take the big numbers seriously". One of the world's leading epidemiologists, Richard Peto's landmark study with Alan Lopez at the World Health Organisation predicted that a billion people would die from diseases associated with tobacco this century, compared to a hundred million killed by tobacco in the 20th century. The chilling message galvanised governments around the world to adopt anti-smoking policies. And Professor Peto's studies about smoking cessation ("smoking kills, stopping works") provided the public health evidence needed to encourage smokers that, however long they had smoked for, it was always worth quitting.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.1	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really. Comedy is a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know, I also know that comedy is really
0:24.3	subjective and everyone has different tastes. So we've got a huge range of comedy on offer from
0:29.8	satire to silly, shocking to soothing, profound to just general pratting about.
0:35.0	So if you fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	This is Discovery from the BBC. I'm Jim El Killelli and in today's program I'm in conversation with a leading scientist about their life and research.
0:51.0	Welcome to the life scientific.
0:53.0	50 years ago I'd probably be puffing away on a cigarette or even a pipe as I did this interview.
1:00.0	And my guess would too. There'd be a smoky foggy haze across the room and that would have been quite normal.
1:06.7	It's hard to imagine that now, but it's in large part because of the work of my guest, Sir Richard Pito, that this studio, in fact all indoor
1:15.3	public places are smoke-free zones and the UK has switched from having the world's worst
1:21.1	death rate from smoking to the world's biggest decrease.
1:25.0	Along with colleagues such as the late Richard Dole, Richard Pito helped to establish unequivocally
1:30.0	the link between tobacco and disease, especially cancer, and most importantly, he effectively
1:36.0	communicated that link, saving an incalculable number of lives in the process.
1:41.5	His work changed attitudes to smoking and he proved to smokers that it makes
1:46.1	health sense to stop whatever your age work that earned him a knighthood 20 years
1:51.0	ago. The impact of his studies has been global and the figures terrifying.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.