The answer is a resounding "YES!"

For Dr. Judith Mackay OBE, her crusade to warn the world about the dangers of tobacco has sometimes been a lonely fight. In her early days, she was an isolated crusader against large corporations with few allies. Back then, her ‘rewards’ for speaking out against Big Tobacco included threats, bureaucratic red tape and having her words fall on deaf ears. She has even been compared to Hitler and held at gun point by presidential guards in Mongolia!

Dr. Judith Mackay Interview:

As with anything in life, persistence, patience and hard work eventually pay off. Dr. Mackay can now list the following amazing achievements:

• Named one of the most influential people in the world - TIME Magazine

And now she has received another accolade, the British Medical Journal Group (BMJ) Lifetime Achievement Award which was announced and presented in London, UK on April 2nd 2009. (Her acceptance speech is included below, in this article).

Her work is being acknowledged because more people are awake to the imminent threat of tobacco:

• Net economic costs of tobacco are negative. Costs of treatment, mortality and disability exceed estimates of the economic benefits to producers and consumers by at least 200 billion US dollars annually. 1/3 of these losses are incurred by developing countries.

Dr. Mackay has sought to demystify the image of the tobacco industry and tackled the following issues head on:

• Promotion and Sales of Tobacco

Developing nations are subjected to savvy, western tobacco marketing and promotion, including direct and indirect advertising, sponsorship, and product placement in films, and "Marlboro" and "Salem" clothes shops. Globally, teenagers, young men and women are targeted with glamorous images in order to hook them on this incredibly addictive 'smoking' habit from a young age.

• Political and Commercial Pressures

Savvy political and media lobbying by tobacco companies is common in developing regions. The use of financial and media clout can often sway government policies. American companies have urged the U.S. government to threaten unilateral retaliatory trade sanctions against countries (to date, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, China) unless they open up to the sales of U.S. tobacco products. This even occurs in countries with established national laws forbidding tobacco advertising. Money and influence go along way some in nations!

• Dominating overseas Markets

The opening up of markets, joint ventures, and complex licensing agreements has weakened local market shares. Opening up markets is not only leading to a sharp increase of foreign cigarettes, but increased smoking amongst those nation’s youth. Market share of U.S. cigarettes in four countries affected by trade threats; Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand increased dramatically once they accepted U.S. tobacco products.

Dr. Judith Mackay OBE is passionate in her crusade and thanks to her work; potentially millions of lives are being saved. Anyone who can get both Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg’s attention is worth your time!

Bill Gates with a copy of Mackay's The Tobacco Atlas


Dr. Mackay's anti-tobacco work is proof how one person CAN change the world.

Prof. Judith Mackay’s acceptance speech for her BMJ Lifetime Achievement Award:

Public health:

“I am just overwhelmed by this great honour. I have the greatest respect for all my shortlisted colleagues in a wide variety of disciplines, but I have been extremely touched by the outpouring of support from China to Scotland, from Vanuatu to Venezuela, of individuals, academics, organizations and governments who voted for public health, prevention, global health issues and tobacco control, especially as public health has often been the poor relation to curative medicine.”

Early days and now:

“When I started working in tobacco control in Asia a quarter of a century ago, it was a lonely job, with no career structure and no pay. Few, if any, countries had even a single person working full-time on tobacco control. I also faced the formidable opposition of the trans-national tobacco companies, who identified Asia as their future.

I received tremendous start-up assistance and advice from colleagues from western countries where initial steps in tobacco control had already been taken, and also from WHO and international health organizations.

There has now been a sea-change in attitudes, activities and grant funding, for example from the Bloomberg Initiative, enabling hundreds of job opportunities in tobacco control, which were simply not there beforehand.”

Public Health is not as dull as it might first appear:

“Public health is usually thought of as rather staid, even boring, compared with the excitement of working in Intensive Care Units in hospitals. But in the course of my working career, I have:

1. been held at gunpoint by Presidential guards in Mongolia
2. kept speaking through martial law in Thailand, a typhoon in Hong Kong, and a huge explosion outside the lecture hall in Cambodia that resulted in the ceiling starting to come down around me
3. been vilified by the tobacco industry, likened to Hitler, threatened with lawsuits and received death threats from smokers’ rights groups”

Treasured award:

"I have always said that my most treasured award was being named by the tobacco industry as one of the three most dangerous people in the world. But, given my roots and connections with the UK, my medical training in Edinburgh, my Fellowships of the Colleges of Physicians of Edinburgh and London, my membership of the BMA over decades, and being Vice-Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board of the BMJ “Tobacco Control” since its inception, I think this trophy now trumps that of the tobacco industry.

Family members, and eminent colleagues with whom I have worked for decades, have joined me this evening.

And, like Edinburgh’s Sir John Crofton, my mentor since 1963, who could not be here tonight, I have no intention of stopping. I have a suspicion that, like him, I will be working in my 90s!

Thank you all so much."

Judith Mackay
World Lung Foundation/Bloomberg Initiative

Go Short: Dr Mackay OBE Blog - http://icubed.us/node/1751
Dr Mackay OBE Interview - http://www.icubed.us/node/1559

Time Magazine Article on Dr. Mackay OBE Dr. Judith Mackay speaks about Tobacco and Globalization. ''The Global Perspective: A New Opium War'' British Medical Journal Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg article on Tobacco

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