Should smokers be refused surgery?

One of the noblest things about the profession of medicine has been its single minded devotion to patients. Doctors routinely treat patients who are despised by the society in which they live—enemy troops, terrorists, murderers. Given this, it is astounding that doctors would question whether they should treat smokers. The issue for doctors is whether they will allow the current antismoking zeal in America, the United Kingdom, and western Europe to infect their practice and undermine the doctor-patient relationship.

In a surprisingly short time smokers have gone from being the victims of tobacco companies to perpetrators of wrongs against others. Secondhand smoke used to be an annoyance but is now treated as a poisonous gas. Smokers' diseases were previously seen as the result of a heartless tobacco industry preying on the young and supplying drugs to those it addicted. Tobacco companies used to win every lawsuit brought against them by diseased smokers because they successfully …