Well this is interesting, but of course lots of smokers never quit and you only need one cell to turn into a cancer and kill you. On a related note, I think th

Well this is interesting, but of course lots of smokers never quit and you only need one cell to turn into a cancer and kill you. On a related note, I think the demonstration that lung cells and lung cancers bear the stigmata of tobacco related mutagenesis has some significance to the legal liability of Big Tobacco. With this data one can show that a particular cancer in a particular person began from a single cell which was mutated by tobacco exposure. This is one level up from saying tobacco merely increases the risk of cancer on average, which is always open to the counter-argument that some other factor could have caused the particular cancer in the particular person. Whole genome sequencing of tumour and germline DNA can be had for about $5k these days plus analysis costs, so a class action suit or even individual suits are very feasible. There will be no shortage of oncologists and genomics people happy to help out with this.