Dr. Blum recounts a debate on the health consequences of smoking that he had with Bill Dwyer and Dr. Charles Waite of the Tobacco Institute on Larry King’s radio talk show on WIOD in Miami in the spring of 1977. King, who chain-smoked throughout the three-hour program in the tiny studio, wouldn’t oblige when asked if he could step outside with his cigarette. “It’s my show,” he retorted. “If you don’t like it, get out.”  The overwhelming negativity of the experience gave rise the next day to Doctors Ought to Care (or DOC), the first national organization of physicians and medical students dedicated to countering the promotion of lethal lifestyles, especially cigarette advertising, using humor, irony and satire. “Only later did I learn from Sherry Manning, president of Colorado College for Women,” Blum notes, “that you should never wrestle in the mud with a pig, because you both get dirty and the pig loves it.”

Caricature of Larry King in the Financial Times
July 4, 2010