[DiamondSmiles]

http://grab-media.com/premium-videos/5182504

September 17, 2013
Mike Stobbe of Associated

Terrie Hall, 53, appeared in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention campaign, showing how smoking-related cancer affected her body.

ATLANTA — A North Carolina woman featured prominently in a graphic government ad campaign to get people to stop smoking died Monday of cancer.

Terrie Hall died at a hospital in Winston-Salem, NC, federal officials said. She was 53.

"She was a public health hero," said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the campaign. "She may well have saved more lives than most doctors do."

A former smoker whose voice box was removed years ago, Hall took a leading role in the campaign that showed how smoking-related cancer ravages the body. Officials believe the, "Tips from Former Smokers," campaign led as many as 100,000 Americans smokers to quit.

Hall's first ad showed her putting on a wig, putting in false teeth and covering a hole in her throat with a scarf. It was the campaign's most popular spot by far, receiving more than 2.8 million views on YouTube.

It was the federal public health agency's largest and starkest anti-smoking push, and its first national advertising effort.

In another ad, the Lexington resident addressed the camera in the buzzing sound of her artificial voice box. She advised smokers to make a video of themselves reading a children's book or singing a lullaby. "I wish I had. The only voice my grandson's ever heard is this one," her electric voice growled.

Hall's oral and throat cancer was caused by the cigarette smoking she began in high school, CDC officials said. This summer, the cancer spread to her brain.

AP Photo: CDC Terri Hall appeared in graphic ads by the CDC designed to get smokers off tobacco.

[Megamel29]

I've seen those commercials. How is it some people who smoke die that young and some live to be 80?

[invertigo]

Originally Posted by Megamel29 ↗

I've seen those commercials. How is it some people who smoke die that young and some live to be 80?

There's a man that goes to the same church my
mother used to in the next town over. He's 101 and he's been smoking since he was 15. Never had a single health issue because of it either, he's still up and about, walking around town and puffing away at a cigarette. He doesn't look any older than 75. It's crazy, but sometimes that happens Good genetics, I guess.

[DiamondSmiles]

Originally Posted by Megamel29 ↗

I've seen those commercials. How is it some people who smoke die that young and some live to be 80?

I think as with anything else, when your number is up, it's up.

We've all seen car crashes that look like no one could have survived and they do.

And, we have seen car crashes that aren't too bad where the occupants died.

Some things kill some people, but, not others.

[DiamondSmiles]

Originally Posted by invertigo ↗

There's a man that goes to the same church my
mother used to in the next town over. He's 101 and he's been smoking since he was 15. Never had a single health issue because of it either, he's still up and about, walking around town and puffing away at a cigarette. He doesn't look any older than 75. It's crazy, but sometimes that happens Good genetics, I guess.

Lewis Black tells a story of an old man, whose age I cannot recall, who ate nothing but fatback and bacon and drank wine or some other alcoholic beverage.

Had he switched to a healthy diet, he probably would have died.

We just never know...

[bob351]

Originally Posted by Megamel29 ↗

I've seen those commercials. How is it some people who smoke die that young and some live to be 80?

genetics.

[bob351]

fuck my grandfather died of cancer... had the shit all fucking over his fucking body... his lungs were fucking clean as shit... smoker since he got out of the concentration camps.

[Megamel29]

Originally Posted by bob351 ↗

fuck my grandfather died of cancer... had the shit all fucking over his fucking body... his lungs were fucking clean as shit... smoker since he got out of the concentration camps.

That is sad. No words to say how awful those places were.