Description: Article from The Actuary, April 1972 – volume 6 - Issue 4 is a review of a book by Lewis C. Robbins, M.D., M.P.H. and Jack H. Hall, A.B., M.D., titled How To Practice Prospective Medicine by assessing and classifying various health risk factors. The review states the authors' basic assumption that average risk can be determined by calculating the total numbers of deaths by cause in the general population is open to criticism. Furthermore, the assignment of weights for the individual risk factors is quite tenuous in many instances. The authors acknowledge this, but once a number appears in print, especially as part of a complex table, it achieves a sanctity that is difficult to destroy.

Description: This article discusses the history of the Sun Life of Canada inserting a question about smoking in their life insurance applications. Actuary John M. Bragg used the Sun Life mortality ratios, supplemented by other data from life companies, from the Cancer Society, and from the U.S. Surgeon General, to construct his non-smoker and smoker mortality tables and to produce his Health Insurance Report which was the starting point for companies that have introduced smoker/nonsmoker differentials for health insurance.

Description: This article summarizes the 1967 Surgeon General’s report on the health consequences of smoking.

Description: Table from an article in The Actuary Magazine on an analysis of risk management terminology: your guide to speaking ERM with different industries. Volume 4, Issue 6