Death
In 1996, Downey was diagnosed with lung cancer and had one of his lungs removed. He did a complete about-face on the issue of tobacco use, going from a one-time member of the National Smokers Alliance to a staunch anti-smoking activist. He continued to speak against smoking until his death from lung cancer in 2001.
After being diagnosed with lung cancer, he commented, "I had spawned a generation of kids to think it was cool to smoke a cigarette. Kids walked up to me until a matter of weeks ago, they'd have a cigarette in their hand and they'd say, 'Hey, Mort,' or, 'Hey, Mort, autograph my cigarette.' And I'd do it." He also blamed tobacco companies for lying to consumers about cigarettes, although congressman Ron Paul (also a physician) had advised him, in 1988, while on his show, that smoking was highly unhealthy and responsible for a huge number of deaths every year.
Read more about this topic: Morton Downey, Jr.
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)
“We often see malefactors, when they are led to execution, put on resolution and a contempt of death which, in truth, is nothing else but fearing to look it in the face—so that this pretended bravery may very truly be said to do the same good office to their mind that the blindfold does to their eyes.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“For who shall defile the temples of the ancient gods, a cruel and violent death shall be his fate, and never shall his soul find rest unto eternity. Such is the curse of Amon-Ra, king of all the gods.”
—Griffin Jay, Maxwell Shane (1905–1983)