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Hollywood raising awareness of smoking-related diseases: can it proactively counteract the impact of smoking in movies?—the final mission of Star Trek’s Mr Spock

2016; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/npjpcrm.2016.52

2055-1010

Job F. M. van Boven, Alan Kaplan,

Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior

On 27 March 2015, generations of fans of Star Trek lost one of its iconic characters. That day, Leonard Nimoy, also known as Mr Spock on the starship Enterprise, died as a consequence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). What many people may not know about Leonard is that since his COPD diagnosis in 2013, despite giving up smoking about 30 years earlier, he became a Star-educator on his own disease. He reached out to his fans on Twitter and in interviews, discussing the burden of COPD, motivating people to quit smoking and highlighting his personal struggles while living with COPD. For a good reason: COPD is now the third leading cause of death in the world and is primarily caused by smoking exposure, but it is still one of the diseases that are least known by the general audience. After his death, his daughter and her husband continued his mission by announcing the film 'COPD: highly Illogical: a Special Tribute to Leonard Nimoy', a documentary that will aim to educate viewers about COPD by using personal stories of Leonard, as well as information about treatments. It is expected to be launched in 2016.1 Ironically, many people may actually have initiated smoking because of television and Hollywood smoking influences.2 Therefore we were wondering whether we could also use movies and famous actors to educate their viewers on the health risks of smoking (i.e. the risk of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease and COPD) and actively involve Hollywood in helping them to quit—or never start—smoking?