“Daddy, please quit smoking.” A plea to smoking fathers

BODY WORLDS & The Story of the Heart exhibition at MOSI (Museum of Science & Industry) invites all families to join together in an effort to encourage dads who smoke to quit for Father’s Day, June 21.

The dramatic display at BODY WORLDS & The Story of the Heart exhibit can guarantee that fathers will want to make a lifestyle change for their children and family. An exhibit specimen containing a tar-filled, blackened smoker’s lung in a side-by-side comparison with a healthy lung has moved thousands of people to pledge to quit on the spot.

BODY WORLDS is calling all children and families with a father who smokes to bring dad to this groundbreaking exhibition on Father’s Day. Fathers will be admitted for FREE on June 21 with the purchase of a child or family member ticket. Fathers who smoke are encouraged to kick the habit and of course pledge to quit once confronted with the compelling imagery inside the lung gallery of BODY WORLDS.

In 2006, exhibition cleaning crews discovered masses of unfinished cigarette packs discarded on the glass displays of the smoker’s lung. In early March, BODY WORLDS partnered with the American Cancer Society (ACS) in the “I Quit!” campaign. Pledge cards for visitors intending to give-up smoking, along with their last packs of cigarettes, were displayed inside the exhibit. Information from ACS is available, as well as a multimedia PSA message from the late Yul Brynner, who died from lung cancer in 1985. BODY WORLDS, in partnership with the Moffitt Cancer Center, have also offered lectures on smoking cessation and lung cancer. The lectures are free of charge with the purchase of admission and held inside the exhibition.

“Lung cancer is the most preventable form of cancer death in our society, but about 23 percent of Americans continue to use tobacco,” said Mel Tockman, M.D., Ph.D, chairman of the American Cancer Society’s Greater Tampa Unit. ACS provided BODY WORLDS visitors smoking cessation materials including a phone number to free phone-based counseling though the Florida Quitline: 1-877-U-Can-Now.