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Results of the statistical study, which are being published in tomorrow's issue of The British Medical Journal, ''appear to explain the long-standing riddle of why many women develop lung cancer although they themselves are nonsmokers,'' Dr. Takeshi Hirayama, the author of the study, said in an interview. Dr. Hirayama is chief epidemiologist of the National Cancer Center Research Institute in Tokyo. Effects Previously Suspected Sir Richard Doll, a British physician at Oxford University who did pioneering studies linking cigarette smoking and lung cancer, said in an interview that Dr. Hirayama's study ''was scientifically sound.'' The effect of passive smoking on nonsmoking wives was ''surprising'' because it was larger than he would have expected, he said. ''The implication'' is that cigarette smoking poses ''a hazard to anybody in public rooms if they are not well ventilated,'' Dr. Doll said

Last April in Houston, Mr. [Alexander M. Haig Jr.] underwent a triple bypass heart operation. The surgery is usually done to relieve symptoms of arteriosclerosis but not to cure the disease. Deposits of fatty substances narrowed three of the coronary arteries that nourish Mr. Haig's heart. With the flow of blood obstructed, his heart could not receive enough oxygen at certain times. The specific medical reasons for Mr. Haig's operation are not publicly known. Presumably Mr. Haig suffered from attacks of angina, the squeezing-type of pain that occurs in the chest, usually beneath the sternum or breast bone, and sometimes in the jaw or arm. Angina generally results from a diminished blood supply to the heart cells. Also, it is not publicly known whether there are limitations on Mr. Haig's physical activities. Further, it is not known what standard cardiological tests, if any, were done to measure the success of Mr. Haig's bypass surgery. Many Resume Stressful Jobs

Leprosy bacteria, unlike many other organisms, cannot be grown on artificial media in the laboratory. But, in 1971, researchers in Louisiana found that leprosy bacteria could infect nine-banded armadillos in the laboratory with a variety that mimicked lepromatous leprosy, the severest form in humans. Now armadillos provide the large numbers of bacteria needed to develop an experimental vaccine. The second stage - selecting the preparation to be tried as an experimental leprosy vaccine - is expected to begin next year, according to Dr. Hubert Sansarricq, who heads the health organization's leprosy program here and who taught me about leprosy when we worked in Upper Volta. When the World Health Organization began its leprosy vaccine program in 1974, the best scientific guess was that the vaccine must include killed leprosy bacteria as well as a chemical called an adjuvant to boost its immunizing power. But a pleasant surprise came from evidence showing that the preparations with killed leprosy bacteria alone had much stronger immunizing properties than originally imagined

The man was unconscious. The contracted muscles throughout his body twitched violently. His hands were held fixed like claws. If we were in an emergency room, drugs like Valium and Dilantin could be injected into a vein to halt the seizure. But the man was on a church bench. His legs, rigid, were stretched under the pew. The narrow space made it difficult to maneuever, but several other wedding guests helped me move him to the aisle. We placed a jacket under his head as a pillow. We sought information from the man's parents or friends, but no one responded. Another physician joined the scene. With no drugs available, we were powerless to stop the seizure. Someone offered a large comb to hold his tongue, but we rejected its use as too risky. It was also doubtful that we could have inserted it into the victim's mouth. Even if we had, the man might have choked from a broken tooth of the comb. Or the comb tooth might have pierced his mouth and caused bleeding. Some guests told me that they had reacted initially to the man's cries by thinking they were somehow part of the service. The priest said later that this was his first such experience and he simply was unsure of how to procede. ''Should I continue celebrating a wedding while a man was dying in my church?'' he said he asked himself. Meanwhile, the man's parents arrived at the reception late, and after we explained what happened, we directed them to the hospital. On returning, they attributed the attack to the son's eating habits, saying that he had little to eat the previous day. Other guests asked if that could be so. We expressed skepticism.

It is not unknown for a maitre d'hotel to put a restaurant's interests ahead of those of patrons who are in distress. In another New York restaurant, the head waiter insisted that a rescue team perform life-saving measures under the table, obscured by a cloth, so as not to disturb the restaurant's customers. ''It's simple - anyone would have known how to do it,'' he said. In fact, more harm than good can be done by someone who does not know the proper way to help a choking victim. The Heimlich maneuver is potentially dangerous, in fact, if applied unselectively, as if everyone who falls ill in a restaurant has choked on food. When the ambulance left, I returned to my table. The restaurant's business went on as if nothing had happened. The incident did not seem to be on anyone's mind. My dinner companion's impression was that the situation had been handled in the usual chaotic human manner, although she wondered why the ambulance had not arrived earlier.

Epidemiological studies have linked hepatitis B with hepatoma, a cancer that develops in the liver. Hepatoma is rare in this country but common elsewhere, particularly in areas of Africa and Asia. A vaccine that protects against hepatitis B would presumably block the development of hepatoma, making it the first vaccine to protect against any cancer. According to the results, the probable incidence of hepatitis B was reduced by 92 percent in the group that received the experimental vaccine. About 25 percent of those who received the placebo developed hepatitis B, Dr. [Wolf Szmuness] said. As researchers have struggled to develop a protection against hepatitis B over the last quarter of a century, there have been three crucial steps in the vaccine's development. They were the discovery of the Australia antigen, believed to be a component of the virus that causes hepatitis B; development of a laboratory test to detect hepatitis B, and the purification of the Australia antigen.

Mr. [John B. Anderson] said that he regarded his heart condition as ''nothing to worry about'' and that he had ''never given it a second thought.'' ''I am never conscious from one day to the next that my heart is any different than anyone else's,'' Mr. Anderson said in an interview last week in his office in the Longworth House Office Building of the Capitol in Washington. Mr. Anderson said that his daily life had not been affected by his mitral valve prolapse and that he ''had the necessary physical endurance to discharge the duties of'' the Presidency. As evidence, he said he swam 1,000 yards up to five times a week and added, ''I'm not even breathing fast when I get out of the pool.'' ''I've never done it,'' Mr. Anderson said. ''It's just not one of those things that I thought was important. I lead a busy life and I don't spend an awful lot of time fussing about things that I really don't think are of great consequence and that was one that I guess I just passed over.''

''I had him examined in a clinic in New Orleans,'' Dr. [Charles Lee Williams Jr.] said. ''It was shortly after the [Leon Spinks] fight that Ali began to bloat - balloon in weight. I gave him a prescription for [Thyrolar], onethree grains a day. The swelling of his skin improved, as did his speech and enunciation. But on his trips to India and Kenya, urging support of the American Olympic boycott, he stopped taking the Thyrolar.'' Dr. Williams prescribed the drug again while Ali was training for his attempt to wrest the World Boxing Council version ot the the title from [Larry Holmes]. Ali, in his effort to lose weight, also restricted the amount of water he took. Dr. Cope speculated that reduced water intake, combined with the amount of sweat that he lost while training in the 100-degree heat in Las Vegas, may have caused Ali to go ''into the fight perhaps a bit dehydrated,'' as Dr. Williams has contended. But Dr. Cope said he had ''no proof of that whatsoever.'' ''Assuming Ali's normal thyroid function is around 6, if he hadn't been taking thyroid, then right now he should have a T4 thyroid function test of 6, not 10.7,'' Dr. Cope said. He said he expected the test value to be lower when he tested him again in about one month. ''If his story is correct, he should have a further drop in his T4.''

USUALLY it is only the family members, and sometimes the physician, of someone killed by a sudden, unexpected injury who are left to wonder, ''What if he had got to the hospital sooner?'' But during the last year, so much publicity surrounded the murders and attempted murders of famous people that nearly everyone has been vividly reminded of the fragility of life, as well as the importance of time in receiving emergency medical care. Among the incidents: - Last week, the surgeon who accompanied Dr. Herman Tarnower from his Purchase, N.Y., home, where he was shot four times on March 10, to St. Agnes Hospital in White Plains, said he ''might have survived'' if he had been moved immediately instead of having to wait 10 or 15 minutes for an ambulance. Despite the unknowns involved, Doctors and patients will probably continue occasionally to say that a particular individual would have survived ''if only he had been treated sooner.'' Sometimes that is true. Other times it is more a rationalization of one's own sense of helplessness than an accurate reflection of how things would have changed if the patient had been treated sooner.

Another psychiatrist, Dr. Steve Pieczenik, said on a separate CBS News program: ''Their emotional status, their psychological response, is showing that they are coming to their end point, that they are tired, they are exhausted, and they would like to keep on hoping and believing but they just don't have that much more to hope and believe on.'' Dr. Pieczenik, speaking again on ABC News, said that many hostages were depressed and felt abandoned. However, Dr. Frank Ochberg, who appeared on the same ABC program, said that although he detected ''a great deal of sadness,'' he was less convinced than Dr. Pieczenik about the degree of the hostages' depression. Dr. Pieczenik contended on ABC News that all 52 will be ''hostages for the rest of their lives.'' Psychiatrists interviewed by The New York Times disagreed, saying that, depending on the psychological factors in each case, some of the hostages might not suffer permanent damage.