No, Mich, you are mistaken, sir. I ***AM***asking other people, especially the smoker-haters and the medical profession to consider them.Mich wrote:There are a whole myriad of reasons why that could be the case (although i've got no figures to prove either hypothesis), and i'm surprised that you can't consider them (or maybe you can, have got retorts and i'm falling into a trap); .
The health fascists at ASH, whose sole function seems to have moved away from discouraging smoking to villifying smokers as killers, REFUSE to consider the 40-odd determinants that affect cancer. Everything is smoking and that's all there is to it.
The problem occurs that when smoking is to blame for everything but the number of "smoking"-related illnesses and deaths soars as smoking & "passive smoking" declines, scientific and medical study is thrown out of the window for political reasons. Health is politically driven.
Have we though? The paragraph above that quote seems to prove otherwise. If someone dies of lung cancer and they were a smoker, it is often recorded as a smoking related death. However, as there are 40+ determinants to cancer, WHY is that the only reason recorded? Why not the other factors?Mich wrote:here are a few possibilities...
- We've got a little better at diagnosing things in the last few years - dying purely of old age is much less commonly recorded now.
Agreed - totally. But no-one seems to be doing research into it. Smokers are blamed for everything.Mich wrote:- Other things that cause these diseases have increased.
I understand your point - there is a slight chance it may be true. However, I do not think that the number of cigarettes smoked by 20-25% of the population now is anywhere near the amount smoked by the 50-55% who smoked in the 60s and 70s. I am more than willing to be proven wrong on this though.Mich wrote:- - The number of cigarettes being smoked may not fall in line with the total of smokers (eg. heavier smokers remain - increasing the average cigarettes smoked per smoker).
IME, and again this is open to being proven wrong, the majority of smokers now smoke mid-tar cigarettes. I do not believe they were available 30 years ago.Mich wrote:- The strength of cigarettes may have changed...
According to the ASH health fascists, "no amount of exposure to cigarette smoke is safe" (paraphrased).Mich wrote:- The time delay between the damage and development of disease...
If that was the case, then "smoking"-related deaths would still remain at their historical average as the time span needed to kill smokers and "passive smokers" would remain reasonably constant based on the notion that it takes 40 years of constant smoking to produce a fatal illness.
However, that is not the case. Asthma, heart disease, lung cancer, ephesema, etc have skyrocketed in the last 30 years when they should, according to that argument, still remain fairly constant as the effect of smoker number reduction would not have fed through yet.
That is completely my position. Did you know that the courts in 2006 could not prove a link between active smoking and cancer because of the rocketing up of numbers of sufferers mixed with declining smoking?Mich wrote:I don't really understand your point with regard to passive smoking. You accept that smoking isn't good for your health (although to less of an extent than common scientific knowledge) but don't think passive smoking does any harm?
My position is, and I genuinely believe it is backed up by medical and epidemiological inquiry, that smoking mildly increases your chances of getting some diseases and mildly decreases others. It has a mainly neutral impact on the smoker but any negative or positive effect can be amplified by other factors, such as diet, lifestyle, work patterns and so on.
If it takes 40 years of active smoking to catch something (plus passive smoking because smokers breath in environmental tobacco smoke all the time), the alleged detrimental health effect to non-smokers (other than what many consider an unpleasant smell) is non-existent.
That is the exact point, Mich. Water is a poison, when imbibed in enough quantity. Check "Water intoxication" at Wikipedia.Mich wrote:Passive smoking may involve far lower proportions of toxins, but the action of the smoke being drawn into your lungs and then expelled doesn't suddenly make it fresh air and remove all of the toxins.
It's not the ingredients that count, it's the dose. Most of the so-called "carcinogenic" toxins in tobacco smoke exist in reasonably significant background quantities, especially in urban areas. Measuring it is so unreliable that the smoke inspectors only measure for something called "cotinine".
According to Wikipedia, this tobacco-smoke-distinct element has positive health effects. According to Wikipedia, "There is some research being done on the effects of cotinine on memory and cognition. Some studies have suggested that cotinine (as well as nicotine) improves memory and prevents neuron death. For this reason it has been studied for effectiveness in treating schizophrenia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. There is research, however, which also suggests that nicotine and cotinine contribute to Alzheimer's disease in other ways which counter and maybe even negate the possible positive effects they might have."
