You sure about that "settled science"?
Native Americans smoked tobacco for a thousand years before the arrival of Europeans, and they didn't suffer from lung cancer. My granddad smoked for 70 years, and never even had a smoker's hack. He died in his eighties of unrelated causes. The last chest x-ray I got showed no traces of tar on my lungs, even after 45 years of smoking.
It's my opinion that there's lots of junk in the science behind lung cancer, and the link to tobacco use as a primary cause. If it were true, Congress would have banned tobacco for human consumption long ago. No, the powers-that-be found a way to hold a gun to the heads of one of the most lucrative industries in the world, and have robbed them of a great deal of their income. That's ALL it's about.
I don't doubt that your dad has cancer, but I doubt anyone knows the true cause. You and his doctors have merely gone into agreement with a questionable regime of studies which claim that it's related to tobacco use. I trust that about as much as I trust the 'studies' on man-made global warming.
I, too, believe the Government’s interest in tobacco stems from the income they receive by taxing it’s sale. I do however know that the vast majority of lung cancer victims are smokers Sometimes it’s just bad luck. A small number of people who develop lung cancer have never smoked. The overwhelming number of lung cancer victims are smokers. Here’s what happens when they light up. But first, a little background: the cells that line your lungs are delicate secretory cells with cilia. The cilia constantly waft impurities, dirt particles, etc, up and out of your lungs. The smoke, tobacco or dope, paralyses the cilia and they fall off. Then the cell goes through a metaplastic process.....changing from a secretory cell to a protective cell, like the cells that make up your skin. But the protective cells don’t belong in your lung passageways. They start dividing at random and that is what cancer is. Cells dividing at random and out of control. So, not all smokers will develop lung cancer, but the overwhelming number of lung cancer victims are smokers. But, so far, we still have free will in this country. My mom used to tell me how much she enjoyed smoking. And she didn’t develop lung cancer. So, it’s up to the individual. Meanwhile, there will come a time, as long as we allow Obamacare to be the ‘law of the land’ where the Government will dictate, under penalty of prosecution, your and my behavior. As Kirsten Powers said on FoxNews, ‘why should I have to pay for their health problems’. But that’s what happens when the Government starts using taxpayer monies to dole out health care. Rant done. I celebrate that, in America, we are still ‘allowed’ some free will. I suspect the choice of getting inked is in that mix, too, for now.