[M. Dodge Thomas]

Are there 435,000 smoking-related deaths per year in America? Maybe. I can tell you this with absolute certainty, however: No human beings are ever studied to find out.

Sheesh... Ms. McWhirter picks up the phone, spend a more or less random hour trying to find someone to answer her question, and when she can't find out where the data comes from, announces with "absolute certainty" that the entire scientific and medical community must have just have made it all up.

Uh huh...

Perhaps she should asked someone actually involved in such work, or GOOGLED up a few of the numerous studies of smoking and health and checked the citations, or perhaps even poked around in GOOGLE for the sources of such data, any of which would have led her in about two minutes to the to CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) - which conducts long terms studies of the behavior of actual human beings to define such risk factors:

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/aag/aag_brfss.htm

And from there she could have GOOGLED up studies based on such data, for example:

http://www.usrf.org/breakingnews/bn_020708_perspective/woolshin_paper.pdf

Which is pretty sobering stuff if you are a smoker, for instance around age 40 a male smoker's chances of death over the next decade from Lung Colon or Prostate cancer rise to around 700% of those of a non-smoker and remain there well inotm their 70s.

[SheLion]

Which is pretty sobering stuff if you are a smoker, for instance around age 40 a male smoker's chances of death over the next decade from Lung Colon or Prostate cancer rise to around 700% of those of a non-smoker and remain there well inotm their 70s.

Well, men get those two diseases if they smoke or DON'T smoke.

I enjoy smoking And will continue to do so until the Lord calls me home.  Personally, at that time, I don't think the Lord will care if I smoked or not When it's my time to go, I will go.