With their fanatical zeal, you have to wonder how far busybodies will go

Sun.Com ^ | 4 August 2002 | PAUL JACKSON

[Dr. Luv]

"Is it your right to create legislation to prevent people from smoking or engaging in other activities which harm their health?"

Who said I wanted to do this? I don't. I'm a conservative in the true sense of the word. I do however object to the "smoking is not really bad for you - just look at Winston Churchill" mantra that passes for debate on our forum.

[mysterio]

Agreed. Smoking is most certainly bad for you. Some people do have extraordinary ability to repair the DNA damage inflicted by the carcinogens in tobacco smoke. These people, however, seem to be more the exception than the rule. Taking a chance that you may be one of those people is truly a long shot. If you smoke, you will most likely die of a smoking related illness.

However, I will not feed the government machine so that it can make peoples' choices for them.

[KDD]

who kills more dr.s or cigs

Whether you like what the Dr. is saying or not, he sounds like many of the fine Dr.s today who deal with cigarette deseases. Your comment is unfair. Do you want doctors encouraging cigerette smoking?

[metesky]

You're calling me an idiot, because I've stated that none of my dead friends, people who ranged from a MassPort Commissioner to a Mafia hitman to one of the best high school basketball players you or anyone else has ever seen, cried, blubbered or broke down when faced with the bad news?

I guess you have to be an oncologist, specially trained in tunnel vision, to run out of arguments that quickly.

Self-righteous boob.

[Snowyman]

That OK with you, sir.

Sure ,but why should you care. I almost agreed with you . Almost.

Every person, whether it's cancer or some other disease, goes through denial ,anger, selfishness, fear. Only an ignorant man would think otherwise.

I'm almost sixty years old

Really, I'm glad for you. Me too. Not next year though.

[Dr. Luv]

Wrong. I called you an idiot because you said: "You must see the weak ones then"

As someone who has seen many, many, many more people who have died of cancer than you have, I stand by my conviction that everyone cries at some point...and there's nothing "weak" about it...

[Dr. Luv]

"However, I will not feed the government machine so that it can make peoples' choices for them."

Agreed.

[lodwick]

Nice! bttt

[metesky]

We're gonna have to agree to disagree I guess, because nothing you say will sway me and it appears the same holds for you.

Have a nice day, Dr.

[RightWhale]

While the city plans to ban smoking entirely in "public" places, a bar, restaurant, pool or bingo hall or casino are not "public" places.

Nor are shopping malls. Streets are, though unless they are just public access easements and not dedicated rights-of-way. They can ban smoking on the street but not on easements.

[Gothmog]

Rudyard Kipling's "The Betrothed" (See the 2nd to last paragraph for yout quote)

You must choose between me and your cigar"
-- Breach Of Promise Case, Circa 1885

Open the old cigar box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarrelled about Havanas -- we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.

Maggie is pretty to look at - Maggie's a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.

There's peace in a Larranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay;
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away --

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown --
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk of the town!

Maggie, my wife at fifty -- grey and dour and old --
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!

And the light of Days that have Been and the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar --

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket --
With never a new one to light tho' it's charred and black to the socket!

Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider awhile.
Here is a mild Manilla -- there is a wifely smile.

Which is the better portion -- bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?

Counsellors cunning and silent -- comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return,
With only a Suttee's passion -- to do their duty and burn.

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,
Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.

The furrows of far-off Java, the Isles of the Spanish Main, When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again.

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal,
So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.

I will scent'em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,
And the Moor and the Morman shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,
But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,
But the only light o the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love.

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?

Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider anew --
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a Cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba -- I hold to my first-sworn vows.
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse!

[SheLion]

As they lie on their beds facing the inevitable, they all look up and say one thing: "Why did I do this to myself and my family?"

So.......you think that if one doesn't smoke, one is going to live FOREVER? If people didn't smoke, then they would put YOU out of a job, am I not correct? Or is smoking the only thing that causes lung cancer? How about "black lung." Many miners get black lung and many do not smoke.

You know, Doktor, life is full of choices. Its your job to heal the sick, not bitch about HOW they got sick!

And about that "40-year-old father who cried buckets in the end": No one FORCED that man to smoke! No one put a GUN to his head to puff on a cigarette everyday!

That's pretty young for a guy to die of cancer. There has to be something else in play here. Although you won't admit it! Your just a die hard anti smoker, admit it.

I bet your bed side manner for an obese person who is dying from kidney disease is a LOT different. Well, thank God I will never have to have Doktor LUV as MY physician!

Oh yes, if your truely a Doctor, how much is YOUR hospital receiving from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation? They give huge grants to dis the smokers!

[Dr. Luv]

When I first came to FR over two years ago, I received advice from a fellow physician that, until today, I have studiously followed. "Never engage a smoker on a smoking thread. There's not one thing that you can say, not one painful experience you can relate that will make them change their minds."

How true he was and how foolish of me to think otherwise...

[SheLion]

Is that a pic of you, She??! DagGONE... Damn, Max! You mean this one??????

Yep! That's me!!!!!!

[Max McGarrity]

Second, yes, you can find smokers and drinkers who lived to a ripe old age, and health fanatics who died young, but it's worth remembering that Groucho and Churchill were prosperous enough to get the very best medical attention to prevent or cure some of their symptoms, the sort of attention that most of us couldn't afford.

Ah, yes, but most of the folks who lived to be older than anyone else in the world--8 of the oldest 10--were not wealthy and did not have the alleged benefit of medical attention, but they did smoke.(No, I'm not saying that smoking is necessarily "healthy," only that it has been tarred with a too-broad brush.) In fact, just last week an article profiled Hava Raxha who has smoked for 105 years and plans to celebrate her 122nd birthday on August 14th in the village of Shushice, in the district of Elbasan, Albania.

[E Rocc]

When I first came to FR over two years ago, I received advice from a fellow physician that, until today, I have studiously followed. "Never engage a smoker on a smoking thread. There's not one thing that you can say, not one painful experience you can relate that will make them change their minds."

People on both sides sometimes forget that the important debate, in a political sense, isn't whether or not smoking is bad. It's whether or not the government should be banning it (or forcing private businesses to), in order to "protect" us from ourselves. The same point is often forgotten in the WoD debates.

-Eric

[MaineRebel]

Personally, I don't think your a Doctor at all.

Just my opinion.

[Max McGarrity]

EVERY SINGLE DAY, I have smokers and their families sitting in my office crying when I tell them that an early death is likely. When I tell them that there's nothing more I can do. When they realize that "their habit" has caused the horrific pain that is cancer.

What do those patients and their families who do NOT smoke do when you tell them there's nothing more you can do and an early death is likely because of cancer? Jump for joy because they have nothing to blame?

Many of them were as smug as you...

I recently read in the Journal of the American Medical Association that doctors are the third leading cause of death in this country. I'll bet many of them are as smug as you...

[SheLion]

<----KNOCK KNOCK YOUR HEAD. IS ANYONE HOME???