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Posted on 11/13/2002 9:23:09 AM PST by SheLion
UK Sunday Telegraph...
Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official
Headline: Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official
Byline: Victoria MacDonald, Health Correspondent
Dateline: March 8, 1998
The world's leading health organization has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect. The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks.
The World Health Organization, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report. Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week.
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The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - inhaling other people's smoke - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups. Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that passive smoking caused lung cancer.
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The research compared 650 lung cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and those who grew up with smokers. The results are consistent with there being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer.
The summary, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, also states: "There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood." A spokesman for Action on Smoking and Health said the findings "seem rather surprising given the evidence from other major reviews on the subject which have shown a clear association between passive smoking and a number of diseases."
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Dr Chris Proctor, head of science for BAT Industries, the tobacco group, said the findings had to be taken seriously. "If this study cannot find any statistically valid risk you have to ask if there can be any risk at all. "It confirms what we and many other scientists have long believed, that while smoking in public may be annoying to some non-smokers, the science does not show that being around a smoker is a lung-cancer risk."
The one from the theoretical journal is interesting though. I particularly liked his closing comment.:
"For those of you who actually read through the whole article...As long as I'm being controversial by presenting both sides of the story, do I dare tell you that a woman is three times more likely to die from an abortion than from delivering a baby (WHO data)."
Laws commanded that Blacks be slaves, and have all nature of crimes committed upon them. Law in a dozens countries ordered Jews, gypsy’s, the cripple and lame to the death camps. Laws gave Stalin leave to kill millions.
No doubt you would of obeyed.
God when he released Abraham from killing his son, Isaac showed that even his law has limits.
Enough proof for you doesn't equate to scientific proof or enough proof for several million others.
I don't deny that nicotine CAN be an addictive substance. Some are able to resist addiction better than others. (scientific fact)
So, what's addictive for one person may not be for another. To lump all smokers into the lump of "addicted" is not at all correct and condensending as all get out.
And like another poster said, until the surgeon general changed the term "addictive/addicted/addict" ANY smoker was not considered "addicted". Since that time, chocolate is also an "addictive" substance.
But we have, up till the current antismoking explosion, allowed them to decide what was allowed in their business if it did not affect the public health and it was legal.
Until that point they WERE allowed to decide.
If unequivical proof can be given that ETS affects the public health I will agree that the govt should be allowed to decide for the business owner.
After he couldn't get out of bed and sneak into the bathroom to smoke he had us wheel his bed and him out to the parking lot to smoke. Of course he wasn't addicted. He enjoyed thme.
Two of our children never knew him and the other two miss him terribly. My wife struggles a lot with the loss of his presence at most family events. She often laments she wishes Dad could be here.
It's ridiculous that smokers in particular would be jumping on this bandwagon. Everyone I know in the Army who smokes freely admits that it adds time to their 2-mile runs and causes them to huff and puff when trying to go up large hills.
It's time for people to stop using personal liberty as an excuse for attacking the health of their children. It's a reflection of the self-centered age we live in and this is the kind of "my pleasure at the expense of all others" thinking that will drive this country directly down the toilet.
Any person being intellectually honest should be able to understand that smoke is ... get ready for this ... bad for you to breathe! It's amazing that people would attack me for this. It doesn't require detailed scientific knowledge nor a subscription to the New England Journal of Medicine to understand this. SMOKE IS BAD FOR YOU!
This is why the soldiers who were near the burning oil fields in Kuwait got sick, this is why firefighters who get too close to the action without masks get sick, and it is why people who are exposed to cigarette smoke get sick - even if they never develop any detectable cancer, their lungs and circulatory system suffer.
That said, you are fortunate. Yes, as was made clear in my previous posts, I went and did various sports before there was a custody change and I moved out and went to my dad's house when I changed schools. So I went directly from a smoking to a non-smoking household and me, my coach, and the family doctor instantly figured out why I was suddenly getting all this endurance I never had before. It was painfully obvious. For me all it meant was lousy performance on the track, but for a more sickly child the results would obviously be more severe. That's why I take this issue seriously.
Of all the freedoms I protect, the first is the freedom of American children to live happy and healthy lives. If forcing my family and friends to be inconvenienced by getting away from my kids when they're smoking and refusing to expose my kids to it irritates people, oh well. As I see it, being a good parent is not always compatible with being "cool." (Of course, fortunately, mom only lives 1.5 miles from my house, so it's easy for me to pick her up - obviously I wouldn't want to have kids and then raise them with no grandma).
Again, I'm sorry for my tone previously and for offending you. It was my fault and I take responsibility for it.
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