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."
Denial is a wonderful thing. It lets you kill yourself while bringing physical and emotional damage to loved ones all so you can indulge in selfish behaviors and look yourself in the mirror every morning.
Too bad. It wouldn't have happened if smokers were not so darn selfish about their "right" to smell up the air we breath. Someday, if you quit, you will understand what we are talking about. Until then the political, economic and social forces will continue to march the smokers into the corner. If they were more considerate the process might stop but they are not.
And yet the insurance actuaries price smokers premiums as if they were 3-4 years older on average. Stay in denial. It really doesn't matter to me except at least err on the side of caution with your kids and don't smoke in the same room/car with them.
FWIW, I don't need a study or an expert to tell me what my nose is smelling. The smokers smoke is awful and I don't want it near me. If they were even partially aware of how objectionable they are they too would be wanting it banned.
cinFla is correct. As a smoker of many years, many years ago, you have no clue as to the smell. It really is quite nauseating. And for us ex-smoekrs its also very understandable to us that smokers don't understand. We had no idea either.
Having quit smoking, they feel most superior and need to flaunt it and because of their neurotic fear response they get nausesous at the slightest whiff of shs, proving once again that we have become a nation of wimps and crybabies.
Sounds right to me.
Calling every true conservative, every person here who understands the evil behind the anti-smoker jihad, every smoker and nonsmoker who wants to get the government out of our private lives...November 21 is the day proclaimed The Great American Smokeout (GASo). Let us all carry an unlit cigarette wherever we go and watch the frantic hand waving and pinched faces of the antis we encounter. It's the day to thumb our noses at this encroachment on the liberties of one in four of our friends, neighbors and family.
BE A POLITICAL NICCER FOR THE GAS! Spread the word.
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