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Let's see-- who causes more deaths in the U.S., smokers or doctors?

Smokers. By far.

For doctors:

44,000 to 98,000 deaths per year

The wide variablity in numbers reflects the controversial nature of such estimates. Additionally, these numbers are far outweighed by the net number of lives saved by medical treatment. Surgical treatment of acute appendicitis, by itself, probably saves more lives each year.

For smoking:

440,000 deaths per year

Why did you even bring this up? It's patently ridiculous to imply that smoking is anything other than our most serious preventable public health hazard.

-ccm

and it's also a major insult to the doctors who spend many hours and energy to save lives.
While I am amused by the raging hysteria of the article and some of your posts as well, the point that needs to get through is that life is a God granted gift and we should be looking to enhance it-not take it away from ourselves, our friends and our children.

Get over it. You live you die, 100% certain. Look at the daily obits in your paper you see people from just born to over 100 years old. All dead. Everyone dies and they never know when, you of healthy lungs may be a victim of a boulder falling across a road while driving minding your own business (see the post somewhere on this site). You ever build model airplanes, Testors cement will kill you, ever breathe car exhaust, that will kill you too, the same with fumes from that summer barbecue or the burning of autumn leaves. You eat food with free radicals, kill ya, booze, kill ya, ice cream, kill ya.

You want protected from lifes hazards build a bubble room and live in there but wait better build a strong wall so no truck can run off the road and crush you, no electric either, don't want you electrocuted, no water, might drown, no food, might choke and you just may be allergic to the peanut shells used as filler in some detergents, so no wash for you and clothes are out too, synthetics you know contain some of the same chemicals as smoke, don't want those against your skin, no sun, skin cancer, get a genetic test too might have some genetic killers in the bloodline, so no kids either.

We start to die the day we are born and there isn't anything you can do about it. You will probably lose more years to worry than second-hand smoke of any type. You should enjoy life, let God roll the dice.

I'll give you an example, my Pop, everything was bad, smoking was bad, drinking was bad, sex was bad, sitting around was bad, music was bad, everything, and he did it on 2 planes the health plane and the religious plane. He spent his whole later life like this. I never smoked around him out of respect and always hid them anyway to avoid a lecture and this was when I was in my late 30's. I never ate around him because I could never eat right according to him.

Well he died at age 85 from heart disease BUT at 75 he was struck with dementia and lived his last 10 years as a plant. Now I wonder how much he would have gave to have spent some of his lucid years sitting in a smokey bar trading war stories or having a Bud with his sons, What would he have given to have spent a few days sitting around fishing with us, smoking a good cigar and talking about the grandkids. It didn't happen, he was so concerned about living long he didn't have the time to live at all.