Precisely how have you determined that I am not honest?
Dr. Luv,
Max's assertion that you are not honest is probably better expressed as the proposition that the entire medical community is not totally honest regarding smoking.
The medical fraternity has happily facilitated and perpetuated the idea that any level of smoking for any period of time so massively increases your chance of an early death that anyone who smokes must be retarded ("intellecually challenged", in PC - polite company, in the historical sense).
There is no "safe" level of smoking, as far as MD's are concerned. One smoke a month is as bad as 1,000 smokes a month.
This "dishonesty" has resulted in the present second-hand smoke hysteria, wherein people inhaling the odd whiff of smoke believe their health is seriously at risk.
A further "dishonest" ommision by the medical community is the proposition that cancer is not one disease, but over 200. However, virtually every cancer known to man (bar those now shown to be due to viruses, polyps, radiation, etc.) are sheeted back to smoking, so long as the patient is a smoker. If the patient is not a smoker, the cancer is from "causes unknown".
Various mechanisms have been suggested to explain why smokers should develop cancer at a greater rate than non-smokers in areas of the body not directly exposed to smoke. However, when a smoker looks at the studies to do with, for example, penile cancer for which smoking apparently increases risk, the additional risk from smoking is approx. 0.005% greater for smokers than for non-smokers. Yet, these "scientists", who increasiningly rely upon study-specific grants to pay their rent and therefore require some positive results in order to have their funding continued, seem to go unchallenged and even congratulated by the medical community.
Is it any wonder, therefore, that smokers begin to believe that clinicians are prepared to applaude dubious, inconclusive and sometimes downright fraudulent (eg. EPA 1993 SHS study) "research" in the belief that such approval and bastardisation of the scientific process is justified because....wait for it - the end justifies the mean.
I am an educated, intelligent individual who smokes. I recognise there are risks involved in my behaviour. Part of that risk is that I may have a greater chance of visiting one of your colleagues in future and being given some bad news (but, then, were I not to smoke I would still have a significant chance of that - 1 in 3 if statistics are to be believed).
So, the "dishonesty" of which Max speaks is not necessarily personal dishonesty on your part, but a perception which smokers have garnered by the medical profession's participation and acclaimation of dubious and exaggerated risks of both active and passive smoking over the last couple of decades. It does your credibility no good in our eyes and, eventually, not in the eyes of the general public, either.
For one thing, you bring anecdotes, and expect it to be believed and it is, trouble is when we use anecdotes, they are just that ANECDOTES....... not to be taken seriously.