Arwenn said:
Looking forward to the show. I hope you can address helping people over-ride the fear programs when they have watched someone they know, pass away from lung cancer ostensibly from smoking (as is the case with me). I'm sure there are a few people in the same boat as me.
Hi Arwenn
I really feel for you and understand how difficult this must be for you. To some extent, just understanding the points made in the article and on the show might help you. It is so difficult when we have all been beaten around the head with the propaganda and told that smoking causes lung cancer over and over again. But it isn't true. Let me try to put things in perspective for you.
Lung cancer, like all cancers, is a multi risk factor disease. In other words there are a number of possible causes for it, and even today, doctors do not know what triggers lung cancers to form. Genetics, environmental pollution, exposure to radioactive particles, truck and car exhaust exposure.workplace pollution, the HPV virus, obesity, diet etc. Unfortunately you would never know this, because we are so programmed that whenever we hear "lung cancer" we immediately think "smoker". I have read some documentation recently where doctors are trying to work out how to de-stigmatize lung cancer as there are many people contracting the disease who are not smokers and they suffer under the scorn and opprobrium from people who offer them no sympathy at all. Also that many people are going un-diagnosed as there is no standard screening for the disease unless you are a smoker.
Actually, it gets worse. If a smoker presents to the doctor with some sort of lung problem, the chances are greater than 90% that the doctor will automatically declare lung cancer. If the person presents with a lung problem and does not smoke, the doctor will look for any other possible diagnosis, because we all "know" that only smokers get lung cancer. In the book "Smoke Screens" the author talks about a study done by some pathologists who followed a group of patients with lung issues over ten years and got to dissect them after the died. They found that the smokers were over diagnosed with lung cancer by some 55% ( in other words more than half of them did not have lung cancer) and non smokers were under diagnosed by a similar percentage ( in other words they did have it but had not been treated for it). In some senses it is better for a smoker to not declare this to their doctor for fear of medical misadventure.
The second nasty trick the Tobacco Control people have is to declare any of the so called "smoking related" diseases to be caused by smoking. even if the person has stopped smoking for 20 years. So, person A stops smoking at 50, contracts lung cancer at 70 and automatically the smoking is blamed for the cancer. Not logical, but unfortunately a lot isn't particularly when dealing with disease causing death, and playing on people's emotions helps drive the cause - which is to drive us all to a smoke free world, whether we want it or not.
Third, as we discussed in the article and on the show, all of the studies purporting to prove lung cancer is caused by smoking are epidemiological. And in the area of tobacco control science, we are subject to the most blatant mis-truths and fraudulent behavior seen in almost any area of medical research. Research questionnaires are easy to skew to make sure you get the results you want - by the questions that are asked and not asked, by how the questions are asked, by whom the study group includes and excludes, by the size of the group etc. And they can rest comfortably in the frat that nobody is going to challenge their results and try to reproduce them - as long as they conform to the politically correct answer - that smoking is evil, dangerous and terribly harmful and nobody in their right mind should be doing it. Confirm that credo and your research will be welcomed with open arms, and more importantly, further research grants will be made available to you.
And the biggest and most glaring omission in the questionnaires is the inability or lack of desire to try to allow for any other confounding factors - genetics etc as discussed above. Then they manipulate the data with statistical models, with adjustments being made for age, income levels etc (no discussion as to how or why they are adjusting for these things). The out pops the required research answer which confirms that on this occasion smoking causes your toenails to curl and your feet to rot away, or whatever other result they want to get noticed and published in a prestigious journal.
There is a whole other area to look at, particularly in Australia where we were subjected to atomic weapons testing and detonations at Maralinga in South Australia after the war. Worldwide, between 1943 and 1969 there were in excess of 700 atmospheric atomic weapon detonations, leaving some 700 billion radioactively charged particles circulating around the world in the upper atmosphere, slowly being brought to ground level by winds,storms and precipitation. Get a particle in your lung, you will get lung cancer; get a particle on your skin, you will get skin cancer. And with a half life of greater than 50,000 years, there could be the explanation for the explosion in lung cancer cases after the war.
The last point worth noting is that lung cancer is typically a disease of old age. Most people suffering lung cancer are not young or middle aged, they are in the older age bracket. As we get older, living in this world where we are soaked in radiation, chemicals and processed foods, our bodies start to break down. For many people it is not a matter of whether they are going to dies from some unpleasant disease as much as which one will get them.
Arwenn, I hope this helps. I realise that you are facing an emotional reaction and that a logical argument is often not the way to combat that, but maybe this helps you by giving you some ammunition you did not have before and something to hang on to which is not the state fed propaganda.
(i may have to jump in the sauna while i listen to some of it live :D )
