Obama Creates Thousands of New Jobs

Independent Individualist ^ | 6/15/09 | Reginald Firehammer

[CottShop]

what about hte resports of increased risk of lung cancer, emphasema, copd, tumors etc? I’m a smoker, and certainly not agaisnt msoking, but isn’t htere pretty hard evidence showing the icnreased risks for breathign diseases such as mentioend above?

[Teflonic]

I read through the articles and if they are legit then I'd have to say that those not predisposed to cancer may benefit from smoking, so a very small percentage.

[CottShop]

Well that may be true- but I think those predisposed to cancer might infact be a large percentage of smokers (myself included most likely- not that I’m goign to give it up- but oh well) Not sure what hte ratio of presdisposed to non predisposed is, but many peopel do die each year to cancers that may not have arisen as early in life had they not smoked it would seem- but hten again- who knows- perhaps other environmental issues were at play causing hte cancer- but smokers lungs are quite gooped up with tar and gunk, and that can;’t be good? As well, there is reported incidence of lung tissue damage due to the hot vapours from smoking over time? All I know is that I do enjoy smoking for htem ost part cept for hte breathign problems (it doesn’t help my asthma- makes it more difficult to breath for me)

I think probably it does help a significant number of people, but I do htink it is infaxct dangerous for those predisposed to cancer or lung problems and high risk folks like myself who have asthma (it might help some forms of asthma, but perhaps not all forms?)

I know smoking causing typing mistakes :)

[kevao]

I recently ordered my fist electronic cigarette.

Me, too. Four days now without smoking a cigarette. Sorry, I meant, "analog." LOL.

[betty boop]

...don't smoke or you'll die from cancer or heart disease; don't go out in the sun or you'll get skin cancer and die; don't drive without a seat-belt or you'll have an accident and die. Does no one think that perhaps it is not too good for you to be terrified of every blessed thing that exists?

LOLOL! It is so true that "The leftist nanny-state just cannot bear the fact that some people are actually enjoying their lives doing what they hate." At the very least, folks who do the things the nanny-staters hate will be made to pay.... Dontcha know the "experts" know better than we do what is "good for us," and will work tirelessly to try to save us from ourselves? Whether we want them to or not?

I just wish these ninnies would get a life.... And stop living vicariously through mine.

To me, there is something morbid about an excessive preoccupation with health. Plus something's got to kill you. You might as well enjoy your life as you see fit while you have it. Plus people who do so tend not to be the ones who nitpick and meddle in the lives of others.

Very interesting essay/post, Hank! Thank you so much for putting it up.

[Old Professer]

Interesting

[CottShop]

[[To me, there is something morbid about an excessive preoccupation with health.]]

We need a government ‘health Czar’ to tax people who over-worry about being healthy because htese people are giving themselves health problems thatr affect ME financially! They cause our insurance rates to rise! Let’s go after these inconciderate dolts!

[listenhillary]

Oh the hilarity.

Another Moron Ping.

24 posted on Thursday, June 18, 2009 10:19:25 PM by cranked

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Cranked seems to be the street lingo of someone high on methamphetamine. And you’re knocking cigarettes? Curious...

[Flying Circus]

Under normal circumstances the natural human reaction is to avoid smoke. We naturally know that sucking fumes from burning material is bad for our lungs. Everyone who has even tried smoking knows how they had to fight down the coughing reflex to start their habit. The nasty stuff found in smokers’ lungs and reduced breathing capacity is pretty straightforward evidence that cigarettes are doing bad things.

What most smokers fail to realize is how filthy and awful they smell to non-smokers. Much of my family smokes and I after I visit them I have to hold my nose on the way to the washing machine and everything my mother sends us has to be washed multiple times to get the smell out. Every surface in a smoker’s home and car is coated in brown gunk and feels grimy- even in fastidiously ‘clean’ smokers’ homes. I grew up in that stuff, when I’m in it it seems normal, but get a little distance and it is disgusting.

This crud justifying smoking is about the equivalent to pot heads and heroine justifying their own habits. Nicotine junkies are no different that any other addict is their desperate need to justify themselves and drag others down with them.

I don’t agree with attempts to bad cigarettes or even tax the heck out of them, but let not kid ourselves that the habit is any healthier than any other addiction. I don’t want to pay your medical bills either.

[betty boop]

We need a government ‘health Czar’ to tax people who over-worry about being healthy because htese people are giving themselves health problems thatr affect ME financially! They cause our insurance rates to rise! Let’s go after these inconciderate dolts!

LOLOL!!!!!!! Yes: Their (i.e., smokers) bad behavior hurts me, me, me: It's always about MEEEEEE....

That's why we have to "socialize all risk," dotcha know!!! In short, the nanny-staters are not the least bit worried about what smokers are supposedly doing to themselves; what they really want is to show that what smokers do as individuals causes the whole society to suffer in some way. On that pretext, one can justify the penalization of any behavior one happens to personally dislike, and regulate just about everything under the Sun....

It's the rare person who sees what a "shell game" this is, and what it aims at: the complete devaluation and erosion of individual Liberty on the pretext of some fictitious "General Will."

Evidently dear CottShop, you are one of those rare persons. And I'm with you.

[Rashputin]

I understand your perspective and admit it's nasty to those who don't smoke. If you want to talk addiction, though, don't forget the Government being addicted to the revenue. If half the smokers in the country quit this week, next week they'd be crying about the shortfall in revenue and deciding whether it was better to tax sugar or coffee to replace it.

Whatever the rationale, the real reason this is done is to raise revenue and there's no end in sight to the things they can declare unhealthy and increase revenues with.

Regards

[Alamo-Girl]

In short, the nanny-staters are not the least bit worried about what smokers are supposedly doing to themselves; what they really want is to show that what smokers do as individuals causes the whole society to suffer in some way. On that pretext, one can justify the penalization of any behavior one happens to personally dislike, and regulate just about everything under the Sun....

Indeed. Evidently that's the plan.

Thank you for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

[betty boop]

Indeed. Evidently that's the plan.

INDEED!!!

[nightlight7]

what about the reports of increased risk of lung cancer, emphysema, copd, tumors etc? I’m a smoker, and certainly not agaisnt smoking, but isn’t there pretty hard evidence showing the increased risks for breathing diseases such as mentioned above?

There is evidence, but it is all of the soft kind, the statistical correlations on non-randomized sample (just like web polls). Such 'soft' evidence only indicates that smoking is a factor within some complex web of causes and effects with 'smoking related diseases'. It doesn't tell you what role smoking played in that web of causes and effects.

For example, tobacco smoke nearly doubles three key antioxidant and detox enzymes in human body: glutathione, catalase and SOD (no one knows which of 10,000+ chemical components of tobacco smoke do that). All industrial or environmental toxins you are exposed to are neutralized and removed by these enzymes. Since tobacco smoke will nearly double your detox rates, if you are exposed to industrial toxins or if you are sensitive to them at typical exposure levels, you will feel relief from smoking and have greater motivation to smoke than someone not exposed or less sensitive. Consequently, smoking becomes statistical marker for exposure (or genetic sensitivity) to industrial or environmental toxins (or similarly for other hardships), which themselves cause 'smoking related' diseases.

Hence, this association is no different than observing that people taking blood pressure and cholesterol lowering medications will have more heart attacks in coming years than those not taking them, or that people wearing sunglasses will have more sunburns than those not wearing them. While sunglasses and sunburns are in the same web of causes and effects, the sunglasses not only do not cause sunburns but they protect your eyes and skin around them from sun exposure. It is precisely because of their protective role against the cause of sunburns (sun rays exposure) that they associate with any harm caused by sun rays exposure, such as sunburns. Whenever you see media or pharma drug peddlers leap from such associations to causal relation, you better hold onto your wallet, since are a target of a junk science scam.

The statistical correlations on non-randomized (self-selected) samples of subjects (smoker, ex-smoker, never-smoker) by themselves, no matter how strong, consistent and universal still only imply that smoking is node in some complex, largely unknown web of causes and effects in which smoking related diseases are terminal nodes. That's all it tells you. It doesn't tell you anything about where in that complex web of causes and effects (largely unknown, uncharted and unquantified by researchers) the smoking node fits, let alone that smoking node must have a positive causal feed into the disease node. None of that follows from any observed correlations on non-randomized (self-selected) samples of subjects {smoker, ex-smoker, never-smoker}.

There are at least three models which could give rise to such correlations (i.e. there are at least 3 configurations in this web of causes and effects):

A) Smoking causes 'smoking related' diseases.
B) Smoking is protective/therapeutic against these diseases or their causes
C) There is some common factor(s) CF which causally contributes to these diseases and to smoking

Antismoking "science" simply declares that only model (A) exists, hence that is the explanation, period, debate over. For normal science the debate just begins at this point. The findings of correlations, implying models (A), (B) or (C) are a mere hint indicating that one or more of these three models is the mechanism behind the correlations. The correlations on non-randomized samples simply lack resolution to discern the picture beyond this whole set and to single out any of them as "The Explanation". It is the task of the much sharper instruments of hard science (experiments, randomized intervention trials) to zoom in and find out how is the web of causes and effects, underlying the observed correlations, laid out, what nodes connect to which others and how do causal effects flow between them.

Indeed, that's how the research proceeded in the very early phase of antismoking "science", back in early 1950s (the real start was actually in 1930s Germany, motivated by Hitler's antismoking hysteria; he is the spiritual father and the role model of our present antismokers). Hard science projects were funded, researchers got busy, smoking machines were humming, puffing hard on all their pipes, tens of thousands of lucky mice, rats, hamsters, dogs, monkeys,... got free cigarettes, all they can smoke, plus several times more,... All went as it should in normal science.

But then, as the first results started coming back, the sudden dead silence fell over the lands of antismoking -- all the results went the "wrong" way, the smoking animals did better, much better, in every way and from every angle they looked at. Nothing worked. Whatever poor scientist did, even pushing the smoke concentrations right up to the edge of asphyxiation, day in day out for the full lifespan of the test animals, they simply could not cause harm by the inhaled tobacco smoke. The smoking critters, always ended up living longer, staying thinner, sharper, tougher, happier... however they twisted it and tossed it around.

This ancient medicinal miracle plant, the 'most precious gift of gods' as shamans understood it in ages past, like a kind of Asimov's robot software programmed into the biochemical networks of the tobacco plant by 'ancient gods' of sun, earth and fire eons ago, simply would not do harm to its master, no matter what. It's just that good. Well, heads were rolling, new teams were brought in, still no luck.

By 1958, the mathematical genius and father of modern scientific statistics R. A. Fisher, noticed the dead silence and subsequent squirming in the land of antismoking "science" and called their bluff (pdf):

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But the time has passed, and although further investigation, in a sense, has taken place, it has consisted largely of the repetition of observations of the same kind as those which Hill and his colleagues called attention several years ago. I read a recent article to the effect that nineteen different investigations in different parts of the world had all concurred in confirming Dr. Hill's findings. I think they had concurred, but I think they were mere repetitions of evidence of the same kind...

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Well, here we are, half a century later since Fisher threw the gauntlet, and antismoking "science" is still stuck in that same statistical hint loop, churning more and more correlations on non-randomized samples.

As for hard science, the experiments, that's still a no go region, a part of the town you just don't go to. See the 2005 survey of experimental field by the authority in this field, S. S. Hecht (discussed also here), with his funny euphemism for the persistently "wrong" key outcome that he refuses to name (increased longevity in smoking animals) "which complicates the interpretation of data." (p. 1489), insisting that to avoid the above "complication" that "The 4 month recovery period is absolutely necessary", i.e. what he is trying to say, but just can't get it out, is that to make sure smoking animals don't end up living longer, forcible abrupt quitting must be imposed. As to why the forcible quit makes it "work", he said "the reason for this is not clear" (it is quite clear, but he can't say it otherwise outraged smokers would string him and his paymasters on the nearest pole). If you look the dramatic survival graphs of NCI experiments brought up earlier, or this one on mice from 2005 (and similar one from 2004 on rats), the reason is pretty clear -- otherwise, the smoking test animals live longer and stay thinner, hence you can't claim with straight face that smoking caused harm to their health.

[cranked]

Your so....um, inciteful when it comes to making deductions on online names, better yet, mocking those you have no clue about. Does that take talent or is that simply a genetically honed malfunction? Curious...

[metmom]

Smoking is good for you, and everyone who believes it isn't believes that for the same reason they believe in global warming--they have swallowed the government lies.

You keep telling yourself that. While I suppose that anyone has the right to kill themselves anyway they want, they can leave me out of it.

/flame suit on...

[CottShop]

Thanks you VERY much for that detailed post night- I’ll have to read it htrough tomorrow though- but briefly, reading a few paragraphs, it would seem there might be other circumstances at play in lung diseases as well, which I suspect might be the case too in some cases.

I NEVER understood how the smoking Nazis came up with hteir ‘second hand smoke’ rules and mandates, especially in OUTDOOR places like parks etc- what a crock of crap those laws are! Heaven forbid someone standing 20 feet away get a dirty particle or two of nicotine, or some chemical- They might develope full blown emphasema that very evenign for gosh sakes! people breath more crap in parks from cars goign by than we woudl EVER breath from smokers enjoying their breaks 20 feet away

Anyway- I’ll read the rest of your post tomorrow- again, thank you very much for such an indepth response

[metmom]

What it is, the nicotine?

It could be. Caffeine is supposed to help with asthma as well, as it is a stimulant. It's supposed to do something to the airways and I know people who managed asthma attacks with coke.

[metmom]

My mother had part of a lung removed because lung cancer; my father is on oxygen for the rest of his for emphyzema.

Everyone who I know who has emphysema smoked. I'm watching my f-i-l slowly suffocate from emphysema and he only smoked lightly for a few years. My b-i-l got emphysema before he was 50.

Sure it's good for you......

[metmom]

Believe in global warming too, don’t you? It’s “proven” by the very same science as proves tobacco harmful.

Just like the science that *proves* evolution happened, eh?