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."
I sincerely hope it is a real study, but I'm skeptical.
I think your right, Joe!!!
I sincerely hope it is a real study, but I'm skeptical.
They keep this stuff swept under the rug so the general public doesn't become aware of it. Just like the Federal Court throwing out the EPA study on second hand smoke! How often do you see THAT! Oh no! The anti's do not WANT us to see the truth.
Federal Court Rules Against EPA on Secondhand Smoke
Too much money to be made for them to ban smoking everywhere. But........the Truth Will Out!
I think it's in the best interest of us all to bookmark this, or at least copy and paste it into our Word for future reference!
It's a real study. It's been yanked from the net. Any thoughts on why? eh?
I have a few thoughts!!
Oh! I will FIND it. Never fear. Or one of us will.! Don't lose heart.
Poor babies!
If any of you smoke around your kids, you should be jailed! I personally suffered more grief than I can tell you due to the fact that I lived with two chainsmokers (had no choice, I was a kid!) in a small apartment for 10 years. Second hand smoke hurts peoples' lungs more than you could imagine!
I was hacking and wheezing whenever I tried to play football or even do a 1 mile run in P.E. class. The physician who examined me was convinced I had asthma, and I was put on a steroid-based inhaler medication for years! (Strangely, it never helped - I wonder why?!?!?) This could have kept me out of the Army!
But lo and behold, as soon as I am moved out within a few months I am running 2 miles in under 13 minutes! Please don't destroy your kids' lungs. If you have to smoke, do it outside and don't make them the victims! This is still a source of tension between my mom and me... I have told her that when her grandkids arrive they will not be visiting her house if I can smell even a trace of tobacco there, and that more likely she'll just have to come to my place. I won't screw up my kids' health on the basis of any studies, that's for sure!
Ahhh. That's called pychopathic neurotic panic attack.
A good psychiatrist should be able to help.
Specially if merely the odor of burning tobacco does it; You know, one part per quadrillion?
While the body of the article went on and on about the dangers of second-hand smoke the footnote stated that the increased danger was statistically insignificant! In fact, it went on to say the drinking raw milk was more dangerous to your health.
I've been trying to find this article again for quite some time.
Well, in this day and age, I am not sure where you go that you have to be around cigarette smoke anymore. Most restaurants have non-smoking sections. There are no smoking in theaters, ever. No smoking in Super Markets or the Post Office. Or Elevators. Or Government Buildings. Where do you go that you are exposed to smoking?
Clubs? Private clubs? You know there will be smoking there and also in bars. Concerts? Most are outside. No smoking in doors at a concert because of the fire code. I am just confused about where you have to go to put up with smokers.
As for asking someone in public to put out a cigarette, is a bit inconsiderate. When your in a public place, the public is all people's. If you see someone smoking on the street, just cross the street. Smoker's are as considerate as can be, unless they are trampled on and treated poorly in a smoking section of anyplace.
As for your spitting in someone's face: do you have aids? That could be a REAL health problem. I'd take breathing in second hand smoke ANY DAY to having someone's body fluids hit me.
Good for you! I grew up with a smoker, and my husband and I both smoked for 35 years. I was given less than a year to live in 1998 because of lung cancer, and thanks to God and some excellent doctors and a special diet, there is no trace of it to date.
But even if you don't get cancer (and you may need to have a specific gene or something) you sure do damage to your lungs and those of people around you. The medical profession calls it Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and it can kill you just as surely as lung cancer.
Carolyn
If any of you smoke around your kids, you should be jailed! I personally suffered more grief than I can tell you due to the fact that I lived with two chainsmokers (had no choice, I was a kid!) in a small apartment for 10 years. Second hand smoke hurts peoples' lungs more than you could imagine!
I was hacking and wheezing whenever I tried to play football or even do a 1 mile run in P.E. class. The physician who examined me was convinced I had asthma, and I was put on a steroid-based inhaler medication for years! (Strangely, it never helped - I wonder why?!?!?) This could have kept me out of the Army!
But lo and behold, as soon as I am moved out within a few months I am running 2 miles in under 13 minutes! Please don't destroy your kids' lungs. If you have to smoke, do it outside and don't make them the victims! This is still a source of tension between my mom and me... I have told her that when her grandkids arrive they will not be visiting her house if I can smell even a trace of tobacco there, and that more likely she'll just have to come to my place. I won't screw up my kids' health on the basis of any studies, that's for sure!
If anyone of us smokes around our kids we should be JAILED? And your an AMERICAN SOLDIER? Who's rights are YOU fighting for!
Your getting a little nasty to me, so don't mind a little retaliation, ok?
My husband is a Viet Nam Vet. TWO Purple Hearts. Thank God he lived to bring them home. My husband was and IS a smoker. Our parents smoked as well as our grandparents before us.
We gave birth to a beautiful baby healthy 8lb 12 oz girl. She grew up, she smokes, and she recently gave birth to a strong, beautiful healthy baby boy! As parents, we never "blew smoke" in our baby's faces! But growing up in a smoking household has prevented her AND us and all people that we know that smokes with children, never to have contacted asthma.
You grew up in a "small apartment with two chain smokers." Why, as a kid, were you inside all the time? Most kids I know can't wait to get outside to play.
Guess what? I was a professional dancer. I started smoking at age 16 and started dancing when I was 8, and danced until I married at age 26. Smoking never ever slowed me down. (And surely not breathing my parent's Second Hand Smoke!) Not once. When a person eats right, exercises, smoking is not going to hinder you until you become an elder.
Your going to deprive your mom from seeing her grandbabies just because she smokes?! I think your mom is better off without you. I'm sure your mom would have the good grace not to smoke around your kids, but just because you can SMELL it in her HOUSE! Yes, she is better off without you, Soldier Boy!
Now you're REALLY talking about overcrowding the prisons.
Don't talk to me about going to jail for smoking around kids. It's easy to tell that you already have an ingrown bias.
Doesn't make it a RIGHT? Since when is it not a right to use a legal commodity?
When you make statements that have no basis in fact, you appear an idiot.
That's ok. Those of us that have been following this study understand what is going on.
Sorry I couldn't provide that link yet, but when it's pulled from the Net, it's very suspicious that they don't want the truth to be known out here. But we will find it!
Here is a link to the abstract of the study, originally published in the Jounal of the Nationall Cancer Institute:
Multicenter case-control study of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and lung Cancer in Europe
This was one of the largest, most comprehensive studies done. It was done by the International Agency for Reasearch on Cancer. (IARC)
I am awfully sorry to hear about your tragic passing, upon whiffing cigarette smoke and subsequently dying of asphyxiation.
By the way, how did you type your post, being dead, and all?
You're right, the exaggeration of risks of second-hand smoke doesn't "make smoking a right". Smoking is, by default, a right already, unless reason can be given for why it shouldn't be. One such reason, for example, could have been: because second-hand smoke causes cancer. But, if that risk is exaggerated, then....
What version?
Thanks again!
I wonder how THEY feel about the smoke from YOUR steak???
Oh wow. I have a whole list of athletics I used to do, even as a smoker. Some people, especially today, with all the anti-smokers trash out there making the general public half afraid to leave their own homes, is getting WAY out of hand.
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