Cigarettes?

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CSIRO wrote:
One cigarette might give you cancer. One dose of second hand smoke can give someone cancer.


Paoletti301 wrote:
Thats is so far off of how cancer works its humorous.

cancer isnt a switch that gets turned on, and cigarettes are not filled with "cancer seeds"


First of all, my quote from a highly regarded scientist (Australia's top government scientist), as I said the person in this role at any given time are not given over to spinning the truth. You partially quoted me there, and seemed to miss this point.

Obviously cigarettes contain carcinogens - cancer causing chemicals (about 40 of them AFAIK) so these can indeed be like "cancer seeds" - I like your analogy IMO I think it is a good one.

Once a cell becomes cancerous, it can reproduce with the new cells also being cancerous, so your analogy of "cancer being a switch that is turned on" is also a good one.

Having said that, I am not sure (is anyone?) why some people can smoke all their lives before they die of a smoking caused heart attack at age 75, while others die of lung cancer (or a whole list of other cancers) at age 25 after having smoked for 1 year.

I would like to know what your version is of how cancer starts & progresses.
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First of all, my quote from a highly regarded scientist (Australia's top government scientist)


that doesnt mean anything. americas surgeon general also says SHS is harmful. but the source (EPA) has been dismissed by the scientific community

there are people who have smoked for years upon years without getting cancer or other smoking related disease.

my point is smoking cigarettes is not a cancer guarantee, which is what that quote suggests.

cancer has much more to do with genetics and the bodies ability to repair itself

http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/life-at/med-talks/why-do-smokers-never-get-lung-cancer.html
@Paoletti301
That's not even remotely what that quote suggests. You seem to be deliberately misinterpreting it---in other words, constructing a strawman. It's extremely clear that all it says is that you can get cancer from any amount of exposure to cigarette smoke, because that's almost word-for-word what he fucking said. Every cigarette contains carcinogens and every carcinogen carries a small chance of developing cancer.
Paoletti301 wrote:
that doesnt mean anything. americas surgeon general also says SHS is harmful. but the source (EPA) has been dismissed by the scientific community


But these guys (the CSIRO) are part of the scientific community. They are not politically appointed or influenced by politics, and nor do they get involved in politics, they are simply the government science & research agency. They don't get involved in policy, they just do research & present the facts. Unlike politicians, they don't go around making controversial statements, because they think it's fun. I think this applies to people like the US Surgeon General as well.

I think we need to look carefully at the first part of the statement, partial quoting can give rise to a wrong conclusion :

CSIRO wrote:
..... there is no safe exposure level for tobacco smoke....


"Safe level of exposure" means that no one will harmed. There might be some people whose bodies are better at coping with or repairing damage, but it is not safe for everyone

So it is not a cancer guarantee, more a guarantee that you are not 100% safe from disease if you smoke.

Of course there are others things in one's life that involve risk, such as driving a car, or mountaineering say, but I imagine that 33% (see below) is a much bigger risk than other things, unless one considers things like being a soldier in Afghanistan for example.

americas surgeon general also says SHS is harmful. but the source (EPA) has been dismissed by the scientific community


I think it would be worth seeing the text of what they all actually said. One has to be careful about 1 sentence summaries in a debate. Not saying your are completely wrong or anything, it is just that I might get a slightly different impression reading the same material.

With the article you linked :

[quote=Article by Joan Schiller, MDProfessor and Chief, Hematology/Oncology](About one in three smokers will die of a smoking-related illness—lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, etc.)[/quote]

Well, that doesn't look like very good odds to me. What about the people who have a Smoking Related Illness that isn't fatal? What are the stats if you include them? My sister has some asthma symptoms because our mother smoked during the pregnancy, and I have reduced lung function for the same reason. My brother in law has a form of Leukemia (probably from smoking weed) that means he will probably live only for another 25 years, and my mother has been affected by bronchiectasis for the last 40 years, who knows whether that will be a contributing factor in her demise? Even if it isn't, that is 40 years of non-fun symptoms.

What about other people who have had their lower leg amputated because of gangrene which came from the peripheral vascular disease - directly related to smoking?

Quite clearly, smoking is not a healthy thing to do. I am hoping you all knew that already.
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we are not talking about smoking here, we are talking about second hand smoke. smoking during pregnancy for the baby is absolutely horrible for the child, thats obvious. smoking by yourself is bad for you, also obvious. walking by someone smoking in a park is essentially harmless, and thats what im talking about here, not smoking in general, but second hand smoke.

EDIT:you seem to be thinking that im saying smoking is harmless, and thats not true. the point im trying to get across here is that most countries battles on second hand smoke is wrong, and that forcing people not to do something thats legal is also wrong.
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Paoletti, you glanced over the four posted articles without much regard for their content, since they show that women who live with husbands that smoke get these diseases that are fairly common on their own. However, I recommend reading the full content of these studies (four of which are free, by the way. One of them requires payment to read).

http://www.bmj.com/content/308/6925/380?view=long&pmid=8124145

The study shows that, based on risk factors presented by the patients due to the environment of which they lived in, the actual rate of which they contracted this particular heart disease was significantly higher than the other risk factors would account for in any possible way (as measured by the control group). In other words, the increased risk could only be due to the single variable that is changing- secondhand smoke. Yes, this is a correlation and thus suffers from issues of validity, but it should not be immediately disregarded because of that. In fact, the fact that the study isolates it down to a single-variable difference almost removes all lack of validity.


http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10654-013-9785-z/fulltext.html

This study doesn't quite have the same interaction with the patients, but rather relies on previous survey data. However, this study accounts for active smoking and the timing of which the patients stopped smoking. This study also accounts for people who simply enter several smoke-filled rooms on a daily basis, rather than simply living with someone who is a smoker. Again, the study shows that there is an increase in the rate of heart disease in those exposed to passive smoke frequently, regardless of previous smoking habits. However, the validity is questionable due to both survey and correlation methods.


http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/83/1/1.full.pdf

This is less of a study and more of a paper explaining 10 studies done before the EPA study. This paper also has a rather fascinating quote:

"Much of the evidence for this link has appeared since 1986, when the US Surgeon General and the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the evidence
on the health effects of ETS. Based on the information available then, both reports concluded that the evidence linking ETS and heart disease was equivocal and that more research was necessary before any definitive statements could be made."

Emphasis mine. Note that the only conclusion of the EPA study, as explained in this paper, is that more data was made. This completely refutes the notion that the EPA fabricated results to attack smokers. The results were completely irrelevant- it was the 10 subsequent studies that show that secondhand smoke has health consequences, not the EPA study itself. Silly me, wrong study. This one was referencing a study done by the surgeon general, not the EPA. The rest of the paper goes into depth of those ten studies, showing exactly how they show the extreme effects of secondhand smoke on lifespan.


Next time, don't just gloss over several provided studies as "correlation" concerns. There is clearly more substance to these than you give credit of.

As an added note, the last study posted that seemed to refute the others:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2001639/pdf/brjcancer00518-0095.pdf

was written the exact year of the surgeon general's study. In other words, this study calls for more research which is then done so in the other mentioned studies.
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Ah well, smoke is smoke - if it gets into your body, it has the same potential to cause trouble, never mind where it came from.

Paoletti301 wrote:
walking by someone smoking in a park is essentially harmless, and thats what im talking about here, not smoking in general, but second hand smoke.


Are you sure? May be the problem here is that there might not be any studies yet to prove it either way. So in this respect we might be speculating. However I would still back the view that it is more likely to be harmful than not.

This is because we have the null hypothesis of breathing clean air versus breathing smoke & air of variable dilution. Common sense tells me the latter would be more harmful. But, how harmful? Given the definition of "Safe Level of Risk" mentioned earlier, I would rather not be exposed.

A big thing is that it should be the right of the non smoker to not be exposed, and that is the whole idea behind various legislation.


Hey Guys well i think that smoking is a bad kind of habit.And its also bring much diseases like its harmful and biggest enemy of your health.Thanks!!
@markspend

indeed, i wouldnt recommend it
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