Smoking causes lung cancer conspiracy?

[edit on 4-2-2005 by harrisjohns]

According to Jeremy Narby, Ph.D., a Stanford U. anthropologist, “It seems clear that nicotine does not cause cancer, given that it is active in the brain and that cigarettes do not cause cancer in the brain, but in the lungs, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, rectum, kidneys, and bladder, the organs reached by the carcinogenic tars, which are also swallowed.”

These tars are loaded with additives (aluminum oxide, potassium nitrate, ammonium phosphate, polyvinyl acetate, etc.), which are what would be causing the cancer cases. It is cigarettes that have additives, so the problem is avoided by buying the pure stuff in a tobacco shop and rolling your own (for which a cigarette-rolling device can be used).

Mild smoking of pure tobacco might even be a healthy habit since nicotine raises the hemoglobin levels in the bloodstream (and helps to strengthen the immunological system), and "this is why it is important for doctors to know if their patients smoke, because then they can discount abnormally high red blood cell counts as being an artifact of smoking and NOT a pathological condition", says a professor of hematology.



[edit on 12-2-2005 by Macrento]

It's quite obvious there is no direct evidence of this.
Of course there is evidence to suggest that those who smoke cigarettes are ''likely'' to be struck down by lung cancer, coronary heart disease and so on....


*Take 10 smokers, who have smoked for roughly the same length of time (lets say 15 years for arguments sake).
*Compare the effects of smoking in each subject, effects on internal organs, skin, teeth, etc.
Ohh what a suprise.


Cigarette wreath for 105 year old smoker
Link here

Fairly old but still worth a little read! Blah..time for a smoke~


[edit on 12-2-2005 by SteveG]

[edit on 12-2-2005 by SteveG]

Hey Smokinjoe. There's more to this. Our freeways are covered with brake dust. Asbestos, beryllium copper, phenolics... and petroleum combustion products, carbon, rubber, crystalline silica and so on... then we race by, billowing invisible clouds of this stuff for the guy behind us to- ahhhhh, breathe in with all that Old Tyme Indian Tobacco and Strontium 90. Finally we get home and shower in chlorine gas (if ya ain't got a filter).

Industrial society provides the hypercarcinogens, Tobacco takes the rap.

You are so right on. Thanks.

[edit on 12-2-2005 by Chakotay]

If lung cancer isn't scary enough, how about emphysema? 80% of all cases of emphysema are caused by smoking, and I can tell you from being around people who have had this disease, it isn't pretty.

www.cnn.com...

Also, perhaps the reason why there doesn't appear to be a smoking related health epidemic in Japan is because the government is the majority owner of the largest tobacco company, Japan Tobacco. It is essentially a national company--perhaps there is a bit of obsfuscation of the facts about lung cancer deaths. Also, what about stats for emphysema? A WHO study found that doctors in Japan were significantly underdiagnosing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)--the prevalence rate for the country's population has been revised to 9.1%. It is estimated that over 5 million people in Japan have COPD--which is directly attributed to smoking.

www.seedplanning.co.jp...
www.google.com...:jLYiK8GmqnYJ:newmedia.winmarcompanies.com/view/copd/docs/copdfacts04.doc+copdfacts04.doc&hl=en

Because the warnings on cigarettes in Japan are a lot less ominous ("Please take care to avoid excessive smoking since it could damage your health") and tobacco companies play down the risks, there have been attempts by smokers who have gotten smoking related diseases to sue JT, but the courts didn't allow the suits. In one case, in an unprecedented move, the judge presiding over the case, a non-smoker, was replaced with a smoker, and then the case was dismissed. Politically-motivated, perhaps?

www.japantimes.co.jp...
www.japantimes.co.jp...

"...new zealand where there as been stringent anti smoking campaigns since the 80's, where such a small percentage of the population smoke - why are the cancer rates so high? "


um, new zealand has 4 million ppl.
1 million of us are smokers.
25 percent, that's a lot
Roughly 1 in 3 kiwis get cancer in their life.

Originally posted by sevastra
um, new zealand has 4 million ppl.
1 million of us are smokers.
25 percent, that's a lot

25% of all adults (where have the children gone

Originally posted by sevastra
Roughly 1 in 3 kiwis get cancer in their life.

Looks like a fair bit of Plutonium dust floated down from the pacific tests, eh?

-smokinjoe