Majority of smokers do not have lung disease?

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by DelayedChristmas

 

You've gotta be kidding me?

We've gone from simply saying tobacco isn't bad to saying it's GOOD for your health? Now this is embarrassing to imagine folks might wander on here and see a thing like this. Thank goodness there are reasonable people around to counter such a silly suggestion.

I must say....this is a first here with the comments on this thread. I've heard many smokers rationalize their own actions by saying it isn't bad..or maybe it's only bad for some (No. only SOME die from it...it's BAD for everybody.) but I can't say I've ever heard anyone make the argument that smoking tobacco is actually GOOD for one's health.

I'd love to see any support you can post or link to with research to back this. Anything at all? Perhaps the ATS members here can analyze such evidence and determine for ourselves how credible or accurate it may be. Anecdotal evidence is totally overwhelmed by the hard fought research proving 100% the opposite.

edit on 29-1-2013 by Wrabbit2000 because: (no reason given)

Given by the tone of your response, I take it that you did not actually read my post. I will not respond until you do and look at the link I provided. Around page 170 - 177 the book provides all information that I have posted here.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


The majority of times when I edit, it is due to grammatical errors. I really do not appreciate your tone when talking to me and I must ask for you to change your tone. If not, nothing else I can do it about than to just ask.

reply to post by DelayedChristmas

You're peddling junk science like it has credbility and it's personally offensive on many levels to me after not only watching my own Father die from aggressive small cell lung cancer that tore him from the inside out, but you may actually make someone who was thinking of quitting, second guess themselves.

Sometimes, misinformation isn't just bad...it's can be directly harmful. Suggesting that *ANY* form of smoke deliberately drawn into the lungs is anything but bad is not just junk science...it fails the common sense test on the most basic level.

Now you link a book....written for retail sale.....and a self help type book at that. That isn't saying everything in the self help section of a bookstore or Amazon is bad. Far from it. However, it has NOTHING for credibility to cite as a source for data to support your claim. How about linking whatever data HE used to draw those conclusions... or as I said, any data at all. Anything solid and factually based (as opposed to profit based in a consumer market self-help publication) would do.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I'm still in the process of quitting. Good for you who succeeded!

From two packs a day, to one a day, to a half pack a day...at which point I am stuck, but still trying. There are 3 smokes a day here and there. Daily stress dependent.

I am feeling the benefits as well. Just got to get over the hump. But I find that I am also a asshole to some. My patience runs short. I don't mean to be, but that is how it is.

I have printed a rather large spreadsheet and hung it in my kitchen that says,

"You didn't need counseling to start smoking, you don't need it to quit!"

But I must admit that I am addicted to nicotine, and without it...I'm a dick.

It is a long hard road to travel.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by DelayedChristmas

 

You're peddling junk science like it has credbility and it's personally offensive on many levels to me after not only watching my own Father die from aggressive small cell lung cancer that tore him from the inside out, but you may actually make someone who was thinking of quitting, second guess themselves.

Sometimes, misinformation isn't just bad...it's can be directly harmful. Suggesting that *ANY* form of smoke deliberately drawn into the lungs is anything but bad is not just junk science...it fails the common sense test on the most basic level.

Now you link a book....written for retail sale.....and a self help type book at that. That isn't saying everything in the self help section of a bookstore or Amazon is bad. Far from it. However, it has NOTHING for credibility to cite as a source for data to support your claim. How about linking whatever data HE used to draw those conclusions... or as I said, any data at all. Anything solid and factually based (as opposed to profit based in a consumer market self-help publication) would do.

Lol. The only thing I am promoting is that if you are going to smoke, buy quality tobacco from farms that air dries your tobacco, doesn't use any pesticides, and smoke it in moderation just like how some people would rather purchase groceries from their local farmers who don't use hormones, GM animals, feed their cows grass, etc.

Second, the research that Dr. Richard Passey isn't anything that you say it is. His conclusions came from a lengthy 20 year research.

reply to post by TDawgRex

Glad to hear you're pushing the big quit button. It's a hard thing alright and long after the nicotine was finally purged I have to admit, there was another aspect people warned me about but it took living it... The Psych dependency on having something to suck on and something to play with. Now snicker away for a moment...I can't help the double meaning that carries..but I'll bet you know exactly what I mean in some ways too.

The addiction is one of the worst, I think. Of all things in life to be addicted to. (Stops short of more for T&C reasons)

You know, I will say one thing though and you may have seen me say this on other smoking threads but if not, maybe it helps? The motivation came from not just seeing my Dad die that way...but being the sole family member charged with medical decision making. When Chemo went bad....I was left with making a decision no Son should ever have to make. A nightmare come true.... As bad as it was? That isn't what made quitting possible.

I couldn't have quit WITHOUT that motivation, but I couldn't have quit by that alone either. It took patches AND Zyban combined. I'd used one and the other alone...but never combined. Taken together, one 100% removed the physical withdrawal and the other 100% removed the psych withdrawal. It was shockingly....sickeningly easy to quit once that was done. I say sickeningly ..because I'll never be able to shake the 'what if' questions about trying that sooner or.....him trying that. One of those things I hope no one else has to live through...but of course, millions will.

(Oh...and of course...always talk to a doctor since half that is a prescription thing. My Doc approved and it worked for the 2 taken together.)

Where does it say that everyone who smokes will get cancer or lung disease?
It's a proven medical fact that smoking puts you at risk for more respiratory related diseases\cancer then not smoking.

reply to post by DelayedChristmas

Then you'll have absolutely no problem linking the original research. Correct?

20 years of hard work and determined research ought to have peer reviewed papers published and studies conducted with data sheets and other quantifiable things to show the validity of the claims in his book. Surely, that can be supplied for us to see and review, can't it?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


tobaccodocuments.org...

There you go. I will edit more as I go along.

Here is information on the experiment he conducted that was mentioned in the references section of the first link I posted:
It is on page 136 - 137, I was wrong about the information being on on pages 170 - 176
"After twenty years of research, Dr. Richard Passey of London's Chester Beatty Resarch Institute reported an association between flue-dried tobacco, especially that to which sugar has been added, and lung cancer. However, he found no significant link between traditional sugar free, air dried tobacco...."

The information of the experiment is followed and I am too lazy to type it all out but I will link it again:
books.google.com... OhuG_LwguY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UpUIUY6QBLHw0QHD94HoBA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Dr.%20Richard%20Passey%20london%20institute&f=false

I also read somewhere, gonna have to find it now, that mega dose vitamin C was great in helping to quit cigarettes and other addictive things. The liposomal vitamin C thread has other great information on vitamin C.

Originally posted by sulaw
reply to post by ZeroReady

 

Is smoking bad? Well the chemicals they use are very dangerous. I will agree 100% , though makes me think, i've been smoking for at least 15 years.. Better half of my life no health issues.

So you're 30. Continue for another 10 years then we'll talk again. I'm 41 and I quit after smoking for 27 years. At 30 I used to do 20-30 km a day on a bike, walk for more than 4-5 km and was active and energetic like there was no tomorrow. But all of a sudden one day you wake up and realize smoking is taking a toll on you (add the age too) and things aren't the same anymore. You can't run the way you did as you find yourself short of breath and your knees tremble. Your heart races like crazy and you start coughing like you want to pull the damnation out of your lungs... Is very hard to quit, at least for me it was and maybe still is. I've been smoke free for little over a month now (thanks to Champix) and I think is one of the best decision in my life. I feel totally a different person. So if you think is time to quit, just do it guys, no matter what studies say, no matter what researches say...Is all about how you feel.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I did quit in Iraq for two weeks. My Command went out and bought me a carton of smokes because apparently I was a dick.

"I don't need them anymore" I said.

"Yes, you do" they said.

"That bad?"

Yep, that bad."

Chantix and Wellbutrin did bad things for me on my third tour. Patches make my skin crawl. The gum makes me puke. Next up is laser therapy. If that doesn't work, it's on to Hypnotherapy.

And if that doesn't work, I'm off on a hiking trip across the Appalachian Trail again. That little trip ran two weeks but I managed to quit for nine years (until a incident...don't ask).

I'm sure there are plenty of BigFoot stories out there that I have created by my bellowing in the middle of the night.

reply to post by DelayedChristmas

Well, it may be a bit awkward for you here, but thank you. I appreciate that document. It supports most of the argument I've been making at levels I didn't know existed in 1958 (the date of that research paper)

I'll admit that at first, I wasn't going to read the whole thing but the more I skimmed down the pages the more I realized, there was too much technical material and description to absorb by skimming. So, I did read the whole thing.

First I'll note it has some disturbing information about how animals were used in lab testing back in the 50's. How times have changed.

It's also interesting to note though that the direction for most of the paper wasn't about a question of lung cancer caused by smoking, although some of what was described was researching the extent that link was valid. It was more focused to removing what people of that time believed were only a few chemicals that caused it. The use of Palladium (among other things) as an additive to cigarettes to function as a catalyst in removing those chemicals was an attention grabber. ....and we think a pack is expensive now? Palladium itself is interesting to look up as well as their intended use of it for something to add.

(It's too bad they didn't yet know it wasn't a few chemicals...but hundreds)

Now I suppose I'm going to back off this thread a bit. You've given me a research paper I'll literally be using for years, given how far back the knowledge was assumed or known. It's depending on which lab is being talked about and he covers the work of several for the years covering the 1950's. I really hadn't looked that far back to know it was that well suspected, that early on.

Take care and thanks for at least linking valid data, to the extend 50+ year data is to debunk present day findings.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by DelayedChristmas

 

Well, it may be a bit awkward for you here, but thank you. I appreciate that document. It supports most of the argument I've been making at levels I didn't know existed in 1958 (the date of that research paper)

I'll admit that at first, I wasn't going to read the whole thing but the more I skimmed down the pages the more I realized, there was too much technical material and description to absorb by skimming. So, I did read the whole thing.

First I'll note it has some disturbing information about how animals were used in lab testing back in the 50's. How times have changed.

It's also interesting to note though that the direction for most of the paper wasn't about a question of lung cancer caused by smoking, although some of what was described was researching the extent that link was valid. It was more focused to removing what people of that time believed were only a few chemicals that caused it. The use of Palladium (among other things) as an additive to cigarettes to function as a catalyst in removing those chemicals was an attention grabber. ....and we think a pack is expensive now? Palladium itself is interesting to look up as well as their intended use of it for something to add.

(It's too bad they didn't yet know it wasn't a few chemicals...but hundreds)

Now I suppose I'm going to back off this thread a bit. You've given me a research paper I'll literally be using for years, given how far back the knowledge was assumed or known. It's depending on which lab is being talked about and he covers the work of several for the years covering the 1950's. I really hadn't looked that far back to know it was that well suspected, that early on.

Take care and thanks for at least linking valid data, to the extend 50+ year data is to debunk present day findings.

Yeah a bit awkward because you caught my laziness. It was just to confirm that Dr. Richard Passey isn't some quack and is valid. I didn't want to go searching the document for hours. The findings from experiment that he conducted with the rats is a bit shocking, especially when you look into the procedure.

He gave 12 rats 20 flue dried high sugar cigarettes a day and another group of 12 rats 20 air dried low sugar cigarettes a day.
Day 62 - 3 rats from the flue dried high sugar cigarettes group died. The rest were too weak to continue the experiment and four died almost right after. The dead rats had lung lesions and cancerous changes. The quota for the air dried low sugar cigarettes group doubled to 40 a day.
Day 251- 189 days of 40 cigarettes a day and 62 days of 20 cigarettes a day. 6 Healthy rats, 3 died of heatstroke, 2 died of undetermined causes, 1 died with an abscess near the kidney, not the lungs.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by DelayedChristmas

 

Now I suppose I'm going to back off this thread a bit. You've given me a research paper I'll literally be using for years, given how far back the knowledge was assumed or known. It's depending on which lab is being talked about and he covers the work of several for the years covering the 1950's. I really hadn't looked that far back to know it was that well suspected, that early on.

Oh and BTW, from what I posted earlier:

Prior to and during the 40's, smoking was promoted to be beneficial for one's health. Assuming from information given by people during those times, smoking was a habit a lot easier to quit than it is now. During the 40's and early 50's, this is when DDT was first being as a pesticide on the majority of crops, one crop being the tobacco plant. DDT was manufactured in a lab in the mid 30's? where the reasons for are clouded in secrecy. During the 50's, this is when scientific evidence began to surface that there were links to lung cancer and smoking. During the 50's, this is when a lot of people began feeling "sick" from smoking tobacco. Methinks the tobacco was not the cause, but the pesticides.

IF you didn't know that research was surfacing around the 50's, that leaves a lot of room for questioning.

reply to post by DelayedChristmas

Err.. Yeah.... I'm leaving this with thanking you for supplying a solid research paper (for it's time) showing the state of knowledge at that time because it really does establish the mindset among science in 1958. That's a critical thing given how frequently foks claim cigarettes don't cause cancer, even following the 1990's disclosures by the tobacco companies themselves.

If you'd like to argue that some special type or blend of cigarette/tobacco is less harmful than others...it's not a battle I'm interested in getting into. This thread already came close enough to combat for my taste, for my part in it and this is quitting while I'm ahead. A nice place to be for a change.

Now if you have modern era research papers since the tobacco disclosures during the investigations of the 90's that contradict what came to be known then and formed the basis for raping the tobacco companies blind in fines and sanctions (to fund State's general funds) I'd be very interested, as I am an open minded guy to well supported research.

However, it's really sounding like you are basically making a unique variation of the old "Light vs Non-Filter" argument for a safer cigarette. Smoke is Smoke and all smoke inhaled has some negative impact. Human biology and lung structure being what it is. Even tobacco somehow stripped of all chemicals which make it what it is.

Better, I think, to leave all this on a fairly good ..or at least neutral note than anything else though. So, I will...barring new linked data or research appearing to check out. (I'll hop back in that case. )

(I'm 100% and entirely sincere in my sentiments too... Nothing sarcastic or snarky here at all)

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


No, I am not making a variation of the light vs filter debate or whatever that is. My stance is stated in my first post in the thread:

Tobacco by itself is not harmful; it is actually beneficial in some cases. Native Americans were noted to have higher immunity from cold related illnesses from smoking pure tobacco. That being said, the Native Americans did not smoke tobacco like we do today.

What is harmful is 1. The way it is dried 2. Organic synthetic pesticides being used on the tobacco plants ( Organic meaning carbon containing and synthetic meaning man-made )

And the Native American thing wasn't an anecdote. If you cared to read the source of the information, the author presents a compelling argument between diet and smoking, which I forgot to mention a diet of high fat and sugars as number 3 on the list of what is harmful, especially high sugar commercialized cigarettes. Cancer rates in Native Americans have been increasing as they have been adopting modern society whereas before the 1920's, to find cancer within the tribes was trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.

The Native Americans also had an acidic diet containing wild fish, game, berries, etc. The blood should slightly alkaline and the tobacco, which is alkaline in nature, neutralizes that acidic diet of the Native Americans. Again, the cancer rate among the Native Americans was extremely low until they started adapting modern life style.

Smokers are even told to eat an alkaline diet to help quit smoking.

That whole thing about the lungs not being designed to inhale smoke is a fallacy. Healthy lungs are able to withstand and neutralize a lot of chemical irritants, metallic dust, air pollution, etc, and designed to do so. It is not a biological necessity TO smoke, but healthy lungs can handle it. Just as Passey's research showed, there is no correlation to smoking AIR DRIED LOW SUGAR, which isn't a blend but the way tobacco is cured, tobacco and lung cancer so obviously the lungs can handle inhaling smoke and designed to withstand pollutants in the air. Blends of tobacco are like Marlboro Lights, 27, and Reds, that opt to go through the flue drying process instead of the air dried method.

What is in question is the culmination of a bad diet, tobacco with pesticides that is flue dried, and frequent use of the faulty product.

I'll find out soon enough

Almost everyone I know smokes, only know one person who got cancer from it.

Even if those statistics are correct, 1 in 5 chance of getting a horrible disease while doing something that is very expensive, generally bad for your overall health, and completely unnecessary, is still a terrible deal.

Smokers are just slaves to a harmful addiction, there is nothing good about it.