I’m an infrequent reader of this blog, but I’ve found it open minded about climate change.
Not my topic. I’m more interested in addressing those who have posted regarding the certainty that smoking causes lung cancer: (To deny this is, of course, is to state that the earth is flat.)
To those of you who are so utterly convinced:
Have you ever read even one of the Surgeon General’s reports? (There are 30, some over 1,000 pages long.) Ask your doctor, has he/she ever read even one of these? I suspect not. (But I might be wrong.)
Have you read any of the American Cancer Society, British Doctors, etc. underlying studies that allegedly “proved” that smoking causes lung cancer? I suspect not. (But I might be wrong.)
Have you read critiques of these studies? Some funded (horrors!) by The Merchants of Death, but many not, and all in contrast to “pure” scientists funded by the government (public health) and “charities” like the American Cancer Society. Again, I suspect not. (But I might be wrong.)
Smoking is said to cause over a dozen types of cancer, and emphysema and bronchitis, plus heart disease and stroke, and those are just some of the fatal diseases. Smoking is also said to cause blindness (macular degeneration), hearing loss, erectile dysfunction, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, wrinkled skin, snoring, and – my own favorite – “apple-shaped weight gain.” (There are easily 100 diseases linked to smoking – cigarette smoking. One of the embarrassments of the “smoking causes” theory is that the statistical association between tobacco and disease generally doesn’t apply to cigars and pipes.)
The case against smoking is almost entirely statistical. Despite decades of trying, other than mouse painting experiments (“…the wrong material, in the wrong form, in the wrong concentration to the wrong tissue of the wrong animal…” R.C. Hockett, 1968), attempts to create disease in animals by exposure to smoke have been a bust. From the start (1950, the first studies on lung cancer) the theory assumed that chemicals in tobacco caused disease; sixty years (and 100 “smoking related” diseases) later, no one has identified any chemical that causes even one of the smoking related diseases. (Reliably, as in viruses cause influenza – and by the way, influenza is a smoking related disease.)
Since this blog is primarily a debate climate change, I won’t try to morph it into a debate about tobacco. I will, however, link to some documents. (And I hope the links don’t blow this comment out of the water.)
SG reports can be downloaded at the Center for Disease Control http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/reports/index.html.)
For a statistical critique of the reports, read Burch: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/hms61f00 He’s talking about the 1982 report which uses the same “rational” as 1964. (As is typical, Brownlee’s 1965 paper (cited by Burch) is still – 17 years later – ignored by the SG.)
For the other side, Lilienfeld on Burch: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/lyh05c00
Burch’s response: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/gms61f00
If you find Burch persuasive, try Brownlee: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/zgb2aa00 T. Sterling (oft paid by the tobacco industry) is also worth a read http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/jgo56b00 And, what the hell, back in the beginning, R. Fisher http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/zrd91f00
I don’t know that I’ll post here again and debate with people. (I might, but it would be a real long dispute.) I will suggest, however, that you read the SG arguments, and the critics, and decide for yourself who had the better arguments. The case against smoking might not be quite as definitive as most people believe.