Rose has been turning up a lot of interesting stuff in recent days. From the Times:
Pollution blamed for lung cancer in people who have never smoked
August 12 2017
“Lung cancer rates among non-smokers have doubled over the past decade amid concerns that high levels of air pollution lie behind the rise, a study shows.
The number of lung cancer deaths among people who have never smoked will overtake deaths from smoking- related cancer within a decade if the trend continues, according to the UK’s largest cancer surgery centre.
Researchers worry that this shift would make the condition, which is the deadliest form of cancer, even harder to diagnose and treat in time. There are 46,400 new cases and 36,000 associated deaths in Britain each year, and only one in 20 patients survives for more than ten years.”
From China:
Lung cancer rising, but not from smoking
August 11, 2017
“Chinese health authorities are trying to figure out the reason for the rapid rise in a form of lung cancer that develops deep in the lung and is not associated with smoking.
China has seen a sharp increase in the disease over the past 10 to 15 years, hitting groups traditionally not susceptible such as women and nonsmokers, said Xue Qi, deputy director of thoracic surgery at the Cancer Hospital Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, also the country’s National Cancer Institute.”
From California, in 2010:
Many Lung Cancer Patients Stopped Smoking Years Before Diagnosis
2010
“July 14, 2010 (Los Angeles, California) — Much of what people think they know about smoking and lung cancer might be wrong, according to findings presented here at the 11th International Lung Cancer Conference.
For example, many if not most patients with a history of smoking quit decades before. In a retrospective study of 626 people with lung cancer treated at a tertiary-care facility in Southern California, 482 (77%) had a history of smoking. Of those, only 71 patients (14.7%) were still smoking at the time of their diagnosis. Of the remaining 411 patients, 245 (60%) had not smoked for a mean of 18 years, 8 of whom had quit 51 to 60 years earlier. The other 166 (40%) had stopped smoking within 10 years of their diagnosis.
“Sixty percent of our cohort developed lung cancer despite doing the right thing by stopping smoking over 1 decade ago,” according to the researchers.
These findings contradict the popular perception that most people with lung cancer are ongoing smokers who did not kick the habit until cancer symptoms appeared, the researchers note”
I’m not in the least bit surprised. I’ve been of the view for some time that nobody really knows what causes cancer, and so it doesn’t surprise me that “health authorities are trying to figure out the reason for the rapid rise,” and “much of what people think they know about smoking and lung cancer might be wrong.” The only heartening thing is that at least some people are starting to admit that they don’t know what’s causing it.
But if smoking isn’t to blame, is it likely that air pollution is any more to blame? I’m reminded of the movie In The Heat Of The Night, which I happened to watch again last night, in which the town sheriff, played by Rod Stieger, investigating a murder, keeps jumping to conclusions and announcing that he’s found the culprit, starting with a black homicide detective, played by Sidney Poitier, who’s passing through town. It’s essentially the same story as the investigation of the causes of cancer over the past 100 years, in which the case is always being closed. Somebody has to be found to pin the rap on, and found as quickly as possible.
Personally I rather like my own “succession” theory of cancer, which relies entirely on an ageing process in which gaps appear between cells as they die, much like clearings appear between trees in an ageing forest when trees die or fall down, and in these spaces fast-growing cells can multiply very rapidly, much like undergrowth in a thinning forest, spreading from clearing to clearing. There’s nothing in particular to blame for it: it just happens when things age. It explains why cancer is strongly associated with old age. And if we have a cancer epidemic these days, it’s because a lot more people are living a lot longer than they used to do. And it’s as good an idea as any other, if nobody knows what causes it.
Another one from Rose:
Diesel Exhaust Exposure in Miners Linked to Lung Cancer
2012
“For never smokers and light-to-moderate smokers, the risk of lung cancer death increased with more diesel exhaust exposure. Non-smokers with the highest level of diesel exposure were seven times more likely to die from lung cancer than non-smokers in the lowest exposure category.
In contrast, among miners who were heavy smokers, the risk of lung cancer death decreased with increasing levels of exposure.”
“The researchers offered possible explanations for the tapering off of risk at high levels of diesel exhaust exposure. Heavy smokers might be more likely to clear diesel exhaust particulate matter from their lungs than non-smokers, a phenomenon that has been reported previously among coal miners who smoke.”
Slightly off topic from a week back:
Health officials: Plus size models as bad as promoting smoking
Health officials in Australia have expressed concerned over “drastically overweight” models being “glorified” on the runway.
The Australian Medical Association NSW President, Brad Frankham, told the Daily Telegraph he believes it sends a dangerous message that’s as damaging as promoting models who are severely underweight.
What business is it of doctors to tell people what they should look at?
I couldn’t help hoping that there’d be a fad for overweight models (after all, there was a fad for underweight ones like Twiggy back in the 1960s) – purely to spite the health zealots.
Better still would be overweight models, gleefully smoking cigarettes and munching cheeseburgers as they lumbered up and down the catwalk. The health zealots would be apoplectic.
Frank Davis 
From behind the Times Paywall:
—————————————————————————————————-
thetimes.co.uk
Pollution blamed for lung cancer in people who have never smoked
Oliver Moody, Science Correspondent
August 12 2017, 12:01am, The Times
The number of lung cancer deaths among people who have never smoked will overtake deaths from smoking-related cancer within a decadeTOBY MELVILLE/REUTERS
Lung cancer rates among non-smokers have doubled over the past decade amid concerns that high levels of air pollution lie behind the rise, a study shows.
The number of lung cancer deaths among people who have never smoked will overtake deaths from smoking- related cancer within a decade if the trend continues, according to the UK’s largest cancer surgery centre.
Researchers worry that this shift would make the condition, which is the deadliest form of cancer, even harder to diagnose and treat in time. There are 46,400 new cases and 36,000 associated deaths in Britain each year, and only one in 20 patients survives for more than ten years.
Lung cancer has overwhelmingly been linked to cigarettes, which caused about nine out of ten cases. As smoking rates have fallen to a record low, however, specialists at the Royal Brompton Hospital and Harefield NHS Trust in London have seen a substantial increase in the number of operations they are performing on non-smokers.
Other researchers said they had yet to see any sign of the trend, and there is little rigorous national data on whether lung cancer patients ever smoked. However, a similar rise was recently identified by three big hospitals in America. Eric Lim, a consultant thoracic surgeon, said he was confident that his team had identified a new and troubling phenomenon.
Between 2008 and 2014 the number of lung cancer patients treated at the centre remained constant at about 310 a year, but the proportion of people who had never smoked climbed steadily from 13 to 28 per cent, rising from fewer than 50 never-smokers to nearly 100 a year, 67 per cent of whom were women.
Mr Lim said that the reasons for this change were unclear but air pollution was a strong candidate. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified fine particles such as soot as a carcinogen, and Cancer Research UK estimates that pollution accounts for 3,500 cases of lung cancer each year. Another possible explanation is better detection of tumours through scans for other diseases.
Mr Lim said the rise of lung cancer in people who had never smoked could lead to a higher death rate because it was harder for doctors to spot the disease early without the red flag of a cigarette habit. Even now only 21 per cent of cases are diagnosed by GPs, compared with the 35 per cent that are discovered at accident and emergency wards.
The Royal Brompton group plans to launch the first clinical trials of a “liquid biopsy” blood test next year that could catch fragments of DNA shed by lung cancer months or years before the most serious symptoms appeared.
Some experts argue that the study, which involved 2,170 patients and is published in the European Journal of Cancer, is too small to be truly reliable.
Stephen Spiro, a former head of respiratory medicine at University College Hospital and an honorary adviser to the British Lung Foundation, said: “There is no good evidence that lung cancer is becoming commoner in never-smokers.” He added: “Lung cancer will become more frequent in never-smokers as a proportion, as smoking cancers begin to decline.”
Mr Lim stood by his findings, saying that Britain was not good enough at monitoring lung cancer rates to have spotted the trend.
Lung cancer has overwhelmingly been linked to cigarettes, which caused about nine out of ten cases. […] Other researchers said they had yet to see any sign of the trend, and there is little rigorous national data on whether lung cancer patients ever smoked.
So how did they determine that 9 out of 10 cases were caused by cigarettes if there’s little rigorous national data on smoking status of lung cancer patients? :))
2004
“These are not just lung-cancer deaths. Brankin’s toll includes every Scot who has died of “smoking-related complaints.” To get into that category alleged victims of smoking do not need to have smoked. They are counted in on the basis that killers including heart disease, strokes and bronchitis can be caused by smoking. Nobody checks the lifestyles of the victims to ascertain that they did smoke.
Some of these dead Scots did smoke, but died at or beyond the average Scottish lifespans of 73 years for men and 78 years for women. The same applies to many of the 140,000 English men and women whom the leading anti-smoking charity, ASH, asserts die each year as a result of smoking. ASH justifies including them on the grounds that deaths from smoking can follow years of painful disability and are thus worth preventing, even if they have not technically shortened a life.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/smoke-screen-533346.html
Some of these dead Scots did smoke, but died at or beyond the average Scottish lifespans of 73 years for men and 78 years for women. The same applies to many of the 140,000 English men and women whom the leading anti-smoking charity, ASH, asserts die each year as a result of smoking. ASH justifies including them on the grounds that deaths from smoking can follow years of painful disability and are thus worth preventing, even if they have not technically shortened a life.”
Who can take ASH seriously these days? Deborah Arnott et al claim that non-smoking 80+ year olds have no “painful disability”? I regret not being able to ask my never-smoking mother about this, she died at the age of 86 back in 2009 – I’d have reserved a seat in the first row as not to miss any of the spectacle!!!
Looks like ASH et al are grasping straws to stay afloat.
Excellent question, Vlad! Yet another bit of evidence that the statistics put forth by Tobacco Control are complete fabrications.
It would be interesting to discover how much research has gone into curing lung cancer over the past 20 years relative to funding research into other cancers. I suspect that with the advent of Public Health’s obsession with smoking, lung cancer was looked upon as a smoking disease and thus unworthy of serious investigation and investment. Now that the general public are becoming aware of what most of us have known for years i.e. diesel fumes are a (if not “the”) major contributory factor, will anyone be held to account over the possible lack of investment?
My surgeon said there was no money in lung cancer, perhaps things will improve now but I think all the concentration on smoking as the sole cause meant no one was looking for other causes. It will be hard to change that mindset as TC will never admit they might be wrong. Since my own dx I have lost six friends to lung cancer, two long term current smokers, three never smokers and one who gave up about 20 years before dx so who knows?
“Sixty percent of our cohort developed lung cancer despite doing the right thing by stopping smoking over 1 decade ago,” according to the researchers.
Despite doing the right thing? It rather looks to me like they were propagandised and hectored into doing exactly the wrong thing. These fresh revelations about increasing numbers of non-smokers getting LC as smoking rates go down rather suggests that smoking was never the ’cause’ of lung cancer in the first place, and that the bedrock foundation of anti-smoking (that ‘smoking gives you lung cancer’) was a delusion right from the word go.
I’ve suspected as much ever since I realised how many inconsistencies there were in the Doll and Hill studies. The discovery that causation has never been proved in the laboratory further increased my scepticism.
Smoking has been a useful and very profitable scapegoat for governments around the world. It will be interesting to see how they and their anti-smoking lobbyists spin this latest news. Because spin it they will. They can’t allow anyone to think that TC was wrong all along.
Yet the evidence mounts that tobacco control was wrong. Then question is were they knowingly so and imposing steps toward prohibition based on their biased agenda.
I think they were indifferent to whether they were correct or not from the very beginning, imagine not bothering to find out all the chemical components of the plant and not even looking at comparable edible plants in the same family before coming to a conclusion.
All they’ve ever had is one plant chemical and a mysterious composite of the rest that they named “tar”.
What’s in a cigarette?
Tar (road surface tar)
http://web.archive.org/web/20090106012619/http://www.pfizerlife.co.uk/SmokingWhatsInACigarette.aspx
And that wasn’t one of Simon Chapman’s, they were using that one when I was in school.
Heh! Yes, I remember the ‘anti-smoking lecture’ by some health wonk when I was in school (must have been about 1964) with what I now know were a set of ‘realistically (black) coloured’ pig’s lungs as the central display piece.
Rose, Nisakiman, I, too, remember being shown the painted lungs – and one of the lads then saying: “That’s scary stuff. Need a cigarette now…”
The anti-smoker showing us the video must have left the class room in despair.
Yes, outright propaganda equating tobacco residue (or total aerosol residue) with road tar.
I had an old medical book years ago and on the cancer pages it said, Cancer is discovered once it reaches the lung, even though it started elsewhere sounds logical but i dont know
When the Doll study was published in 1953, there was a large debate as to whether the rise in lung cancer was caused by smoking or diesel (tarmac was also cited). This is why it was not until 1963 that the Royal College of Physicians endorsed the Doll study. I once knew a man who worked in the omnibus industry from the 1950’s (before good ventilation in the bus depot). He was diagnosed with throat cancer in the 1980’s. This of course was blamed on him smoking. Rubbish
2008
Bus workers file suit against diesel companies
“For 32 years, Connor Hartnett worked in bus depots throughout the city with little or no ventilation. Diesel fumes from hundreds of idling buses were so thick he often couldn’t read the identification numbers on the vehicles.
“There were times you couldn’t see the buses,” said Hartnett, 73, who retired in 1992 and now has inoperable lung cancer and a heart condition.
Yesterday, Hartnett and 17 others filed suit against diesel engine manufacturers, claiming that exposure to the particulate matter in the emissions caused their severe illnesses. Hartnett’s attorneys estimate that he was exposed for 42,960 hours during his time as a bus driver and shifter. Other in the case had more exposure, like mechanics Vincenzo Mancio and Joseph Ganz, who are now deceased from cancer and heart problems and are represented by family in the law suit.
At the end of his shift Emidio DeStefano, 71, drove his bus into the back entrance of a depot he worked at for 20 years at 126th Street near the East River. He and the others then had to walk the length of the massive structure, some three blocks, to the other side. It was a slow walk because he often had to squeeze between the buses parked cheek by jowl. “There was no air whatsoever,” he said. He said they complained to supervisors but nothing was ever changed.
Today he has throat cancer. All the doctors at the hospital ask him, how many packs a day do you smoke. “I never smoked in my life,” he said.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20090330173714/http://www.amny.com:80/news/local/transportation/am-bus0819,0,6550452.story
Reblogged this on Contra la ley "antitabaco".
By 1971 TC really had the bit between their teeth and didn’t like any opposition to the theory, which was unfortunate for this gentlemen who clearly still thought it was all about science.
A brief extract from The Cigarette – Enemy or Red Herring?
By Dr. Geoffrey Myddelton
“The other theory is that the increase in lung cancer has been due to motor exhaust fumes; which are known to contain carcinogens, especially those of the diesel engine. I estimate roughly that the petrol engine is only about 6 % as dangerous as the diesel, and that if one adds.6 % of the petrol used to the diesel fuel consumed on the road’s in each year, one gets a graph of the huge rise in carcinogenic pollution of the atmosphere in Britain in the last 50 years .
If the curve of the rise in male lung cancer mortality is plotted beside it, one can see that there is a close relationship between them.
I believe that this correlation is more than mere coincidence.
The diesel’ theory needs to be thoroughly investigated’ by a crash programme of research, and the cigarette theory needs to be checked and the figures on which it is based audited by independent statisticians.
The cigarette theory has been used as a red herring to distract attention from the horrible pollution of the atmosphere by the diesel engine. all we’ve had up till now has been a flood of propaganda and the virtual suppression of all criticism and discussion.
I appeal to the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians to have the courage to support a fresh and unbiased investigation.
Somebody dies of lung cancer in England and Wales every 18 minutes. I believe that a complete mis-diagnosis of the cause of the increase in lung cancer has unfortunately been made, and that suffering humanity has the right to a second opinion.”
https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=mgff0115
“He was trying to read an unscheduled paper on “‘The Cigarette — Enemy or Red Herring?” and it became obvious that he felt cigarettes were being used as a scapegoat for alleged dangers of diesel engine fumes.” – at the 2nd World Conference on Smoking and Health in 1971 and got booed and clapped down for his trouble.
Of course, mobs always shout down dissent. Tobacco control is essentially a totalitarian mob.
“He was trying to read an unscheduled paper on “‘The Cigarette — Enemy or Red Herring?” and it became obvious that he felt cigarettes were being used as a scapegoat for alleged dangers of diesel engine fumes.” – at the 2nd World Conference on Smoking and Health in 1971 and got booed and clapped down for his trouble.
Over the last few years I’ve often come across papers about diesel fumes (also chromium industry!) causing lung cancer. And I observed an (?anti-smoker driven) ignorance/occasionally ridicule about both.
The british government in recent weeks has announced via the bbc news that it is heavily investing into battery cars, conveniently forgetting that Lithium supply is not endless.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/is-there-enough-lithium-to-maintain-the-growth-of-the-lithium-ion-battery-m
The U.S. Geological Survey produced a reserves estimate of lithium in early 2015, concluding that the world has enough known reserves for about 365 years of current global production of about 37,000 tons per year (Figure 1). Current production goes to a little over one-third for ceramics, almost one-third for batteries, and miscellaneous uses for the last one-third. The same report finds about 39.5 million metric tons of “resources,” which is a less firm category than “reserves.” “Resources” include supplies that could feasibly be extracted economically at some point in the future, whereas reserves estimates refer to current economic viability.
Even though 365 years of reserve supply sounds very comforting, the point of the EV and stationary storage revolutions is that current demand will shoot up, way up, if these revolutions do happen. The 100 Gigafactories scenario could come true. And if that happens, the 365-year supply would be less than a 17-year supply (13.5 million tons of reserves divided by 800,000 = 16.9 years).
We need to be aware of the lack of ability of politicians to think ahead more than 4 years.
The ‘Diesel Exhaust Exposure in Miners Linked to Lung Cancer’ article has been removed from the DCEG web site, Frank.
No doubt Rose has posted this here before (apologies if so) but from 1998:
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/diesel_lung_cancer.html#.WZRDSvmGPcs
The link still works for me.
https://dceg.cancer.gov/news-events/linkage-newsletter/2012-07/research-publications/diesel-exhaust
Oh cool. The page couldn’t be found when I clicked on it earlier.
Dr Kittle Little contacted Rothman’s with her findings in 1984 but they weren’t interested because of her distrust of the medical establishment.
“Dr. Little is very “anti” the medical establishment and appears to have been “pensioned off” because she disagrees so strongly with the establishment’s view on a number of issues including the alleged health consequences of smoking.
Although her view that the increase in the incidence of lung cancer has been caused by the increase of the use of diesel engines can not be supported by the available evidence Dr Kitty Little is not a “crank”- she is extremely knowledgeable and is highly articulate – her antagonism towards the medical establishment does appear to cloud her judgement and she believes that scientific knowledge is, on occasions suppressed for ulterior reasons.
In the circumstances, I do not she would be suitable as a “third party” to put the case for smoking in public debates therefore did not raise this possibility with her. However, I believe she would welcome any opportunity to express her views in public and her name should remain “on file”.”
But luckily for us, in those files is a piece entitled “Cause of the Increase in Lung Cancer – Available Evidence”
Diesel – page 16
“One would have expected the results of such definitive experiments to have been published by 1957 or 1958, or by 1960 at the very latest.
Instead, publication of papers on the subject suddenly ceased; funds for research on the effects of diesel smoke were withdrawn; lawyers issued instructions on how to confuse a court should an action for damages be initiated; and articles on diesel fuel tended to have the unsupported statement “diesel smoke is harmless” as a frequent non sequitor.
If it had not been for this cut off of information, together with the brainwashing techniques of the anti-smoking campaign, all lung cancer of the type under discussion could have been eliminated by now.
The cut off of information about the carcinogenic action of diesel smoke seems to have coincided with the availability of final proof that smoking was not, and could not be, responsible for the rise in lung cancer; with an acceleration of the campaign to make industrial nations more dependant on oil as a source of energy; and with the EEC decision to rely primarily on road transport for the carriage of industrial products.”
https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=nyvb0208
Why do I only see glaring spelling mistakes when I’ve posted?
Why do I only see glaring spelling mistakes when I’ve posted?
Where? copy&paste here.
the evidence that smoking is not the actual cause of lung cancer has been steadily growing despite efforts to obscure other causes. The early evidence that diesel fuel and other vehicle and industrial emissions were the actual cause was strong but suppressed. The tobacco controllers are still doing their best to suppress the evidence lest their power and profit erode. It is essential that the evidence about the actual causes of lung cancer and other so-called smoking related diseases be widely disseminated. Tobacco control must be destroyed.
@Rose
That last link has some interesting stuff. I’ve read Dr Little’s article on her diesel theory and not much else, but in your link I found something that interested me, which I hadn’t seen attributed to her before:
(r) People who are “coronary risks” are less likely to have a coronary if they are habitual smokers, provided they are not subjected to anti-smoking propaganda.
(s) Although smoking does not increase the likelihood of people getting coronary heart disease, anti-smoking propaganda does, when it introduces fear, apprehension and worry.
And of course the medico-porn we have imposed on us by TC is specifically designed to introduce ‘fear, apprehension and worry’. As are all the anti-smoking campaigns. It would be interesting to know just how many people have died as a result of this ‘nocebo’ effect. If Dr Little is right, then the anti-smoking movement are directly responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of premature deaths.
She is of course arguing from the point of view that in her opinion coronary heart disease is largely caused by stress, which is something that I, as a layman, have thought for years. Likewise I think stress is a large contributory factor in cancer also.
They have recently done a meta-nalysis on suicides but strangely enough haven’t considered the relentless pressure from government anti-smoking campaigns, loss of status, loss of social life, extortionate taxation and nocebo effects of packaging and anti-smoking adverts popping up unexpectedly on TV
Smoking and Suicide: A Meta-Analysis
2016
Conclusion
“There is sufficient evidence based on the current epidemiological studies that smoking is significantly associated with an increased risk of suicidal behaviors. Therefore, smoking can be considered as a contributing factor for suicide, although this association does not necessarily imply causation.”
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156348
So I think that you are probably right.
“Lawrence Walker, 61, barely went out when cigs were barred from his local pub.
Friend Robert Lye said: “He felt insulted to have to stand outside and smoke.
“We think the ban killed him. He was so depressed about it he hardly went out.
It made him very solitary.”
Mr Walker, of St Columb, Cornwall, leapt to his death from cliffs at Porth beach, Newquay, in June. Coroner Dr Andrew Cox recorded a verdict of suicide.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/taxman-kills-himself-over-smoking-363784
That should read – They have recently done a meta-nalysis on suicides but strangely enough haven’t considered the relentless pressure from government anti-smoking campaigns, loss of status, loss of social life, extortionate taxation and nocebo effects of packaging and anti-smoking adverts popping up unexpectedly on TV as a confounder.
I need more coffee.
It is very plausible that stress is a causal factor in heart disease…and it has been proven in the lab, unlike with smoking. https://archive.org/details/tobacco_cow27a00 (at about 5:20 mark). Going with this assumption, I can think of 2 ways that smoking is beneficial…1. by reducing stress 2. by providing nitric oxide which opens up the arteries (the effect behind Viagra). Another effect of NO is angiogenesis, the creation of new blood vessels.
Mental stress induces transient endothelial dysfunction in humans.
2000
“BACKGROUND:
Mental stress has been linked to increased morbidity and mortality in coronary artery disease and to atherosclerosis progression. Experimental studies have suggested that damage to the endothelium may be an important mechanism.
METHODS AND RESULTS:
Endothelial function was studied in 10 healthy men (aged 50. 4+/-9.6 years) and in 8 non-insulin-dependent diabetic men (aged 52. 0+/-7.2 years). Brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD, endothelium dependent) and response to 50 microg of sublingual glyceryl trinitrate (GTN, endothelium independent) were measured noninvasively by use of high-resolution ultrasound before and after (30, 90, and 240 minutes) a standardized mental stress test. The same protocol without mental stress was repeated on a separate occasion in the healthy men. In healthy subjects, FMD (5.0+/-2.1%) was significantly (P:<0.01) reduced at 30 and 90 minutes after mental stress (2.8+/-2.3% and 2.3+/-2.4%, respectively) and returned toward normal after 4 hours (4.1+/-2.0%). Mental stress had no effect on the response to GTN. In the repeated studies without mental stress, FMD did not change. The diabetic subjects had lower FMD than did the control subjects (3.0+/-1.5% versus 5.0+/-2.1%, respectively; P:=0.02) but showed no changes in FMD (2.7+/-1.1% after 30 minutes, 2.8+/-1.9% after 90 minutes, and 3.1+/-2.3% after 240 minutes) or GTN responses after mental stress.
CONCLUSIONS:
These findings suggest that brief episodes of mental stress, similar to those encountered in everyday life, may cause transient (up to 4 hours) endothelial dysfunction in healthy young individuals. This might represent a mechanistic link between mental stress and atherogenesis."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11076819
The 30 minute Heart Attack Claim
New Study Shows McDonalds Meal Causes Same Degree of Endothelial Dysfunction as Brief Tobacco Smoke Exposure; Anti-Smoking Groups' Claims are Flawed
Monday, August 20, 2007
"The study casts into serious doubt the widespread claims of anti-smoking groups that 30 minutes of secondhand smoke exposure causes hardening of the arteries, atherosclerosis, heart disease, decreased coronary artery blood flow, strokes, heart attacks, and death. These claims are based largely on the Otsuka et al. study, which showed that brief secondhand smoke exposure causes endothelial dysfunction – as measured by a reduction in coronary endothelial-dependent flow-mediated dilatation – in healthy nonsmokers.
Here, however, we see that simply eating a single high-fat meal – even a seemingly healthy one – also causes endothelial dysfunction and to same extent as a brief exposure to secondhand smoke. Since it would be absurd to claim that eating a single high-fat meal causes hardening of the arteries, atherosclerosis, heart disease, decreased coronary artery blood flow, strokes, heart attacks, and death, it is equally absurd to make the same claims for a single, brief secondhand smoke exposure."
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/new-study-shows-mcdonalds-meal-causes.html
She is of course arguing from the point of view that in her opinion coronary heart disease is largely caused by stress, which is something that I, as a layman, have thought for years. Likewise I think stress is a large contributory factor in cancer also.
Stress is something interesting. Whilst short bursts of stress on occasion is nothing to worry about, constant stress kills just like you kill an engine running constantly on top performance.
I have observed many, many people who had heart attacks. They all had been “under pressure” one way or the other. What was the first advice the medics gave? Stop smoking.
The anti-smoking industry built a wall, chipping it away will take time.
Didn’t the Whitehall Studies identify a link between stress and heart disease (and discount the smoking link)?
For example: “The two major smoking-related diseases of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease also followed the inverse association.”
Marmot, M.G., Shipley, M.J., and Rose, G., 1984. Inequalities in death – specific explanations of a general pattern? Lancet, 8384, 1003-1006.
I agree, i smoked for 50 years before dx. My husband died very suddenly no illness and no warning. My immune system collapsed for months after, I thought I would never be well again. This seems to be when the cancer started. After surgery seven years later I am fine and still smoking. I know several people who developed cancer after an traumatic experience. Stress definitely plays a big part in the development of cancer.
It crossed my mind a few years back that we must know the smoking status of every single person that is diagnosed with lung cancer and yet I have never seen them published for the UK. Why not?
The CDC did for 2004 and it turned out that 20% current smokers, 20% never smokers and 60% former smokers. Given that 20% of the population in the US were current smokers (2004) it is hardly a convincing case for stopping smoking. And puts a lie to the idea that smoking causes 9 out of ten lung cancers, it cant even be true that it causes as much as 8 out of ten lung cancers.
Many to most of the studies that link smoking or shs to disease had no information on whether the actual subjects smoked (let alone how much) or were “exposed.” They simply applied other population stats of smoking rates to the study at hand. In other cases, whre the question was actually asked, the old “100 cgts in a lifetime” made the subject a smoker.
Maybe the Chinese lung cancer rate has increased due to their having more money to buy foreign brands which contain more pesticides?
They were traditionally heavy smokers in a high proportion of the populace but had a low rate of lung disease.
I remember reading that lung cancer decreased in Britain when they got rid of steam engines so maybe it’s related to pollution.
No. From the article Frank quoted above:
The commonality amongst all these recent reports from around the world is that the incidence of lung cancer is rising in never-smokers. Believe it or not, they’re actually admitting it has nothing to do with smoking.
Maybe the Chinese lung cancer rate has increased due to their having more money to buy foreign brands which contain more pesticides?
As Joe pointed out,
Chinese health authorities are trying to figure out the reason for the rapid rise in a form of lung cancer that develops deep in the lung and is not associated with smoking.
Also, the foreign brands (as all tobacco plants) of tobacco plants require little care. Just the right conditions to grow.
Diesel fumes are different.
Isn’t it remarkable that every (albeit idiotic) straw is being used for justification for people who have been taught to believe that smoking is the MAIN (if at all!) cause of lung cancer?I remember reading that lung cancer decreased in Britain when they got rid of steam engines so maybe it’s related to pollution.
I’m sorry, Richard, you need to go into more details here. What exactly do you mean?
@ Richard.
Tobacco is essentially a closed shop in China, accounting for 98% of cigarettes consumed there. Most of the 2% that’s not Chinese are sourced from places where cigarette prices are lower than China, with N. Korea doing rather well in that sector.
rfa.org/english/news/korea/cigarettes-04032013155714.html
Foreign brands would very much like to tap into this market, but the State run monopoly is pretty much dead set against that.
The article’s just over a year old, but helps clarify the thinking behind
http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2016/06/28/why-china-has-banned-foreign-investment-in-the-tobacco-industry.html
What’s also of interest is the fact these Chinese brands are making very big inroads into markets where the average wage is very low. And – as is the case in Egypt – where the WHO has an office, the authorities have banged up taxes.
http://www.thearabweekly.com/Opinion/3376/Chinese-imports-prove-costly-to-Egypt
It’s just one para:
“Egypt’s national tobacco maker, Eastern Company, has incurred millions of dollars in losses because of more than 122 cheap Chinese cigarette brands smuggled into Egypt every year, according to Abdo’s forum.”
It’s a source of great frustration to me watching the governments in less developed countries suck up to those international bodies, sometimes to get loans and stuff, but sometimes just to be seen to be conformist and responsible. Yet at the same time being woefully inept at getting the basics right in their country.
Of course that’s not unique to the 3rd world, we do it quite well too, with our juvenile belief that giving 0.7% of our wealth created to overseas development is accepted and used exclusively for the purposes intended. Like the Ethiopian Spice Girls getting £5m.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/19/ethiopian-spice-girls-given-5m-british-foreign-aid-despite-previous/
One thing I couldn’t work out when I was in my early teens and got my first anti-tobacco lecture,was as the nightshade vegetables contain the same plant chemicals as tobacco just in smaller amounts, why weren’t they being accused of causing bowel cancer as they stay in the body for longer?
If anti-tobacco had said that inhaling the fumes from a newly lit match several times a day could give you lung cancer I wouldn’t have questioned it.
It would seem that I had a better idea of the plant chemistry of tobacco and the nightshades at primary school than they did – I was an avid reader of my Mother’s books on gardening.
There has been wonderful research here and thanks Rose for the Kitty Little expansion.
That’s powerful stuff. One ought to be able to tackle current & previous MPs, councils with this.
OT a little, but with regard to the VLNC proposals, it’s http://www.xxiicentury.com/ who are behind this, with patents on GM tobacco modified to produce lower (or higher;- they’re having a bob both ways!) nicotine.
Recently, their home page (or business development page) declares
At 22nd Century, our important mission is straightforward: to reduce the harm caused by smoking.
with further
But it wasn’t always so. Look back to when they were starting up… and in between.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.xxiicentury.com/
For instance:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070402074156/http://www.xxiicentury.com/
The pdfs seem still downloadable.
Very interesting, as a non-believer I must say that I look forward to the availabilty of real low nicotine cigarettes to finally knock the Nicotine Addiction Theory on it’s head, TC would be quite lost without it.
“Lung cancer rates among non-smokers have doubled over the past decade …”
Interesting timing, n’est ce pas? Seems that the much-derided idea of the “protective” elements of ETS might just be a little less derisory after all ….. ?