If this study is substantiated will cigarettes be seen as less harmful?

[x-ray_vision]

@Yllaria

I believe there has been a study or two showing that obese folks are less likely to get osteoporosis. That doesn’t get much press either - probably for the same reasons. You get to the end of your nice little science article and there’s no cool way to write the conclusion.

“If more studies support this conclusion, the public would be advised to . . . well, lose weight for other reasons. Never mind.”

There are cool ways:

The relationship between fat mass and bone is confounded by complex genetic backgrounds and by interactions between metabolic factors and regulatory pathways influencing both obesity and osteoporosis. Although the evidence that adipose tissue exerts a protective effect against bone loss is greater than that showing a negative association, the recent increasing data on this issue suggest that both obese and nonobese postmenopausal women should be considered at risk for alteration in bone mineral density and osteoporosis. Specific and careful characterization of skeletal metabolism and further studies evaluating skeleton changes may be useful in obese women, because aging itself might also increase their risk of developing fractures later in life.

Is obesity in women protective against osteoporosis?

That’s the end of the conclusion. Before anyone tells me that’s not the whole story regarding the study…I know.

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

@Czarcasm

Next up-“The Benefits of Drinking and Driving”.

It does help you have a relaxed attitude during the crash.

[Czarcasm]

@Qadgop_the_Mercotan

It does help you have a relaxed attitude during the crash.

“When I die, I want to go quietly in my sleep like my Grandfather…not screaming in terror like the passengers in his car.”

[VinylTurnip]

@PastTense

So how would this explain the much higher frequency of lung cancer in smokers?

Maybe a “mistake in DNA” leads some people to think it’s a good idea to take up smoking.

[Defensive_Indifference]

@Bryan_Ekers

I can remember being indifferent to smokers, mostly because they were everywhere and you gradually learned to just ignore them. Now when I walk into a room where there’s a smoker or where a smoker had recently been, the stench is actively irritating because it stands is such sharp contrast to the much cleaner air I’ve gotten used to (but gradually learned to ignore, until something intrudes on it).

Same here. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time in smoke-filled bars. I’d sit there all night passively smoking, and I’d come home with my clothes stinking of smoke, and I just kind of accepted it. Now, I can’t remember the last time I was in a bar that allowed smoking. Nowadays I get mildly annoyed when someone coming back from their smoke break walks past my office.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@Czarcasm

About that one study from a decade and a half ago-When you look at the 43 studies that have been done on the subject, Does it matter if some of the researchers had ties to the tobacco industry?
Yeah-it matters.

I have nothing to add to the debunking of the absurd premise that tobacco consumption is somehow “less harmful” than the overwhelming mass of clinical and empirical evidence (even directly from research performed by tobacco companies themselves) other than to recommend Robert Proctor’s Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition as comprehensive and evicerating review of the tobacco industries effort to conceal the harms of tobacco consumption, particularly in the form of manufactured cigarettes which have been scientifically designed to be as addictive as possible even when those modifications increase hazards known to the manufacturers. It covers the marketing and promotion, manufactured and altered scientific research, misdirection and obstruction of release of data showing harms, and collusion strategies by the manufacturers to develop new markets because of declines in their existing user base due to increased literacy of the direct and secondhand impacts of smoking, and premature loss of users due to health impacts (e.g. COPD, emphysema, death). No honest person of normal intelligence and literacy is going to see cigarettes as not representing a significant and entirely avoidable hazard to public and personal health.

Stranger

[DrDeth]

@WhyNot

Are you kidding? You could have study after study showing that cigarettes cut the risk of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s by half, and people would still insist that cigarettes are nothing but pure evil.

I mean, literally. That’s something we’ve known for nearly two decades.

The hatred of smoking in our culture is irrational. Not that smoking doesn’t have real health risks - it does - but there are very few people who are willing to stand up and say anything at all positive about it, even when warranted.

Except smoking has no health benefits at all. Nicotine can have some.
**
Smoking kills 50000 non smoking Americans each year.** Five times that of Drunk Driver and nearly TEN times that of handgun murders.

But of course "The hatred of smoking in our culture is irrational. " :rolleyes: I mean, who hates Drunk Drivers?

[monstro]

Parkinson’s Disease more likely to hit people who aren’t risk-takers

Smokers more likely to take risks

Anyone who thinks cigarettes are some kind of preventative for PD is woefully confused. PD develops when there is a substantial loss in dopamine signaling. Risk-taking (like sneaking into the girl’s restroom to smoke during 2nd period English class) is behavior emblematic of brains that are highly responsive to dopamine. So it makes sense that some percentage of smokers would be naturally resistant to PD, since smokers are disproportionately represented among risk-takers, and risk-takers are more likely to have brains that have a unusually high affinity for dopamine.

[Pantastic]

@WhyNot

Are you kidding? You could have study after study showing that cigarettes cut the risk of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s by half, and people would still insist that cigarettes are nothing but pure evil.

Actually, you’ve got a few studies by people deep in the tobacco industry’s pockets that show that people who try smoking at some point in their life also experience lower rates of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. The link you posted and the other studies don’t support your claim that “cigarettes cut the risk of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s by half”. The people in the study didn’t necessarily even touch a cigarette, or smoke for a significant time, and there’s nothing that points to cigarettes being the cause of the low rates instead of merely being correllated with them.

[bob_2]

There is always a nice bell graph for these things. At one end, there are people who will get lung cancer whatever they do; they may never smoke, live in the countryside and eat healthy, but they will still get it. At the top there are those who can smoke 40 a day, live on a busy crossroad and hate vegetables, but will not develop lung cancer. Between the extremes there are the majority who, to a greater or lesser extent, can improve or reduce their chances of avoiding the disease by following the advice.

[HumbleThinker]

@aldiboronti

A new study on the causes of cancer comes to a surprising conclusion.

If the conclusions of this report stand up to scrutiny does not this necessarily imply that many of the past cancers attributed to smoking were in fact not connected to that activity at all but were the result of these random mutations in DNA? Does it not follow from this that smoking is not as dangerous as has long been claimed and that although it may lead to lung cancer in some it is not responsible for anywhere near the number of cases that has been attributed to it?

BTW I’d better make my own position clear. I haven’t smoked in more than 30 years and I think smoking is a disgusting habit that should be consigned to history as rapidly as possible.

The author of the study, if I understood him correctly, has flatly said his study does no such thing. It’s simply that there are cancers that are largely due to “bad luck”. Others are very much caused or exacerbated by environmental factors like smoking. No cite, just heard him talking on NPR.

[jshore]

@HumbleThinker

No cite, just heard him talking on NPR.

Perhaps this story?

These numbers vary depending on the type of cancer, they found.

Lung cancer is largely the result of environmental causes, while the vast majority of childhood cancer is a result of these bad-luck mutations, they found.

[Wesley_Clark]

The vast majority of cancers are caused by the body failing with age.

As for smoking, it is pretty well established that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer among other things (lifetimerates of lung cancer among smokers are about 15-20%, lifetime rates among non-smokers are <1%).

However the vast majority of smokers do not develop lung cancer. Even among heavy smokers, 75-80% will not develop lung cancer.

Also, fun fact, the body develops cancer everyday. Up to a million cells develop cancer daily, but the body fixes, kills or sequesters the cells.

Also in that diagram in the OPs site, it shows lung cancer is one of the most environmentally caused cancers you can develop. So there is that.

[Wesley_Clark]

@WhyNot

Are you kidding? You could have study after study showing that cigarettes cut the risk of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s by half, and people would still insist that cigarettes are nothing but pure evil.

I mean, literally. That’s something we’ve known for nearly two decades.

The hatred of smoking in our culture is irrational. Not that smoking doesn’t have real health risks - it does - but there are very few people who are willing to stand up and say anything at all positive about it, even when warranted.

It is the same with obesity, various studies have found being overweight (25-30 BMI) gives better health and lower mortality than a BMI under 25. Science doesn’t know everything, especially when science is used to justify cultural biases.

Scientists now think that being overweight can protect your health

However as far as smoking, could it be that the reason smokers have lower risks of alzheimers or parkinsons because smokers have a lower life expectancy? Life expectancy among smokers is up to 10 years shorter than non-smokers, and alzheimers is strongly correlated with age. By age 85, half of all people have AZ, and the vast majority of smokers are dead before age 85.

Edit: nevermind, your study mentioned using age and gender matched controls.

[Blue_Blistering_Barnacle]

The really damning thing about cigarette smoking is the shear weight and types of evidence, combining numerous studies.

Not only do numerous studies show strong associations of tobacco with numerous cancer types, BUT:

-cancer risk goes up with increased exposure

-dominant cancer distribution frequently corresponds to most exposed tissues (point of application) - for example, tobacco chewers primarily get oral cancer, cigar smokers primarily get oral and pharyngeal cancer, and cigarette smokers get lung cancer (and oral and pharyngeal cancer)

I’d say that it is really quite surprising how some people refuse to make this connection, while if the same thing was happening to their lawn they would immediately get rid of fertilizer (or whatever) they were using on it. Except I knowingly justify eating foods I know are bad for me. The brain has an extraordinary ability to shield itself from stuff it doesn’t want to know. Kind of a superpower. (You see this manifest in ‘Elections’ and ‘GD’ every day. )

[Blue_Blistering_Barnacle]

I guess the point I really wanted to make is simply this:

We know from epidemiological studies that smoking “causes” cancer, at least in the sense that it is highly associated with being diagnosed with and dying of cancer.

Even if the background rate of spontaneous mutations is 99.99%, the former remains true. It is just figuring out mechanisms after that. (Maybe smoking does something to inhibit repair of damaged DNA. Or maybe smoking prevents killer T-cells from taking out the bad cells. Or etc., etc., etc.)

[DrDeth]

@Blue_Blistering_Barnacle

The really damning thing about cigarette smoking is the shear weight and types of evidence, combining numerous studies.

Not only do numerous studies show strong associations of tobacco with numerous cancer types, BUT:

-cancer risk goes up with increased exposure

-dominant cancer distribution frequently corresponds to most exposed tissues (point of application) - for example, tobacco chewers primarily get oral cancer, cigar smokers primarily get oral and pharyngeal cancer, and cigarette smokers get lung cancer (and oral and pharyngeal cancer)

I’d say that it is really quite surprising how some people refuse to make this connection, while if the same thing was happening to their lawn they would immediately get rid of fertilizer (or whatever) they were using on it. Except I knowingly justify eating foods I know are bad for me. The brain has an extraordinary ability to shield itself from stuff it doesn’t want to know. Kind of a superpower. (You see this manifest in ‘Elections’ and ‘GD’ every day. )

Denial. We see this here on the SDMB from hardcore smokers all the time.

[Declan]

@Czarcasm

Next up-“The Benefits of Drinking and Driving”.

Cuts down on road rage

[Chronos]

Even if smoking does cut the risk for Parkinson’s in half, how common is Parkinson’s? In particular, is it more or less common than lung cancer? If I start smoking, and increase my chance of lung cancer from “pretty low” to “extremely high”, but at the same time decrease my chance of Parkinson’s from “very low” to “even lower”, have I really gained anything?

Which is not to say that such information (if true) is useless. If smoking does in fact reduce the chance of Parkinson’s, then maybe we can figure out what it is about smoking that has that effect, and administer it in some controlled fashion with fewer side effects (vaping, maybe, or nicotine patches, if it’s the nicotine that’s having the effect) to only those people who are known to have an elevated risk of the disease. That might (emphasis on “might”) have a net positive effect. Smoking, though? Even with the inevitable error bars, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that it’s a net negative.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Chronos

If smoking does in fact reduce the chance of Parkinson’s, then maybe we can figure out what it is about smoking that has that effect

Your general point is a very good one, but I want to make sure people didn’t miss monstro’s Post #28 on the link between Parkinson’s and smoking.