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Claimed dangers of tobacco are mostly a result of propaganda
As no cause-effect connection has ever been established between tobacco use and any of the 101 ailments it has been epidemiologically associated with, the latest bout of demonisation which tobacco is currently receiving leaves me decidedly unimpressed. For example, despite 50+ years of subjecting many different laboratory animals (such as dogs, monkeys, rats, mice, and so on) to enormous amounts of tobacco smoke – in one instance laboratory mice were forced to inhale the human equivalent of 62 packs of cigarettes a day – no animal has ever developed lung cancer. For another example, in the USA, where all the furore started back in the ‘fifties’, whilst the number of people using tobacco has dropped from approx. 50% of the population back then to approx. 25% nowadays the incidence of lung cancer has risen, not fallen.
What is of particular note is that the cause of liver cancer, cervical cancer, throat cancer and stomach cancer has recently been discovered to be bacterial/viral, all the while that tobacco was being blamed and valuable research dollars were being allocated elsewhere, and some preliminary research is showing indications that bacteria/viruses might also be the cause of lung cancer ... and maybe even heart disease.
Also, the figures published claiming, say, 350,000 deaths in a given year from tobacco-related diseases are not figures derived from a body-count – there are no such dead bodies in graves to count – as they are 350,000 (or whatever) phantom deaths generated by a computer programme such as SAMMEC II ... meaning that it is the epidemiological data that is fed into the computer which determines the statistical deaths the programme prints out.
Lastly (as I have no interest in belabouring the subject) those graphic photographs showing a slimy-black cancerous lung, labelled ‘smoker’s lung’, and a shiny-pink healthy lung, labelled ‘non-smoker’s lung’, are nothing but propaganda: the slimy-black lung should read ‘cancerous lung’ (and could very well be a non-smoker’s lung) and the shiny-pink lung should read ‘healthy lung’ (and could very well be a smoker’s lung) as it is impossible for a pathologist to determine, from both gross and microscopic examination of lung tissue, whether a person who died from other causes (such as a vehicular accident) is a smoker or a non-smoker.
The following URL covers all this and much more: https://lcolby.myvtoronte.com/
While this is very scholarly, upon reflection let me say:
Fuck you.
My late mother smoked pretty much all her life, tried and failed to stop smoking various times, and over the years I could see that the amount she smoked increased. She tried switching to low-tar cigarettes, but ending up smoking way more of them, presumably to get the same effect. EDIT: My father, on the other hand, smoked but succeeded in quitting and lived to be 81 before he died of an unrelated illness.
Eventually she got lung cancer. It was diagnosed very late, partly as a result of her reluctance to go to the doctor until the symptoms were undeniable (coughing up black phlegm in the mornings) and partly because the tumour was behind her shoulder blade so they didn't pick it up on x-rays until it was too big and too late for anything.
They offered her chemotherapy as more of a sop than any hope it would do anything; the first bout of it made her so sick that she refused any more, and the doctors said "yeah, it wouldn't do anything anyway".
I saw her die of it. It is a horrible, painful, wretched way to die, even with morphine as a palliative.
So maybe, yeah, maybe it's all propaganda that tobacco gives you cancer. But if some fool reads this, and starts smoking, and gets cancer, that is a miserable and avoidable death.
So, once again, Fuck. You.
And don't try to tell me she didn't die of lung cancer or that the smoking didn't cause it or any bullshit. Like your stupid-ass example of "if someone is killed in a car crash, it's not because they smoked so that shouldn't be counted as tobacco-related death" - who the fuck is counting "died in a car crash" as "died from smoking"?
I'm going to cut you some slack here (i.e., not give you a timeout) because there is a strong possibility the OP is a troll, but still, you know better than this. How many times have you been told you don't get to just start cursing people out because you're offended?
When it comes to denying the facts of what KILLED MY MOTHER, I think we're past "being offended" and into "if you said that to my face, you'd get punched in the mouth" territory.
Hit me with a ban and let him continue shit-posting. I don't care at this stage. But he/she/it/they are a fucking liar and I won't eat dogshit and call it chocolate, all in the name of "play nicely, children".
It's almost funny, to see how from the above how I could skirt around a ban on a technicality of "we're not quite sure you're a troll, so we'll keep on letting you shit-post". But on this one topic I am not going to be sweet and calm.
This is about "this thing kills people". I already see young people going back to the notion that tobacco smoking is cool and edgy and trendy. At least some of them will develop a smoking habit, and at least some of them will die from that. And die painful, miserable, awful deaths.
So pardon me if I tread on Sky's toes and their oh-so-edgy "it's all propaganda", while I have a grave of someone who died from not-propaganda to visit.
No, it is not this one topic. You do this on every topic that gets under your skin.
Answer me this: people are posting all the time about how Jews are cancer, the Holocaust is a hoax, blacks are low IQ criminals, trans people are mentally ill degenerates, women should be property, fascism is good, leftists are moral mutants who should be disenfranchised, etc.
Do you believe someone personally affronted by any of those themes (like, say, by being Jewish, or black, or trans, or a leftist) would be justified in throwing fuck yous at the OP and ignoring our discourse rules? Would you yell at me for modding them?
If not, then please explain why it's different for you.
If so, then fine, you would prefer that we just let people curse each other out when they're sufficiently riled. This is a position a number of people have advocated over the years. It's fine to want the Motte to be more of a free for all where we don't enforce civility. Take it up with Zorba; maybe the umpteenth petition will convince him that's how it should be. But right now, that's not how it is.
You want it one way, but it's the other way. You know how it is, so please stop acting the martyr when you very deliberately break the rules.
It's not. Your house, your rules, and I knew what I was getting into when I signed up.
I like The Motte, I like (most of) you, I like the principles behind this place, I like what you are trying to do. And I do believe in free speech, so I'm not asking for bans or demanding this place is run how I want it/like it or, worst of all, issuing ultimatums along the lines of "him or me, choose!"
I've mocked people for flouncing off, so consider this karma or just retribution or what you will. Whether we call it the Wheel of the Law or the Wheel of Fortune, it turns inexorably and inescapably and we are all bound to it.
Yes. See "committed to free speech" above. Sky is perfectly entitled to tell me go fuck myself if offended by what I said to them. I realise the mods don't want this place to degenerate into exchanges of insults, but sometimes "fuck you" is the bon mot.
"Acting the martyr"? Maybe that is indeed what I'm doing. But you, Amadan, said to me that "you don't get to just start cursing people out because you're offended".
I wish to God I was only "offended". That would be so much easier and less painful. I'm not offended, Amadan, I'm flayed raw. It's been ten years since my mother's death, and it still hurts to think of it.
So to hell with it, if I'm playing the martyr, let me play it to the hilt.
She was diagnosed in February and dead by June. She died hard, and fearfully. She said to me "I don't want to die", but what could I say? This was fatal, we all knew it. Over that period of five months, she went from an active woman to a wizened, aged thing that could barely sit upright in a chair. She hated hospitals, so we kept her at home as long as we could.
Morphine patches helped, but when they were sufficient to keep the pain down (not gone, just down), they left her groggy and limp-muscled, and rendered her doubly incontinent because she wasn't able to alert us in time or get out of her bed to use toilet facilities. As you can imagine, this was humiliating for a woman who had always been private and independent.
When we cut back on the medication so she was more with-it, the pain was unbearable. I don't know if you've had to listen to someone moaning and whimpering in pain for hours while you're desperately applying morphine patches and hoping they'll build up fast again in her blood stream, while waiting for the ambulance to come and take her into hospital for the final days she has left.
Oh, and talking of hospitals: because it was so urgent, she was taken in by our shitty local hospital instead of the regional hospital. We were warned about this, but we knew it already: the matron had a reputation for stealing from the patients, so my sister took off my mother's wedding ring and kept it safe.
Imagine that: having to take the wedding ring off a dying woman's finger because the medical staff will rob her corpse.
Well, the end wasn't long after she went in; they had her on pain control, so she was semi-conscious at best, and unaware of where she was, what was happening, and so on. She lasted a day or so and then the end, which by then was a mercy.
Is that enough "playing" for you, Amadan?
So this shit-for-brains comes to piss on my mother's grave, and I yell at him, and you grab me by the elbow to rebuke me. Heaven forfend I use harsh language to someone pissing on my mother's corpse!
I am genuinely sorry not to be able to comply with your requirements, but I also genuinely cannot.
However. Your house, your rules. I don't need to be here, and you don't need me to be here. At the end, I'm here for entertainment and fun. When it stops being fun, time to go. I wish all of you the best and success in your endeavours, guys and gals and those of you what ain't too sure. I'm not flouncing out because I'm too dispirited to flounce, let's say I'm slinking away.
And you are all completely, positively, absolutely entitled to mock me for flouncing/slinking off when I got my knuckles rapped.
Good night, good luck, and good bye to you all. Let's have one for the road, the deoch an dorais.
Look, I'm sorry about your mother, really, and I understand that this subject hit a nerve for you. I don't even blame you for losing it and telling the OP to fuck off. But we can't make exceptions for every person who feels personally aggrieved. You admit yourself that you understand why the rules are the way they are, so basically, you did it knowing it would get you modded. And ffs, all I did was tell you "Stop that."
I do not think this is cause for you to decide you're not wanted here. I, for one, will be sad to see you go. But I'm not going to beg you to stay.
I hope you change your mind, or that you return after you've cooled off.
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