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Cigarette Hazards—Resultant Effects:
What The Record Shows
from pre-1492 to Present
Naming the Diseases and Related Effects:
What Doctors and Others Say About
Thirty-One (31) Tobacco Correlatives
"Most smokers do not view themselves at increased risk of heart disease or cancer." John P. Ayanian, M.D., M.P.P., and Paul J. Cleary, Ph.D., "Perceived Risks of Heart Disease and Cancer Among Cigarette Smokers," 281 J Am Med Ass'n (11) 1019-1021 (17 March 1999). See also the 11 January 1999 Testimony of Dr. Whelan, and key quote: "smokers never, even today, have sufficient information to make a decision about smoking."
A major reason for this unawareness is the tobacco taboo. Another is the decline in education quality, and a third is ignorance of statistics including medical statistics. A fourth is cultural: "Smoking Rates Remain Highest in Kentucky, Lowest in Utah." |
See also David Winograd, "Things The Tobacco Industry Doesn't Want You To Know" (Washington Post, 1 July 2013)
Remembering Our History:
Past Activist Solutions
Additional Suggestions for Solutions
Seek Out Support From Other Groups
On Issues Such As The Following
Free Information
Get facts about tobacco the media doesn't report."
"Do you know what is in a cigarette?" "Learn things the tobacco industry doesn't want you to know." |
Activism Examples
Airspace Action, Physicians for Smoke-Free Canada, et al. v Premier of British Columbia, et al, Case # 16958 (BC Human Rights Commission, 15 Oct 2001) | Boycott Pushers' Accessory Companies' Products |
Benjamin Rush, M.D. (1746-1813), was an early American physician. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Surgeon General under George Washington, and anti-tobacco activist).
"Benjamin Rush serves as our prototype. His axiom was 'The science of medicine is related to everything' . . . psychiatry . . . chemistry, botany . . . crime and punishment . . . religion, philosophy, and . . . education."—Page Smith, Ph.D., A People's History of the Young Republic, Vol 3, The Shaping of America (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co, 1980), p 431. Please read the reprint of his 1798 anti-tobacco essay. Dr. Rush was "against the habitual use of tobacco" because it The medical research process was already well-established by Rush's era, details at the medical causation analysis site. Tobacco dangers were known and reported long before cigarettes, very early, in the era of cigars and pipes. Tobacco even in miniscule amount is ultra-hazardous! For impact of small amounts, see our tobacco addiction site, "craving section." |
A Recent Surgeon General Report: 2000 |
Books on Tobacco Effects Written
BEFORE Modern Surgeon General Reports
Ed. Note: "When something 'new' in medical literature is published, it is a wise precaution to read previous literature on the subject—that 'something new' may not really be new."—Alison B. Froese and Prof. A. Charles Bryan, "High Frequency Ventilation," 123 Am Rev Resp Dis (#3) 249-250 (March 1981).
See, e.g., Prof. Allan M. Brandt, Ph.D., The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America (Basic Books, Inc., 20 February 2005). Tobacco-caused deterioration, personal and national, has long been reported, as per a lengthy list of references. |
"Public health is the foundation on which reposes the happiness of the people and the power of a country. The care of the public health is the first duty of a statesman."—Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881). |
Why Smokers Don't Associate
Tobacco Effects With Tobacco
". . . the immediate effect of smoking . . . is a lowering of the accuracy of finely coordinated reactions (including associative thought processes)."—John H. Kellogg, M.D., LL.D., F.A.C.S., Tobaccoism, or, How Tobacco Kills (Battle Creek, MI: The Modern Medicine Publishing Co, 1922), p 88.
Thus, "no smoker can think steadily or continuously on any subject. . . . He cannot follow out a train of ideas," says Dr. William M'Donald, in vol. 1 The Lancet (Issue #1748) p 231 (28 Feb 1857). "Smokers show the same attitude to tobacco as addicts to their drug, and their judgment is therefore biased in giving an opinion of its effect on them."—Lennox Johnston, "Tobacco Smoking and Nicotine," 243 The Lancet 742 (19 Dec 1942). Smokers show "marked denial of concern . . . about any dangers associated with tobacco."—Peter H. Knapp, M.D., et al, 119 Am J Psychiatry (#10) 966-972 (April 1963) [Details]. And causation is rarely taught. "When textbook authors omit the causes and process of [a subject], they offer us a history [omission] whose purpose must be to keep us unaware," says Prof. James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York: The New Press, 1995), Chapter 2, p 65. And "textbooks rarely suggest that the events of one period caused events of the next," Chapter 9, p 243. "Or as Frances Fitzgerald [in America Revised, p 158] put it when she analyzed textbooks in 1979, 'In all history, there is no known [stated] cause of anyone's creating a problem for anyone else,'" Chapter 5, p 138. "Matthew Downey makes the same point in 'Speaking of Textbooks: Putting Pressure on the Publishers,' History Teacher 14, 1980]: 68, cited by Loewen, p 334. The bottom line is, "Textbooks stifle meaning by suppressing causation. Students exit . . . textbooks without having developed the ability to think coherently about social life," Intro., p 4. |
Cigarette Costs to Society:
Long Documented
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches
of evil to one who is striking at the root." |
“Partem aliquam recte intelligere nemo potest, antequam totum, iterum atque iterum, periegerit.” No one can rightly understand any part until he has read the whole again and again. Rev. John B. Wight, Tobacco (Columbia: Pickett Pub, 1889), p 7. |
Eliminate the cause; the effect disappears. “Sublatâ causa, tollitur effectus: Otez la cause, l'effet disparaît.”—Dr. Hippolyte A. Depierris, Physiologie Sociale: Le Tabac (Paris: Dentu, 1876), p 328.
“It is not enough to know the past. It is necessary to understand it.”—Paul Claudel (1868-1955).
“Most people's knowledge of [medical] history is like a string of graduated pearls without the string.”— Historian cited by Henrietta C. Mears (1891-1963).
“For every social wrong there must be a remedy. But the remedy can be nothing less than the abolition of the wrong.”—Henry George (1839-1897).
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”—George Orwell (1903-1950).
“When people who are honestly mistaken learn the truth, they will either cease being mistaken, or cease being honest!”—Anonymous.
“A circulating [public] library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical [behavior-altering] knowledge.”—Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816).
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”—George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903).
“Truth goes through three phases: first it is violently opposed, then it is ridiculed, then it is treated as canon.”—Arthur Schopenaur (1788-1860).
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”—Mohandas Gandhi.
“A man should never be ashamed to own up he has been in the wrong, which is but saying . . . That he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”—Alexander Pope.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous.”—Carl Sagan. [The notion of "smokers' rights" is an example; the truth is the opposite.]
“When a well-packaged web of lies [e.g., smokers' rights] has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”—Dresden James.
“It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition to stand up for it.”—A. A. Hodge.
“The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and his fellow men.”—Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899).
“Stupidity is much the same the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so those whose opinions and feelings are emanations from their own nature and faculties.” (Subjection of Women, Chapter I, p. 273)—John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).
“If the truth gives pain, it is not the fault of the teacher, nor of the reader who hears it for the first time, but of error, which stabs and stings before it will surrender its victim.”—M. M. Mangasarian.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”—Plato.
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”—Aldous Huxley.
“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”—Thomas Edison.
“Ah yes, truth. Funny how everyone is always asking for it but when they get it they don't believe it because it's not the truth they want to hear.”—Helena Cassadine.
“In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”—Mark Twain.
“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”—Chinese Proverb.
“Vision without Action is a daydream. Action without Vision is a nightmare.”—Japanese Proverb.
“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”—Nelson Mandela.
“The appearance of a disease is swift as an arrow; its disappearance slow, like a thread.”—Chinese Proverb.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”—Bertrand Russell.
“Many people would sooner die than think, in fact, they do so.”—Bertrand Russell.
Examples of Medical Search Engines
Examples of Medical Journals
Journal of the American Medical Assocation The Lancet New England Journal of Medicine |
Example of Using A
Regular Search Engine
AMA Physician Select |
Pertinent Legal Terms
A Recommended Tobacco Exposé BookGeorgina Lovell, You Are the Target: Big Tobacco: Lies, Scams—Now the Truth (Vancouver, B.C: Chryan Communications, 2002)
Medicolegal
An early use of the term "medicolegal" is at an American Medical Association (Chicago, Illinois) site, reporting a 1900 Illinois case:
"Medicolegal: Power to Regulate Sale of Cigarettes,"
35 J Am Med Ass'n 298-299 (4 Aug 1900).
TCPG involves activism to recreate in 21st century context, the broader 19th century coalition against tobacco. Back then, concern about
tobacco significantly related to 'moral issues,' tobacco's role in
alcoholism and crime, the 'sin' aspect, and media support on this fuller ranger, as distinct from the modern, ultra-narrow focused, 'health-only' issues, which are relatively ineffective in motivating people.
Note also: "There are four items that need to be considered in negligence torts: legal duty, a breach of that duty, causal relationship between breach and injury, and damages.
. . . The Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence (revised 2000) CPG, sponsored by the US Public Health Service, recommends effective and inexpensive treatments for nicotine addiction, the largest preventable cause of death in the US, and can be used as an example to focus on important considerations about the appropriateness of CPGs in the judicial system. Furthermore, the failure of many doctors and hospitals to deal with tobacco use and dependence raises the question of whether this failure could be considered malpractice, given the Public Health Service guideline’s straightforward recommendations, their efficacy in preventing serious disease and cost-effectiveness. . . . Although each case of medical malpractice depends on a multitude of factors unique to individual cases, a court could have sufficient basis to find that the failure to adequately treat the main cause of preventable disease and death in the US qualifies as a violation of the legal duty that doctors and hospitals owe to patients habituated to tobacco use and dependence," say Randy M. Torrijos and Stanton A. Glantz, in "The US Public Health Service 'treating tobacco use and dependence clinical practice guidelines' as a legal standard of care," in 15 Tobacco Control (Issue # 6), pp 447-451 (December 2006).
“'Get well soon'? . . . We prefer, 'Stay healthier longer.'”—Advertisement by Pfizer, The New Yorker (12 Feb 2007), p 23. |
Smokescreen Discussion Groups List |
“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.”—Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom.
Such pre-existing prejudice is contrary to the rule of law. "In assessing the reasonableness of petitioner's actions, the views of public health authorities, such as the U.S. Public Health Service, CDC, and the National Institutes of Health are of special weight and authority. . . . A health care professional who disagrees with the prevailing medical consensus may refute it by citing a credible scientific basis for deviating from the accepted norm." Bragdon v. Abbott, 524 U.S. 624, 650; 118 S.Ct. 2196, 2211; 141 L.Ed.2d 540 (1998). “The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.”—Emma Goldman. “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”—Bertrand Russell. “To be ignorant of one's ignorance [anosognosia] is the malady of the ignorant.”—Amos Bronson Alcott. “Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.”—Demosthenes. “When you deal with stupidity, you begin to understand the concept of infinity”—Gustave Flaubert. “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”—Edmund Burke. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”—Philip K. Dick. “Nay illigitamis carbarundum descendus!” The 2010 Surgeon General Report states, "The evidence on the mechanisms by which smoking causes disease indicates that there is no risk-free level of exposure to tobacco smoke." and "Low levels of exposure, including exposures to secondhand tobacco smoke, lead to a rapid and sharp increase in endothelial dysfunction and inflammation, which are implicated in acute cardio-vascular events and thrombosis." It then provides 727 pages of exposition. I suggest those who doubt these conclusions should read the report, and provide a scientific explanation of why these conclusions are incorrect. I have studied exposure to secondhand smoke for 35 years. I believe these general statements are defensible and are applicable on a population wide level. On a personal level, some individuals will be susceptible and others resistant, with the rest in between. For most nonsmokers who are chronically exposed, concentrations are neither low nor are they fleeting. Repeated low level exposures to carcinogens are cumulative, and unrepaired DNA damage leads to disease. If anyone wants to try to understand the concept of a low exposure, I suggest they read the USEPA's risk and exposure assessment guidelines, and apply them to secondhand smoke."--James Repace. |
Biographies |
See Historic Diet Advice: 1848 and 1906 Growth Charts Blood Pressure NTE 114/74 Says 7th JNC Report, JAMA Health Group Positions on FDA Tobacco Regulation Bills S.625/H.R.1108 Commentary vs. Said Bills (by Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan, 7 March 2007) "Presidential Panel Calls for Political Will to Fight Tobacco Use" (16 August 2007) www.healthline.com/ |