Nuno Figueira

Listen, I never did or would resource to violence, but I do think I have the right to protect my health, and life since you can DIE from a asthma attack, when I'm ignored and even laughed at by smokers. Why do you think I have asthma? Maybe because both my parents smoked?

Tenspace

I'm not putting words in your mouth. I am simply trying to bring a different viewpoint. And obesity does have relevance, as well as the current SUV trend.

Did you know that being fat is more dangerous to one's health than smoking? I don't have the reference in front of me, but I will research it. And think of what it does to culture... medical costs (yeah, just like what smokers cause, but much more), special considerations as if they're handicapped (I understand about the 1% where the medical condition is legitimate; I'm referring to the other 99% of obese people), not to mention the searing discomfort and general nausea when shoehorned next to a really fat person on an airplane.

And seriously, what about all the SUV's on the road? They are much more dangerous to each other's health than smokers. (I notice you are in Portugal. In the U.S. we have a huge problem with huge trucks. It seems that every soccer mom wants the biggest, baddest Ford Excursion or Hummer H2 to haul their kids around in.)

With regard to the referenced quotes, my apologies - I did not read that far back in the thread before posting.

Tenspace

NialScorva

What I read in Patrick's posts is that a RR in the low 1.x area is barely noticable from noise, only indicative in extremely large studies. Not only that, but we trivially tolerate risks up to RR=3 or so without much comment but a RR=1.9 is one of the highest published risks of ETS, and that was with a rather large 95% confidence interval.

Where am I mistaken?


Look through the data that you are presenting to show the risk factors:

1.29 (95% CI 1.17-1.43)
1.21 (95% CI 1.10-1.33)
(odds ratio, 2.83; 95% CI, 1.22-6.55)

No one has said that ETS is healthy, or that there is no danger, but rather that all studies have shown [i]little[i] danger, so little danger that the risk has been considered unworthy of attention in many other situations.

scigirl

Not to derail this thread, but. . .

Where are you getting the 1, and 99% figures? I tend to think that biological causes of obesity (especially morbid obesity) is much higher than 1%.

scigirl

JGL53

These are false analogies (the analogy with farting was MUCH more to the point).

Fat people don't force others to eat donuts. SUV drivers don't take their vehicles into enclosed public places and just sit there, revving the engines for hours on end and forcing others to breath the exaust.

The majority of people are non-smokers in the U.S. - about 75 per cent of the population. They have no desire to breath the smoke of the minority. Can they minority go outside to smoke? Yes they can. Are they inconvenienced by being required to do so? Yes they are. Do I or do the majority of the non-smokers give a shit about this last fact? No we don't. Do we care about smokers calling us whiners or other slurs, or do we care that smokers actually whine themselves about having their 'rights' violated? No we don't. As time goes on, won't more and more laws get passed which restrict where smokers can legally smoke? Yes they will. Will smokers become more and more socially marginalized as time goes on? Yes they will. Is smoking already being seen as a low class rather than a middle class pastime? Yes it is. What are smokers top three options if they don't want to go along with the program? A. jail B. Move to China, France, etc. C. Fucking DIE.

Smokers are for the most part drug addicts, similar to crackheads. Ever try to REASON with a crackhead? It's REAL difficult. All any addict wants is his or her next 'hit'. All else is commentary.

OTOH, crackheads stay in their houses and don't ever get in the general public's face with their addition. Smokers should follow their lead.

Tenspace

They're figurative. Even if it's 12%, that still leaves 82% who have no biological impairment leading to obesity.

Ten

Tenspace

Really? How can someone's fart ever hurt another, either through repeated, prolonged exposure, or in immediate high concentrations? Other than maybe methane poisoning, I don't think it's possible. Smoke is obviously dangerous.

It has nothing to do with the SUV's exhaust. It has everything to do with putting a poorly trained, inattentive human at the wheel of a 4000+ object and cutting them loose on the general population. It was my weak attempt at a segue into the fact that a helluva lot more people die from bad driving than from second-hand smoke. The issues of the SUV's exhaust, and the apalling fuel consumption are secondary.

Obesity (in the majority of the obese population) is no different an addiction than smoking. And it causes problems for others, like high insurance costs, and the daily freaking, "OH MY GOD" ice pick to the back of the cranium feeling every time you hear about people suing McDonald's for making them fat. Kinda like a smoker suing the cigarette company for giving them cancer, eh?

Whoa! Replace "smoker" with "atheist" and see how that above paragraph sounds... wait, I'll do it for you:

The majority of people are non-atheists in the U.S. - about 75 per cent of the population. They have no desire to breath the atheism of the minority. Can they minority go outside to not believe? Yes they can. Are they inconvenienced by being required to do so? Yes they are. Do I or do the majority of the non-atheists give a shit about this last fact? No we don't. Do we care about atheists calling us whiners or other slurs, or do we care that atheists actually whine themselves about having their 'rights' violated? No we don't. As time goes on, won't more and more laws get passed which restrict where atheists can legally not believe? Yes they will. Will atheists become more and more socially marginalized as time goes on? Yes they will. Is atheism already being seen as a low class rather than a middle class pastime? Yes it is. What are atheists top three options if they don't want to go along with the program? A. jail B. Move to China, France, etc. C. Fucking DIE.


WTF? I could slam home this bullshit argument right now. What's your addiction? C'mon, everybody has one. You can't reason with a smoker, can you? You've never met any considerate smokers, that only smoke outside, or never argue for the smoking table when in a group? You think that a smoker doesn't care about anything but his next cigarette? You truly believe that SMOKER == CRACKHEAD?

Maybe a more appropriate analogy, instead of the obese, would have been to use alcoholics, which I place in the same regard as you place smokers.

Boy, I haven't been told to FUCKING DIE in awhile..err, never actually.

Tenspace

Tenspace

Maybe... maybe not. Both of my parents smoked, but I didn't contract asthma until I had my house painted, and the fumes triggered my first (very scary!) attack.

If you walk into a room full of smokers, like in a bar, and you don't take your rescue inhaler, then yeah, you could DIE from an asthma attack. But don't blame others in the room. Different situation, if you enter an elevator where someone was smoking and it triggered an attack, I'd support you 100% and help you find the jerk that was smoking in the elevator.

Tenspace

NialScorva

You've never been on the DC beltway at rush hour, have you? Add in one merge attempt and death-by-SUV becomes far more likely and detrimental to quality of life.

ps418

The evidence is even less compelling than those numbers would imply. The two CPS studies are the best analyses to date of ETS and CHD/lung cancer, judged in terms of sample size, prospective study design, and so on, and while one the earlier one shows RRs around 1.1-1.2, the other (Enstrom and Kabat, 2003) shows RRs around 1. And though conceding another 0.1 or relative risk does not affect my point at all, I don't think a rr of 1.3 is the best estimate.

As I pointed out twice, there is very clear evidence of publication bias in previous ETS studies (the "50 very reputable studies"), with the effect size being greatest in the smallest and less rigorous studies (defined as controlling for fewest variables, smallest sample sizes, and fewest lung cancer cases). Since this is the case, meta-analyses that dont correct for this bias are misleading. It is also evident when you look at all the studies that --for some strange reason-- the RRs decreased in the 1990's. Actually, its not strange at all, it simply reflects the fact the the samples were getting larger and more confounding variables were accounted for (e.g. diet).

Lee, P.N., 1997. A review of the epidemiology of ETS and lung cancer. PDF file

And this is based on the studies available prior to 1996. Since then, both the CPS I and CPS II data have been published, one of which yields RRs=1 and the other yielding RRs=1.1-1.2. So, again, though it really is immaterial to me whether we accept 1 or 1.1 or 1.2 as the best estimate, I'll be far more worried about getting hit by lightening. Also, we've been focusing on studies of ETS exposure by nonsmoking spouses of smokers, which allows one to generalize to . . . the nonsmoking spouses of smokers. Its inapproporiate to infer on the basis of such studies that nonsmokers only exposed to ETS in restaurants and bars, for instance, are at increased risk or lung cancer or CHD. In fact, the association of lung cancer and CHD with workplace ETS exposure is even weaker (I already posted some refs). Lee again (p. 24):

Since 1996 there has been one other major case-control study of workplace ETS exposure published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which yielded a statistically insignificant (authors own words) risk of 1.17 (95% CI 0.94-1.45), so the inclusion of these results in the metanalysis would raise the overall RR very slightly (Multicenter case-control study of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer in Europe. JNCI Journal 90, 1440-1450). This is the infamous WHO study.

However, as usual, when you look at the details, things get even murkier and even less convincing. For instance, in the very same study, those exposed to both spousal ETS and workplace ETS had lower RR's than those exposed only to workplace ETS (1.14; 95% CI 0.88 - 1.47), and childhood exposure to ETS was associated with decreased risk (RR=0.78; 95% CI 0.64-0.96!! Using the very same statistical standards that the anti-ETS proponents are using, I could claim that many people are getting lung cancer because they were not exposed to ETS as children! After all, the CI excludes 1, and the RR difference is 0.22. But obviously that would be absurd.

Bottom line, though, is that even if one concedes that ETS causes cancer and CHD in nonsmoking spouses of smokers -- which I think is far from certain-- the evidence that your average nonsmoker who is exposed to ETS at work and public places only is at an elevated risk of CHD and lung cancer is even weaker, far too weak to make the emphatic causal inferences that are being made. This is significant because this directly contradicts what many anti-ETS activists are claiming as justification for total bans. Unless they want to claim that RRs=1.05 -1.10 are 'significant,' which at this point would not surprise me.

Patrick