Mad Kally

Do they know for sure there is a correlation between your uncle's smoking and your aunt's cancer? I'm sorry to hear about your aunt.

Do they have homes health hospice where you live. It's so much better for the patient to be at home instead of a hospital ward. If that's what they would prefer. I don't work in a hospital setting anymore. I go to their homes. I have a Home health aide who goes to see them as well. It's actually a whole team of people working together on each patient to maximize pain relief and provide psycho-social support for patient/family/friends.

simian

Mad Kally,

Your earlier posts said you had never seen a non-smoker with lung cancer. Now Wyz_sub10 comes forward with a personal example. Your response is essentiall "are they sure it is not from something else?"

What would you consider convincing evidence that second-hand smoke is harmful?

For me, convincing evidence that second-hand smoke is not harmful would be that there there is some factor in directly inhaled tobacco smoke not in second-hand smoke (hopefully we can agree that increased exposure is increased risk, but that tobacco smoke is a carcenogen), that the is no relationship between respatory infections and living with a smoker or working in a smoking environment, or even that tobacco smoke causes a characteristic type of lung cancer and the non-smokers get a different type of lung cancer. There are probably some items that could be added, but they escape me right now.

All of the above on the basis on the perponderance of the scientific evidence, of course - there will be some studies here or there that have differing results.

Simian

Mad Kally

Ok, I believe you. You must be right. His uncle gave his wife ETS lung cancer. It's a sad thing isn't it?

I take care of the terminally ill in my profession. I don't treat patients differently because of how they got sick. I'm not a scientist and I certainly haven't read all the studies. So what am I posting here for? I've forgotten. I'm not afraid of saying I was wrong.

Now I will gracefully bow out. Well, I'm not all that graceful.

Wyz_sub10

It's almost impossible to make a such connection with certainty. Even for smokers. The fact that they've lived together for decades makes it a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood. But one can never say for sure.

They live in Edmonton. There are hospices there (usually for specific things like AIDS or breast cancer), but the hospitalization was sudden, so for the time-being it's a palliative ward. Maybe in the coming days (weeks?) she can move someplace more comfortable.

Mad Kally

I hope so

Kinross

I've been watching this thread and there was interest in scientific studies on the effects of second hand smoke.

I just wanted to recommend a book which could prove usefull for layman of science in undestanding the results in such scientific studies.

The book is Junk Science Judo by Steven J. Milloy. It goes into epidemiological or ecologic studies and the different methods of aquiring data and how useful these methods are. It also goes into relative risk and help you determine when a study is junk science and when it has meaningful results.

One of the case studies in the book is second hand smoke.

redstar2000

Thank you for your post, Dr. Rick

The first study that you cited neglects to mention the actual number of deaths in the sample. That number would be needed to extract the odds.

The second study records the deaths of never-smokers as about 1 in 8 over a 20-year period...smokers do much worse in this study, about 1 out of 3...even worse, over-all, than patients already diagnosed with cardio-vascular disease in the Israeli study (though over a longer period of time).

I can't help but wonder if this discrepancy could be due to the rather notorious air pollution in the industrialized parts of China...does Xi'an Province fall into that catagory?

The study's projection--that "half of all smokers in China will die from smoking"--is one that doesn't appear "obvious" to the layman. But suppose for a moment that we could nail that down...suppose we could say with near certainty that one out of every two lifetime smokers is going to die from a smoking-related disease. That would certainly be a sobering statistic. (Die when? would be the next question.)

And yet...would that convince people to stop smoking? I can see that it might convince young people never to start...but I doubt very much that anything short of yet another "war on drugs" is going to convince existing smokers to quit--and that only until a "black-market" connection can be arranged.

In fact, given human resistance to authority, the harder the anti-smoking neo-puritans pound their drums...the more rebellious young people are likely to take up smoking tobacco, as they have embraced so many other illegal drugs...some of which can be and have been immediately fatal.

Plant-based drugs are unusually vulnerable to prohibition; wiping out the tobacco plant would stop people from smoking tobacco...the same is true for marijuana, heroin and cocaine. Other drugs can be rather easily manifactured in a kitchen-laboratory...and some of them may be far deadlier than tobacco.

Before you crush "the devil's weed", better think a little bit about what will come next.

Dr Rick

Med Lav 2002 Jul-Aug;93(4):310-7

Results of a health education program on smoking for trainee workers


Marchi T, Alessandri MV, Perelli C, Pasqualetto M, Baretta L, Munarin C, Ragazzi M, Mometti D, Magarotto G.

Servizio Prevenzione Igiene e Sicurezza negli Ambienti di Lavoro, ULSS 12 Veneziana, via Gozzi 53, Mestre-Venezia.

BACKGROUND: Social costs of smoking behaviour are remarkable. Although smoking is an individual choice, it is strongly influenced by a social contest where it is widespread. OBJECTIVES: To induce young non-smoking apprentices to continue as such and smokers to give up smoking. METHODS: During 1999, a specific health education programme on smoking was carried out for a group of 1083 young apprentices, 531 females and 552 males, who came to the occupational health unit in Venice for a check on work fitness. This programme was part of a larger global programme concerning health hazards prevention where apprentices received various information about health and safety at work. Smoking habits were compared to a control group of 312 females and 458 males after a one year follow-up. RESULTS: The females' chance of giving up smoking was three times higher than controls; while the chance of becoming a smoker was 70% lower. The males' chance of giving up smoking was double; while the chance of becoming a smoker was 60% lower. The health education programme decreased the trend of becoming a smoker in cases and increased non-smoking, especially in females. In females, there was also a significant prevalence who reduced cigarette consumption. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates the effectiveness of health education programmes on smoking directed to young people and stresses the role of public health units in the involvement of the users of such services in prevention programmes. An occupational health service has specific prevention objectives here, since promoting healthy attitudes affects motivation of individual behaviour. This is the reason why initiatives on a single specific prevention objective, like smoking, become significant in every context of people's lives. Such attitudes are a significant resource which people can use to protect themselves from hazards, with a resulting safe, aware and active behaviour as regards occupational risks.

JohnR

I have a friend that says if you think second hand smoke is not harmful blow some in my face. But he needs anger management.
When we went to Vegas last month one thing I noticed was it seemed everyone but us smoked. It is a smokers haven there. But the casinos do a really good job of sucking out all the smoke. It still got on clothes but the casino air wasn't that bad. Bullshit or not I'd just as soon not suck someone else's smoke.
I quit at 29 yo when my wife got pregnant.

Wyz_sub10

Casinos suck out the smoke and pump in the oxygen because they want you to stay awake (it helps keep people in there until 4:00 am).

I was at a casino north of here and was surprised by how awake I was, breathing heavy amount of oxygen all night.