Well, omygodnotagain,

I don’t dispute anything you said except the first sentence.  The reason I posted in this thread was because John Brown said (below) that “quitting smoking (or avoiding people who smoke) isn’t going to make you healthier.”

I suppose “healthier” could be the pivot point of the argument.  For example, if you have already smoked for 30 years and have lung cancer, I guess quitting is moot.  If you live in San Bernardino, which the residents call “the tailpipe of LA”, I suppose you could mount a “what the hell” defense.

But here in flyover country, the worst we have to deal with is pig shit lagoons.  If you don’t live near one of them, you don’t really notice them, even though once in a while there’s an article by conservationists that there’s pig shit in your drinking water.  But for a murder rate that’s one third that of NYC (around 2 per 100000 vs 6.3) I think that gives you a feeling for the relative stress level.  And we know that stress is a killer.

I was taken by JB’s sweeping generalization about medicine, namely that there’s not one single prescription that doesn’t make us sicker.  Hmmm. He has a point about many of the ‘scripts people take. Just look at all the warnings and disclaimers that come with drugs.  Even so, there are drugs that save people’s lives.  Just 100 years ago you could die from an ingrown toenail or abscessed tooth if you got an infection.  Antibiotics have been a blessing, saving many millions of lives, even though some of them may be extremely dangerous.  A few years ago I was on high doses of Levaquin for 6 weeks and I believe that using that drug that way for pneumonia led to a chronic health problem I live with today.  Tell you the truth, I think the pneumonia might have gone away on its own if I would have been able to just stop going to work for a month and stayed home to rest. 

Here in Iowa we have the best possible combination, I think. It’s an idyllic setting (listen to Dvorak’s New World Symphony), modern medicine, low crime rates, very high appreciation for education and the arts.  It’s not a bad place to park your arse while you wait to die, which we’re all going to do no matter what.  I’ll take a little bit of pig shit in my water, I guess. I can just replace the filter in my Brita pitcher every other week instead of once a month.

-Wexler

I just thought of a some more not really news news subjects that would be more interesting than the formula still used today…I would like to know who thought up this No news category, used to divert attention to the millions and millions of little things that anyone with common sense already knows, and has since time began…When I see the title “Scientists Uncover New Risks” I avoid cringe, feel disgusted, tired of the constant negativity layed on all of us daily…A person is better off, really if they stay away from the news…Scientist Uncover startling facts that the news bites Scientists put out, are mostly manipulative propaganda, which serves another purpose to keep people in fear, paranoid, defensive and uppity in general, can cause death injury depression and general paranoia and defeat, which leads to death by all things…Scientist’s discover that life is out to kill you…Evidence proves that once you are born, you will die, OMG Who started this crap? When will it end????I don’t need no stinking scientist to waste money and time, my time on something that anyone with common sense knows….I live in a suburban area, with way too many cars passing my house daily…This use to be the country, and I choke, cough, get asthma attacks, and can actually smell the stench from the air pollution outside my door and windows…Am better off not opening the windows, this is bad and combined with the noise of people going 45 50mph rushing home to watch TV?. in a 35mph zone that should be 20 to 25 MPH is hazardous to my health…

Wexler
No one disputes that smoking is harmful to the person that smokes. But in context so are ‘everyday’ pollutants. A non smoker living in New York is exposed to much higher levels of pollutants, breathed 24/7. 20% of ALL lung cancers cases are non smokers. When the rising lung cancer rates were first noticed epidemological studies were undertaken,(meaning statistical studies of populations)  but they could never dissociate industrial pollution, because cars and factories had already polluted the air, and everyone by virtue of living in an industrial society was exposed. What the powers that be do not want are studies done on industrial pollution.This is the junk science necessary to cover that. The next time a semi trailer is stuck in traffic in front of you, watch the black plume of particulate smoke that it pushes out and ask yourself, a cigarette puts out 1 microgram of tar how many did that semi just push out into your face..take a look at your car engine or exhaust pipe and see the soot for yourself..its why we have catalytic converters, the NOx road tests.

Well, John Brown,

I don’t disagree with your argument about dangers in our food and medicine.  However, your statement that quitting smoking isn’t going to make you healthier is just wrong.

I don’t know if you were using ironic hyperbole to buttress your point, but the plain fact is that if you quit smoking you will begin to get healthier.  Immediately.

The continuous bombardment of carbon monoxide, nicotine, and other products in the smoke raises hell with your cardiopulmonary system.  It constricts your blood vessels, raises your pulse rate, decreases the available red blood cells that can carry oxygen, puts crap into your lungs that you have to cough up, just for starters.

If I hadn’t quit smoking in ‘91 I would be dead now, and that’s just the truth.  So, I guess that in itself sorta blows your argument that quitting smoking won’t help you out of the water.

-Wexler

PS BTW, I quit using the patch.  I quit once about 10 years earlier cold turkey, and the patch was much more comfortable.  The gum… forget it. It is too much like smoking (putting something in your mouth that tastes like an ashtray and is your source of nicotine). I’ve known people who got hooked on the gum and chewed it (while sneaking a smoke once in a while) for years.

SCIENTISTS UNCOVER NEW RISK ASSOCIATED WITH THIRDHAND
SMOKE

To bad they haven’t uncovered the risks of nicotine in a bottle designed to addict children & keep current addicts in the loop.

Googling Nicotine in a bottle: can make you sick.

Results 1 - 10 of about 448,000 for Nicotine in a
bottle. (0.17 seconds)

What a joke, why don’t they look at the millions of tons of pollutants put out by cars, industry and just about every household product that people have to breathe 24/7

Next, how smoking is destroying parallel dimensions.

Ask anyone allergic to tobacco.

Well, bullshit “science” is bought and paid for to introduce yet another “spook” story! sigh. It’s true, Americans ARE the stupidest people on earth.

This “third-hand smoke” bullshit was tried in England and shot down by ... gasp! actual science. American Anti-smoking groups put up signs telling people that if they smoke, they cannot go into the maternity wards.

It does NOT exist, and every anti-smoking doctor doing studies in the field for the last 26 years has left the movement they started because…. The Anti-Smokers have left science behind and taken up the Nazi “repeat a lie often enough with enough conviction, people will begin to think it is the truth.”

But, American Evangelical fanatics will take up the battle cry without checking ONE fact, just as they have when they decided to up the number of “things” in cigarette smoke higher and higher because 39 did not sound “dangerous” enough. And, no one mentioned those 39 “things” were measured in 1 to 5 microns, not enough to do anything to anyone.

But keep lying, America. You are stupider than Germans who eventually came to believe the Goebbel’s Mantra. Americans, it is now dead solid fact, only have hear a lie once.

At least England finally gagged on the lies, took the signs down and informed A.S.H. never to try that bullshit again or they would jailed. Here in Amerika, land of the “free and home of the brave”, the stupid are looking for victims of bigotry they can feel proud about treating as less than garbage. Wait till the Black Market get into the concentration camps you come up with to keep the “contaminating smokers” in ...

Watch “V” again. It’s the kind of government you want, and remember, it ends badly for the “righteous”.