Quote:
Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Why do you think I sent you to Medline and the actual Surgeon General's report instead of some reporter's synopsis of the same studies? At the very least, read the conclusions at the end of each chapter of the Surgeon General report (hint: especially adult respiratory) to bolster your own position instead of shouting back that science is wrong. Scientific study is all about the fucking details, trying to parse which of a gazillion different factors is likely to lead to a specific result.
And you're so hyped up on lung cancer that you're forgetting all of the other health problems that have an association with tobacco smoke, including environmental tobacco smoke, like asthma, COPD, CHD, a variety of other cancers and reproductive problems. I'll talk to your oncologists if you talk to my pulmonologists. If a person doesn't have a genetic predisposition to lung cancer, he or she may very well have a predisposition to one of the other nasty, expensive to treat diseases that tobacco smoke exacerbates. And then I have to pay for his or her healthcare costs through increased insurance premiums or Medicare / Medicaid, and that's when it becomes a problem that I care about.
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I understand your point. My problem with the way medicine offers conclusions is that its very reluctant to admit the socially unpalatable finding implicit in its research (you're probably not going to get a disease from 99.9% of the things you do until you're quite old). The findings are always subtly geared toward making the readers as hyper-vigilant as possible, which, I think, actually causes our taxes to go up. Frivolous visits to docs and E/Rs are a fairly sizable chunk of medical costs each year.
I also have a problem with dumbing down data for the public. Why not tell Joe Shmoe he probably won't see any problems from weekend binge drinking or an occasional suntan or cigarette? It's true. Why do we always inflate the dangerous aspects of things?
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