Emphysema is perpetually thrown at me whenever I discuss the antismoking. What do anyone of you know about Emphysema?

I've never even known anyone outside of a medical nursing facility that's had this illness, so I'm at a lose for much of a response to antismokers.

I would appreciate any insight as I know I can't just trust any source online.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Libra,

quote:

Originally posted by Sick Of Scientific Fraud:
Emphysema is perpetually thrown at me whenever I discuss the antismoking. What do anyone of you know about Emphysema?

Emphysema is an autoimmune disease, in which lung elastin is destroyed by ones own immune system. Smoking is generally protective against autoimmune diseases (e.g. colitis, Chron, rheumatoid arthritis, allergies, asthma,...), hence it is an unlikely cause of emphysema. Colby has chapter on emphysema in his book. See also Whitby's book "Smoking is good for you" (both books are online and free).

Given the antismoking zeitgeist of the present medical "research", had they been able to show that one could induce emphysema in animals by making them inhale tobacco smoke, or stop it or prevent it by quitting smoking in randomized intervention trials in humans, that would have been trumpeted all along. None of that was ever found. Instead, their whole theory that 'smoking causes emphysema' is built on blind statistical associations (if that), which may well be of the same kind as the association between consumption of aspirin and headaches or use of walking cane and arthrits.

Note, though, that while particles in tobacco smoke are entirely biodegradable and are at worst harmless, the filters do release non-biodegradable fibers, some of which remain in the lungs throughout the life. Whether they're more or less harmful than, say, fabric and other non-biodegradable fibers we inhale daily, it's probably better not to inhale them anyway and stick with the traditional ways of smoking tobacco (such as pipe, cigars, non-filtered cigarettes smoked through cigarette holdres), which have thousands of years long track record of benevolence.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nightlight,

Thank you so much...I appreciate having a cited source that I can spend some time reading and looking into.

Within the past 25 years, a disease called COPD(Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), has been created.

I remember the model Christy Turlington claiming a few years back that she had emphysema. I don't think that she was yet 30 at the time. Soon after, she did an anti-smoking commercial where she did a cry on camera for the loss of her father to "smoking-related" illness.

I know someone who smoked 4 packs of full flavor cigarettes a day for 50 years. This person is over 65 and has difficulty breathing, but has not been diagnosed with emphysema.

I've tried to find a definitive "look here, this is it" definition of emphysema and I'm not able to find a definition that doesn't seem highly subjective.

Emphysema, from what I can tell, and as NightLight pointed out, seems to mean "the elasticity in your lungs has decreased". I have a co-worker whom I've debated with who claims that her grandmother never smoked, but died from emphysema from secondhand smoke in her sixties.

My thoughts on Emphysema are that it is a "disease by classification". I don't deny that people can have severe problems with their breathing, and ultimately die from those complications, but I don't think that there is a hard and fast definition of emphysema that one can herd into a specific, measurable definition.

If you have a gun to your head, I can probably safely diagnose you with depression. As you know, though, depression has varying degrees and the definition is applied where it may not even belong. There certainly are people who have severe breathing problems, but emphysema seems to be a subjective diagnosis except when the situation has become as ugly as the gun to the head. When the breathing problems cause medical intervention for everyday survival, you've got emphysema.

Please know that I am not a medical professional. I am only sharing what I have found while trying to answer the same question you are.

Thank you too Winston for your posting. All of this information is of tremendous help to me as I really desire to be capable of relating to others more clearly over this issue.

quote:

Originally posted by Sick Of Scientific Fraud:
Thank you so much...I appreciate having a cited source that I can spend some time reading and looking into.

Another valuable resource is Ronald A. Fisher, the famous British mathematician and founder of the statistical methods as we know them in science today. In late 1950s he debunked the antismoking "research" of Dr. Richard Doll (he is the scientific fraud who started it all; more on his main "trick": blame the victim). Fisher's article Cigarettes, Cancer and Statistics explains in plain language why that kind of blind statistical associations between smoking and diseases, which was peddled by Doll, doesn't justify Doll's wishful leap into blaming smoking as the cause of those diseases. Fisher also points out peculiar anomalies in Doll & Hill data which indicate that tobacco smoke is protective against rather than being a cause of lung cancer.

Interestingly, even though Fisher's critique was made in 1950s, the antismoking "science" hasn't found anything better since. It is still based purely on blind statistical associations, as Johnson & Finch (also Whitby and Colby) point out. The reason for this five decade long failure to pin the causal role of tobacco smoke in any disease at all, is that any time an experiment was done to prove such causal role, the data invariably went the "wrong" way, showing that smoking was therapeutic & protective against the very diseases it was blamed for.

To get around this "little" inconvenience, the antismoking swindlers basically gave up on that kind of "hard science" and are still stuck with the "soft science" of blind statistical associations which are at least as consistent with the protective role of tobacco smoke as with the officially declared causal role (there is also a stronger biochemical basis for the protective role as well). That fact alone tells you what the real score is -- tobacco smoke is healthy and therapeutic/protective against the very diseases it is blamed for. The principal harm to smokers is from the witch doctor effect (negative placebo) injected into their minds by the antismoking con artists.

You can find more info, links and defense of this perspective in my recent posts in alt.smokers newsgroup.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nightlight,

Nightlight, coudn't people basically blame these liars for cancer's (or emphysema) not having been eradicated yet? I have heard it put this way on another board, and it makes sense, at least to me.

The theory is that they're(ACS, and their ilk) so busy pushing their lies, statistics, and garabage , and in that process, they are ignoring the real causes of cancer, and other diseases.
Or they're just sidestepping them, to keep the big money rolling in.

The ACS did send lawyers to fight a total tobacco ban in North Dakota. Go figure, eh? I guess they didn't want to kill the golden goose just yet.

Being an anti is a PROFITABLE business venture. I don't think the 'truth', or 'lives' mean a damn thing to these people.

quote:

Originally posted by 383rr:
The ACS did send lawyers to fight a total tobacco ban in North Dakota. Go figure, eh? I guess they didn't want to kill the golden goose just yet.

One of the stated reasons by the anti-smoker groups arguing against prohibition was just that: They'd lose anti-tobacco funding.

Their other reason was they didn't know if prohibition would work.

These same people who say 70% of smokers want to quit and something as simple as restaurant smoking bans makes people quit don't think prohibition would cause a greater decline in smoking than stupid ^%$# commercials?

I don't think most anti-smokers are in it for the money (because most don't get paid a dime), but I do believe there are some.

I recall one lady bitching their funding was getting cut and they would no longer be able to have anti-tobacco education in their schools and I thought, "How much does it %$#@ cost for you to just go there and speak? Nothing.

The greatest threat on earth. A pediatric disease. Blah blah blah. And she won't even use one or two vacation days a year to fight this "epidemic" she's so passionate about? Bull****!

"Tomato Juice Keeps Emphysema From Developing In New Animal Model Of Degenerative Disease"

http://www.the-aps.org/press/journal/06/1.htm

I just found this interesting article.

quote:

Originally posted by Sick Of Scientific Fraud:
"Tomato Juice Keeps Emphysema From Developing In New Animal Model Of Degenerative Disease"

http://www.the-aps.org/press/journal/06/1.htm

I just found this interesting article.

Well, it's very interesting considering they don't really know what causes emphysema. Doubly interesting because tomatoes are related to tobacco and contain nicotine.

"Since the lungs of one of the mouse strains “naturally” age very quickly, the researchers believed that exposure to inhaled cigarette smoke would induce emphysema in that strain much more quickly than in the other strain."

If I'm reading this correctly, then they have special mice with lungs that age quickly. If so, then might not these special mice be pre-disposed to developing old-age diseases like emphysema?

I have so many links and bookmarks, I'm at the point where I have a hard time finding anything...but I think I remember reading somewhere that emphysema is now thought to be genetic in most cases. Sorry I can't provide a source for that.

Tnsmoker,

Familial emphysema. Lack of the AAT enzyme.

I can't find crap in my computer anymore either. I looked that up quick.

They've known about it quite awhile. I first read about it in Lauren Colby's book.

Just be careful, nightlight uses obscurious as a source of information. This is the tabloid press of the internet. He has no credibility. You may note a lot of his links are to free sites and pro-smoking lobbies and not backed by any credibility either. I suspect he works for a tobacco company.

Mineral fibres are a believed to be a major contributor to Emphysema however smoking increases the risk by destroying the bodies natural protection. Do you find yourself hacking up phlegm in the morning? Non smokers don't do that as they have a natural mechanism in place to keep mucus out of the lungs, in removing the mucus the mineral fibres come out too which prevents them imbedding in the lungs to cause an immune reaction.

The only protection smoking can provide is the filter may catch some of the fibres when you are drawing on a cigarette. Asbestos is around us in building materials and brake linings. It is no longer in production but it is in out urban environment.

You can’t remove the traces of asbestos from the environment although there are controls to minimise exposure but you can avoid cigarettes.

Dear know it all,

I truly believe you are in the pay of the drug companies.

COPD
2. MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY. Currently, COPD ranks as the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. behind heart disease, cancer, and cardiovascular disease, and it is the only major disease that continues to show increased mortality rates each year. By contrast, data provided by the American Lung Association indicate that death rates for COPD actually doubled between 1979 and 1998. By 2020, COPD is expected to rise to the third leading cause of death in the US. (World Health Organization).

http://www.emphysema.net/intro.html


From 1965-2005, smoking rates have gone down by about 1/2. source: CDC

Smoking down 50%, COPD up 100%; your blaming smoking has all the earmarks of genius.


Your lack of credibilty is off the chart. Your BS and attack people's character ratings are pretty high too.

quote:

Originally posted by I know it all:
Just be careful, nightlight uses obscurious as a source of information.

If only you had some brains, or at least memory, in working order, you might have made it into a half decent conman, since your integrity is of the right kind and you seem quite given to distorting and misrepresenting the facts (e.g. didn't I give you plenty of alternative links, including the original journal ref, for the same paper that has somehow seized up your brain into that endless 'obscurious' loop, just few posts ago?).

As it is, unfortunately, even the poor anti retards on alt.smokers are few rungs above your grade. I am glad, though, you quit smoking and are now on the other side. Who would need enemies with someone of that caliber behind. So, don't start smoking again (even though that could salvage those handful of neurons still firing), stay on that side.

quote:

Originally posted by gkayser30:
Dear know it all,

I truly believe you are in the pay of the drug companies.

Maybe as a bathroom cleaner. With those brains of his, though, if he sticks around they may even let him collect the office trash cans some day.

Once your credability is gone it's never coming back. The obscurious link was the first one I clicked if I remember rightly.

I work for the state government in a safety compliance roll not at all related to any drug company. Are you paid by tobacco companies nightlight? You haven't answered that one.

I didn't know it was a fight or war, I thought it was a discussion.

Control the risks you can control. Balance risk against gain. Make up your own mind.

How many adults do you hear saying, "I'm thinking of taking up smoking"? and how many say "I'm thinking of giving up smoking"? Must be a lot of stupid smokers out there? I'm not refering to you people as stupid, you aren't giving up are you? you wouldn't dream of it!

quote:

Originally posted by squeezer:
Tnsmoker,

Familial emphysema. Lack of the AAT enzyme.

I can't find crap in my computer anymore either. I looked that up quick.

They've known about it quite awhile. I first read about it in Lauren Colby's book.

Thanks, Squeezer. I think Colby's book is what I was thinking of. I need to re-read it.

To I Know It All,

Until this past year I have never paid much attention to the anti-smokers, the scare tactics, and those that even appear well-intentioned over my smoking. I've mainly smoked by myself, and it's been a private habit. Then the hysteria was planted in our media, my father died of throat cancer, and I decided that it was time to do some researching on the issue. I wanted some answers to my own reservations of believing just anything.

Way back in the mid 90's here in the United States I had sent my daughter to a public school, and they were wonderful with her until she hit the 1st grade. I was told all in one meeting with her teacher that she was ADHD, that is was a brain disease, she would have to take Ritalin, and that I had no choice in doctor either over the issue. They were even claiming then that parents that smoked caused ADHD.

My first impression was of disbelief, because I know of not even a doctor that can diagnosis a brain disorder just by looking at someone. My disbelief was hit with tons of startling statistics, I was informed children that don't take Ritalin end up jailed, imprisoned, and the list of what was going to happen if I did not obey was a mile long. I refused! Even though everyone was telling me that all these invented mental illnesses were all real I did not buy it. I even offered to come in and teach my daughter for the teacher, I offered to come in unannounced with a video camera to document the so called behaviors but I was refused, and it became even more apparent to me that it was somehow a scam.

I ended up home-schooling my daughter for over 10 years, because the school would not teach her unless I drugged her Ritalin by their choice of doctor. It hurt me incredibly financially, but my daughter never ended up with a criminal record or anything else of that nature. In fact, she was a much better teenager than I ever dreamed of being. I have a huge file of the whole scandal, but not even the department of education would touch it to investigate because they have made drugging our children with very dangerous drugs completely legal.

Then around 2000 I was searching on the Internet and came across an organization over the child drugging issues. I became involved, and now not only a handful of doctors have came out of the dark and claimed it's all fraud but many more have stepped up to that plate that it's basically a con. There's more to say, but I trust my instincts if I think I'm being lied to.

I've said this before, but will say it again. I have no desire to make any nonsmoker unhappy or miserable with my habit. When I found Forces a few month's ago, I started researching their data, and I started finding they are telling the truth. Yes, smoking can kill a smoker from decades of smoking, and smoking outside is not harmful to anyone in the public. I do understand that passive smoke can distress some nonsmokers very seriously. I have no problem understanding that some just hate this habit with a passion, because I despise prescription drugs with an equal passion. There really is mutual understanding happening. The extremism is what disturbs me more than anything.

The craziness of telling smokers by laws that they can't smoke outside is just insane. We are being overwhelmed by the Pharmaceutical companies at angle in our lives. It's fine with me if I can't smoke inside of someplace, but telling smokers that they can't even smoke outside is just too off-the-way.

I did read all the information about Emphysema from all the medical Web sites, but it did not satisfy me. I don't believe cigarettes are causing every illness known to humankind. I have learned that whatever is presented on the surface to the public is almost a promise that there are huge lies laced into the picture. The drugs they want all of us to eventually consume are far worse than smoking.

At least half of the public is now on prescription drugs, and it's incredibly amazing that smoking is claimed to be so awful now. I can't cite all the people I know taking drugs for no medical purposes, and they wish to order me around about smoking and don't even want us to smoke outside.

I can see how a non-smoker would hate smokers, but the bottom line is this whole thing has blown way out of proportion. It's one group at a time is being targeted with the hidden agenda of drugging them. The drugging in the schools is absolutely beyond any belief. Teen Screen is trying to force their way in to prevent teen suicide when about the only problem we have with teen suicide is from those that have committed it from taking psychotropic drugs. These people too absolutely hate cigarette smokers, and they are peddling fraud from pharmaceutical grants bestowed onto colleges to produce anything they wish to say and do.

Drug companies operate America right now! Non-profits like Forces International are almost always operated by very decent and intelligent beings. They are true non-profits unlike others who will say anything and do anything they are paid to do. What forces has done is shown the other side of the story the American public will likely never see unless something significant happens.

http://allpsych.com/disorders/dsm.html

"This is the tabloid press of the internet. He has no credibility. You may note a lot of his links are to free sites and pro-smoking lobbies and not backed by any credibility either. I suspect he works for a tobacco company."

To, I know it all,

If you find amusement in reading tabloid type materials I recommend that you go investigate the psychiatric Bible of mental health. They have created all types of mental illnesses, in effort, to sell even more prescription drugs. Many of these illnesses have no scientific credibility whatsoever, but millions are drugged regardless of no science. It's very legal for them to even force drugging, because they have taken many of our rights away.

There have been children in this country literally removed from their homes, their parent's rights completely terminated, and forced legally to consume extremely dangerous drugs for invented mental illness because the parents refused the drugs. Foster children have been killed with countless psychiatric drugs. On the other hand, I have read stories about parents being hauled into court over smoking in front of children. What is this called?

Scientific fraud, is found all over, and some of our most trusted authority figures are, in fact, drug lords beyond your wildest imagination. Please take a look at www.ahrp.org ,and you will discover we have drug lords within our highest and most distinct ranks. Click the link for the board of directors. Read the paragraphs about the Harvard psychiatrist that was literally fired for uncovering the abuse and fraud in the mental health system he was hired to perform. He did his job, and they fired him on the spot!!!

We have problems darling, and cigarette smokers are just a target to open up a brand new enterprise of new drug clients for the drug cartel. Why give them anymore power? I know very intimate details of cases of children who were forced to take drugs for public schools that resulted in death. These high and mighty authorities that are claimed to have impeccable credibility literally describe these children and parents as nothing but garbage in court. They care nothing about you, or about my smoking. As long as they can keep hooking more people they don't care.

You are right that cigarettes are not the greatest thing in the world, but most us coming in the forums know cigarette smoking is barely what is behind the true motivation to ban smoking. Honestly, I would rather be a moderate smoker than start up on prescription drugs of any kind. I have an intense personality that is completely natural, and cigarettes do calm me. I know some that claim that psychiatric drugs have improved their lives even though I hate the things. Sometimes we have to understand that others will have a choice that we may not like. It's life, and the freedom to make a choice should never be banned.

quote:

Originally posted by Sick Of Scientific Fraud:
We are being overwhelmed by the Pharmaceutical companies at angle in our lives.

The other night I saw a program, "Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease and Selling Drugs". It was on Free Speech TV, a channel on Dish Network and cable. It was about "invented" diseases and how Big Pharma pushes their drugs, how they've created a bigger market by inundating us with ads on TV, how they create a "new" drug just by adding an extra ingredient to the old drug when the patent is about to expire on the old drug, etc. etc. etc. They'll do anything--including lies, deceit, and fraud--for a buck.

I wish I had recorded it, to quote correctly, but my husband and I spent a long time discussing the situation and I didn't think about recording it until too late. Anyway, someone made the comment that a member of congress has said that Big Pharma has a stranglehold on congress.

Many money trails lead back to Big Pharma. With it happening in so many areas, in my mind it is no longer just a conspiracy theory.

Big Pharma funds smoking bans to increase their profits on nicotine replacement therapy products.

Big Pharma funds and pushes testing of children for ADD and ADHD to increase their profits on medications for these disorders.

Big Pharma funds and backs those who discredit vitamin therapies for cancer and heart disease to increase profits for their cancer and heart disease drugs.

(On a side note: I just started looking into vitamins and wound up on a site about the Vitamin C therapy devised by Linus Pauling, an acclaimed chemist and two-time Nobel prize winner, for lowering cholesterol. Sorry, antis, but I'll believe a two-time Nobel prize winning chemist that heart disease is caused by a severe deficiency in Vitamin C over a freaky mechanical engineer saying it's caused by smoking/SHS any day!! The discreditation of Linus Pauling's Vit C therapy and other alternative therapies [B17/Laetrile therapies for cancer, for example] reads frightening similar to the smoking/SHS fraud in many respects. It's worth a look into these other areas just to see how Big Pharma is working the same scam across the board.)

I have no clue how this will eventually play out. It is a lot more complicated than I initially thought. I think maybe Big Anti-tobacco, with their ambitious zeal to stamp out smoking at all cost, is the straw that will break Big Pharma's back. Perhaps with smoking bans being the center of attention these days, more and more people will become aware of what Big Pharma is doing. Perhaps soon, when the awareness reaches critical mass, there will be an uprising against Big Pharma (and those in collusion with them) and demands of accountability. So perhaps escalating bans will help us in the long run. We just have to keep spreading the word about the fraud and suffer through the bans until that point is reached.

Sorry for rambling on so long. Just a few stray thoughts that came together this morning.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tnsmoker,