Good video...But one thing I have never believed is that smokers on average have shorter lifespans than nonsmokers. Granted, much of my reasoning is anecdotal, but people more or less live about 80 years on average whether they smoke or not. With that said, I've seen nonsmokers drop dead before age 50. I've seen smokers do the same. I've seen nonsmokers who live over 100 years. I've seen 100+-year-old smokers as well. Because of this, I firmly dismiss "statistics" that claim smokers live 15-20 years less than nonsmokers as bullshit. If smokers have ANY degree of shorter lifespans, I would guess that it's maybe 5 years at the most.

quote:

Originally posted by Pat:
Good video...But one thing I have never believed is that smokers on average have shorter lifespans than nonsmokers. Granted, much of my reasoning is anecdotal, but people more or less live about 80 years on average whether they smoke or not......... Because of this, I firmly dismiss "statistics" that claim smokers live 15-20 years less than nonsmokers as bullshit. If smokers have ANY degree of shorter lifespans, I would guess that it's maybe 5 years at the most.

http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/brfss/Trends/agechart_c.asp?gr...tate_c=US&SUBMIT5=Go

Using US govt data,we find that only 10% of those over the age of 65 smoke. This is when most people die.

A while back I did some rough figuring and came up with an average age for smokers of 42.5 years,the average for nonsmokers was 48 years.

Comparing these two groups as equal is very bad math! Smoking has nothing to do with car accident deaths;yet,you would find that smokers tend to die from car accident deaths at an age of about 5 years younger than nonsmokers,because as a group they are 5 years younger.

When you compare apples to oranges,you can find a lot of mortality differences.

If you took 5,000 smokers that were 40 years old and also 5,000 nonsmokers that were 40 years old, then tracked them until all had died,you would find no difference in avg age of death.

http://www.forces.org/writers/hatton/files/murder.htm

The "Whitehall" study in England did just about that,so did the "Mr.Fit" study,and 4 or 5 others.

There has been only one that has solely dealt with smoking. This was the first 'Whitehall' study, starting in 1968, which recruited 1,445 British civil servants. Half were encouraged to give up smoking, the others were left alone. After a year smoking in the intervention group (the nagged) was down by 75%. After ten years, 17.2% of this group was dead, as against 17.5% of the control group. This difference of percentage is not statistically significant.

There was no difference in deaths from lung cancer or heart disease, and the only other unexpected result was that the intervention group had 28 deaths from cancer other than lung cancer, compared with the control in which the number of deaths from such cancers was 12. This is statistically significant.

Another study, with a wider range, was the 'Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial' (MRFIT) in the US. In this there were 12,866 subjects. They were all shown to be at risk of heart disease because of their lifestyle and general health. (With 300 risk factors that's not surprising.) One group was given drugs for high blood pressure, encouraged to eat more healthily, and to stop smoking. The other was left alone, as in the Whitehall study.

These were not self-selected studies, and seem to have been conducted competently. At the end of the MRFIT study, 41.2 per thousand of the 'healthy' group were dead, as against the 40.4 per thousand of the other.
Scientists investigating the study didn't like the results, and went over them again. They found that the drugs to reduce high blood pressure had in fact increased the death rate among the men given them, and were forced to conclude that the risk factors had nothing to do with the actual risks.

Professor Burch, in a letter to the British Medical Journal (March 1985) pointed out that in these two studies:

In the low smoking intervention groups 56 cases of lung cancer were recorded in a total starting population of 7,142 men (0.78%); the corresponding number for the more heavily smoking normal care groups being 53 in 7,169 (0.74%).

Findings for cancer other than those of the lung were even more surprising.


Some 88 cases (1.23%) were recorded in the low smoking intervention groups, but only 60 cases (0.84%) in the normal care groups. Thus in the category 'all cancers' there were 144 cases (2.02%) in the intervention groups but 113 cases (1.58%) in the more heavily smoking normal care groups. Reduced levels of smoking were associated with increases in cancer incidence.
He concludes:


It is fair to ask experts to explain why these remarkable findings from methodologically reputable trials conflict so drastically with their claims.

Professor Burch adds, in Can Epidemiology Become a Rigorous Science?


Strenuous efforts have been made to rescue something from the wreckage, though Stallones risked the creation of many personal enemies when he wrote: 'No amount of squirming on the hook alters the fact that for every 1,000 test subjects 41.2 dies and for every 1,000 control subjects 40.4 died.'