Originally posted by lockjaw02:
Please be very careful using anything from that article. I don't believe the author is correct in the way she explains
SAMMEC. There is regard given to other causes of death according to whatever confounding factors were accounted for in the epidemiological studies used to compute the formulas in SAMMEC, or at least that's the way it is in the American version. Also the American version states it does NOT include cigarette caused fires or those assumed to be caused by ETS exposure.
The most glaring mistake is that the article says, "
All told, about a third of smokers who die each year, succumb to lung cancer -- most at well above retirement age." As written, that's not correct. I estimate that only about 3-6% of smokers and former smokers ever get lung cancer. Remember, no matter how hard the antis try and the fact that percentages keep going down, there has always been an average of around 50 million current smokers in the US since the early 60's.
For most of the last 50 years, there had been less than 150,000 lung cancer deaths in the US recorded annually, at least until 1994. In 1974 there were approximately 78,700 lung cancer deaths. In 1994, there were 149,400 recorded. I think it peaked at around 172,000 and is now back on its way down. Anti-smokers would love to attribute the current decline to their activities alone, but facts are that the peak and subsequent decline also corresponds to other factors such as the intrinsic changes in the US transition from an industrial/manufacturing based society to information age economy, the OSH Act of 1970, and many of the other harsher environmental laws passed in the 60's and 70's like the switch to unleaded fuels.
Just winging a generous rough estimate, 150,000 lc deaths per year times 50 years would only equal a grand total of 7.5 million lc deaths in the entire population, not just smokers. Ignoring that never smokers get lung cancer too (never smokers incur at least 10-15% of recorded lung cancers, according to anti-smokers), those 7.5 million lung cancer deaths in 50 years only equates to 15% of 50 million average number of current smokers. So stating that 1/3 of all smokers' deaths each year being due to lung cancer is absurd.
