Where smoking is concerned, it's obvious that if everybody who smoked developed lung cancer, we could say, conclusively, that smoking "causes" lung cancer. But we all know that not everybody who smokes develops lung cancer, and we also all know of many people who don't smoke a day in their lives, but none-the-less develop lung cancer at an early age and die from the disease.

Hal Roach, the producer of the "Little Rascals" movies, was a heavy, 3 or 4 pack-per-day cigarette smoker for his entire life, but died recently, at the age of 101, apparently from simple old age. Just the other day, CNN showed a picture of a Lebanese gentleman, who claims to be 134 years old. He was vigorously puffing on a cigarette, burned down almost all the way to his lips. His formula for a long life: smoking and drinking every day, along with the consumption of fresh vegetables. The world's oldest woman, a 125 year old resident of France, smoked until she was 123.

In my own family, my aunt died recently in Florida, at the age of 78, from lung cancer. She'd been a smoker in her youth, but gave it up about 25 years ago. A family friend, also a female, died in New York at about the same time as my aunt died. The family friend was in her late 70's or early 80's, and had never smoked a day in her life. Thus, these little old ladies became statistics. Or did they? Actually, it may surprise the reader to learn that death certificates never contain any information concerning the life-styles of the decedents. Therefore, while the Public Health Service keeps certain records showing the cause of death from various diseases, nobody, but nobody keeps any records to show whether the decedents were or were not smokers!

There is an Internet News Group devoted to smoking (alt.smokers). Recently, a participant called the Office of Smoking or Health, in an effort to find out how the government arrives at its estimate of 450,000 annual smoking related deaths. After repeated calls to different individuals within the government, it turned out that nobody really knew how the figures are compiled. Some bureaucrat said he thought the calculations might come from a book, "Foundations of Modern Epidemiology", by David Lilienfeld. They don't. I'll discuss this and other interesting statistical manipulations, later.

A common myth about smoking assert that the lungs of smokers become brown or even black from years of accumulation of tars and goo. Not true, according to Wray Kephart. Mr. Kephart presently works as an engineer but he previously worked in a hospital, performing autopsies, most of which were paid for by insurance companies, seeking to determine whether the deceased committed suicide, or died from "natural causes". Kephart tells me that he's done approximately 1560 autopsies, and he's seen some strange things, such as the lungs of auto painters, which were "effectively sealed with catalyzed lacquers".

Kephart insists, however, that it is normally impossible to tell, from autopsy, whether the deceased was or was not a smoker. Upon resection, the lungs are always clear, unless the deceased lived in a large city where there was significant industrial pollution. In that event, carbon deposits may be found, but these are unrelated to smoking. So the "brown lungs" myth is exactly that: a myth.

Actually, Dr. Burns is not the only medical doctor who has begun to question that simplistic notion. Julian Whitaker, MD, is a practitioner of "alternative medicine", a writer of a monthly newsletter on health and exercise, and no friend of smoking. However, in the October, 1995, issue of his newsletter, "Health and Healing", Doctor Whitaker writes:


"Since 1950, the incidence of all cancers in people between the ages of 50 and 60 years has increased by 44%, with even higher increases in some of the more deadly forms of cancer. Breast and colon cancer went up 60%, prostate up 100% and testicular cancer for men between the ages of 28 and 35 went up 300%. Lung cancer has gone up 262%, an increase that is obviously not related to cigarette smoking, because over the same period the number of people smoking cigarettes dropped from 50% to 25%..."

I am a smoker and will willingly admit that it's bad for you...

I don't know about vitamin depleater but it's defenitely hard on the wallet.

nicotine is a drug. you are an addict...at least in terms of cost, it cost less than cocaine or heroin...

The supplements you need to take will cost more...

try this, though...get some vitamin C.

begin to take mega doses of it.

you will discover something.

take 10,000 mg C twice a day. On the second day you will see it completely takes away the craving. promise. try it.

Antioxidants act like cops in the body, apprehending the rowdy molecules called free radicals that form naturally during metabolism and that can damage cells. One theory holds that free radicals promote chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's, and that by increasing our consumption of antioxidants, we can stave off these feared killers.

In particular, researchers say, green tea might explain why some Asian countries have high smoking rates, but relatively few deaths from heart disease or lung cancer, both of them smoking-related diseases.

Japan, for instance, has about half the death rate from heart disease as the United States, even though the Japanese smoke far more cigarettes.http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/06/54E1664D-9EB3-48E0-B033-DA4A2BE2EDBD.html

Conventional wisdom also used to indicate that the earth was the center of the solar system and that everything else revolved around it.