BS: Help wanted: Scientist

Subject: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:09 AM

I've dubbed this thought-provoking article The Mice that Roared. For a couple weeks now, I've been trying to validate the historical/scientific claims the author makes:

Certain governments know that their past actions are directly responsible for causing most of the lung and skin cancers in the world today, so they go to extreme lengths in trying to deflect responsibility and thus financial liability away from themselves ...

By the early 20th Century almost one in every two people smoked, but the incidence of lung cancer remained so low that it was almost immeasurable. Then something extraordinary happened on July 16, 1945: a terrifying cataclysmic event that would eventually cause western governments to distort the perception of smoking forever...

Twelve years after the cataclysmic Trinity test, it became obvious to western governments that things were getting completely out of control, with a 1957 British Medical Research Council report stating that global "deaths from lung cancer have more than doubled during the period 1945 to 1955", though no explanation was offered. During the same ten-year period, cancer deaths in the immediate proximity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki went up threefold. By the end of official atmospheric testing in 1963, the incidence of lung cancer in the Pacific Islands had increased fivefold since 1945. Having screwed your environment completely for 50,000 years, it was time for "big government" to start taking heavy diversionary action.
            
How could people be proved to be causing themselves to contract lung cancer, i.e. be said to be guilty of a self inflicted injury for which government could never be blamed or sued? The only obvious substance that people inhaled into their lungs, apart from air, was tobacco smoke, so the government boot was put in. Poorly qualified medical "researchers" suddenly found themselves overwhelmed with massive government grants all aimed at achieving the same end-result: "Prove that smoking causes lung cancer"...

Despite exposing literally tens of thousands of especially vulnerable mice and rats to the equivalent of 200 cigarettes per day for years on end, "medical science" has never once managed to induce lung cancer in any mouse or rat. Yes, you did read that correctly. For more than forty years, hundreds of thousands of medical doctors have been deliberately lying to you...

Government pressure was immediately brought to bear and the facts suppressed, but this did not completely silence the real scientists. Tongue in cheek perhaps, Professor Schrauzer, President of the International Association of Bio-inorganic Chemists, testified before a U.S. congressional committee in 1982 that it had long been well known to scientists that certain constituents of tobacco smoke act as anti-carcinogens [anti-cancer agents] in test animals. He continued that when known carcinogens [cancer causing substances] are applied to the animals, the application of constituents of cigarette smoke counter them...

Nor did Professor Schrauzer stop there. He further testified on oath to the committee that "no ingredient of cigarette smoke has been shown to cause human lung cancer", adding that "no-one has been able to produce lung cancer in laboratory animals from smoking." It was a neat answer to a rather perplexing problem. If government blocks publication of your scientific paper, take the alternate route and put the essential facts on the written congressional record!


If these claims are true, they toll like a funeral bell for the whole planet. The author's claims about the continuing health threats posed by nuclear weapons testing appear to be correct, but I'm wondering if any of you scientific Cats have any information to prove or disprove the rest of these claims.

Thanks in advance for your help,

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: beardedbruce
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:17 AM

The residual radiation from testin is not appreciably higher than that from "natural " sources, such as volcanoes, and "conventional" sources, such as coal fired plants.


I guess you really have to blame the defeat of Germany, since that occurred at about the same time.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: DMcG
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:30 AM

A Google search for "International Association of Bio-inorganic Chemists" brings up nothing but examples of the quotation above, including this one for Dr William Whitley where the original paragraph occurs. It is headed with a quotation from the tobacco industry (Philip Morris) "It is possible he is a kind of nut".

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: sledge
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:30 AM

Or with increased longevity you get an increased risk of developing these diseases? Or the occupational illnesses that used to cause so many problems, mining or asbestos for example, started to be controlled more and so the cancer deaths were no longer just written off as an adjunct to those trades.

No stats etc. to back it up but it makes sense to me.

Sledge

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:35 AM

or TB, or "consumption" or half a dozen other diseases.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Peter T.
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:44 AM

We have no decent medical evidence of any kind before the middle of the 20th century that would satisfy a medical statistician. Everything is all swamped together -- people died of pneumonic diseases of varying kinds that were not diagnosed or sampled properly, etc.

I would be very surprised if the lab tests on smoking mice never got lung cancer. It sounds like an urban myth, like the cars that run on water that were hushed up by General Motors.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:48 AM

Not a scientist, but - as a kid in a science museum I remember seeing pictures of healthy pink lungs next to pictures of a smoker's lungs. Never occurred to me that they could have been "faked" or could have been, for instance, the lungs of a smoker who also worked in a coal mine and died of black lung.


A bald statement like "Despite exposing literally tens of thousands of especially vulnerable mice and rats to the equivalent of 200 cigarettes per day for years on end, "medical science" has never once managed to induce lung cancer in any mouse or rat" ought to be easily disproved if false, simply by trotting out a single study where a mouse or rat got lung cancer as a result of smoking cigarettes, passively or not.

Besides cancer, though, aren't there other risks and disabilities attached to smoking?

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:50 AM

Most statistics can be skewed to serve many purposes. Add to the above the facts that between 1900 and 1945 the average human lifespan in the western world was 52 years. By 1950 it had gone up to 70. Now in the 3rd Millenium we can expect with some confidence to live into our 80's. What conclusion do we draw from this?

I think we would be skating on pretty thin ice if we deduce that some event at the end of WW2 increased our life expectancy significantly. In much the same way it is very unsafe to conclude that the same event triggered an increase in anything!

What you make of it is entirely up to yourselves. Me? I can only conclude that studies, particulary expert studies, have a way of counter-acting each other.

Believe nothing you hear and only about half of what you see!

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Peter T.
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:55 AM

It is also true that animal tests are notoriously poor indicators of human health problems.

However, we do know of one mouse that does get lots of cancer, because we genetically engineered it to -- the oncomouse.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST,Hard 8 :: ::
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 10:06 AM

I'm not a medical scientist, so cannot speak to the physiological aspects of the argument, but there is a flaw in the basic scientific logic used in the argument. Namely, that if cancer in humans is due to exposure to airborne radionucliides and not cigarrette smoke, then why do none of the rats and mice in the purported laboratory studies also get cancer from the same radionucliides? Are all lab rats and mice exposed only to filtered air and cigarrette smoke? I doubt it.

A basic flaw in scientific reasoning such as this casts serious doubt on the whole concept. It makes me skeptical about all of the other alleged "data" presented.

It is my understanding, based on discussions I have had with toxicologists (people who study how poisons kill you) I work with (in the haz-waste cleanup business), that cancer risk is evaluated to a large extent by statistical analysis of large populations. In other words, studies are done of how many people who smoke get cancer compared to how many people who don't smoke get cancer. And the numbers I have seen are overwhelming.

Did Dr Schrauzer happen to be an employee of the cigarrette industry? (grins)

Do radionucides from testing exacerbate the effects of smoking in causing cancer? Could be.

I'd suggest looking at some reputable publications to get your science, for example, Science News.

Regards,

:: ::

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Wolfgang
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 10:16 AM

Another one from the same camp

On each field whatever it is you'll find at least one PhD who is a virulent dissenter. Most of them do it for the joy of dissenting and not for the money in it.

Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit

(What might have misled the author) A counter-intuitive result: Since the last war (with few exceptions) each year more people die from cancer than the year before. However in each age group less people die from cancer than the decades before. The increase in cancer related deaths is a spurious consequence of us living longer than before. The percentage of cancer deaths is an indicator of good health.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST,William
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 10:26 AM

Dave the gnome says: "Most statistics can be skewed to serve many purposes."

Absolutly, completely and totally false!!! Statistics do NOT do anything of the kind, nor can they be skewed. Statistics are mathematical results of applying certain procedures to collected data. The data collected might be incomplete, the method of collection might be wrong, or the wrong kind of procedure may be used on the data, but that does not say anything about the skewing of statistics. And by implying that it can, it gives false color to all procedures.

Don't look just at the results - look at the method of collection, etc., before you believe what is being reported.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Peter T.
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 10:29 AM

Are you suggesting that it is the human beings and not the statistics that are flawed? Shame on you.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Amos
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 10:41 AM

PEter:

Take your tongue out of your cheek this instant! This is a serious discussion!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 10:47 AM

Of course statistics can be skewed, William. It is not the statistics themselves that are doing it. My phrase is exactly as you quote it. The point is not that the statistics are right or wrong, simply that there are many ways of interpreting, or 'skewing', the results.

Two simples indicators of what I mean

1. On a remote island there are 100 people. One mans earns £1M per year while the other 99 earn £1. The simple arithmentic is that the average earnings on the island are just over £10k and everyone is happy! However, go for the weighted average and we get a different picture. We need to modify, or skew, our methods.

2. Over half the population of the UK are of below average intelligence. Again - rely on simple sums and we are right. However modify the arithmetic in innumerable ways and we are wrong. How can this be? Simple. The "Mathematic results of applying certain procedures to collected data" is modified. Or fudged. Or skewed.

Call it what you will, if it looks like a horse, smells like a horse and sounds like a horse it's probably a horse...

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 10:54 AM

Daylia says "If these claims are true, they toll like a funeral bell for the whole planet." Well, for the reasons stated by many others above, these claims are almost certainly bogus. But the funeral bell does toll. Not for the whole planet (life - in some forms - will survive), but for homo sapiens and many other species. The fossil and geochemical records are full of mass extinctions - some brought on by the wild success of a species or genus or family that use up or poison their habitat or become so densely populated that disease brings crashes the population. So, just because WWII nukes aren't ringing the bell doesn't mean it ain't ringing. My sunny contribution for the day is complete.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 02:12 PM

An interesting look back at the political / economic beginnings of the "tobacco wars" in this Guardian article, 1954. At that time, the world's most powerful gov'ts were still conducting nuclear weapons testing without sanction around the globe.

I've been trying to find the 1982 congressional report by Prof G Schrauzer. He surely must have referenced these alleged studies showing that tobacco smoke does not cause lung cancer in mice! He was working for the Council for Tobacco Research at the time, yet surely if fraud had been an issue he would not still be pursuing this rather distinguished-looking scientific career.

Dr. Gerhard N. Schrauzer PhD, M.S, BSc, FACN, CNS :.

Dr. Schrauzer is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California San Diego where he taught and researched from 1966 until his retirement in 1994. In 1994 Dr. Schrauzer founded the San Diego based Biological Trace Element Research Institute, which he presently directs. Dr. Schrauzer is internationally known and recognized for his work on the biological functions of Vitamins and Nutritionally essential trace elements, notably Selenium, and for his work on Cancer Prevention.

Dr. Schrauzer has published more than 300 papers and reviews in National and International Journals, authored or edited 4 books and he holds several patents.

Dr. Schrauzer's professional memberships include, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Institute of Nutrition, the American College of Toxicology and Association of Clinical Scientists. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN), a Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS) and a Life-Member of the American Board of Forensic Examiners.

hmmmmm .... thanks for your links and opinions, everyone.

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 02:46 PM

"Despite exposing literally tens of thousands of especially vulnerable mice and rats to the equivalent of 200 cigarettes per day for years on end, "medical science" has never once managed to induce lung cancer in any mouse or rat. Yes, you did read that correctly."

Do rats and mice LIVE long enough to develop cancer? Most people develop it after 20 years or more of smoking. How long do mice live? 3 years maybe?

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 03:24 PM

Skewed or not, the statistics of the Insurance Companies all seem to point to the same conclusion:   Smokers die at a comparatively earlier age than non-Smokers.

They don't profess to know why, and they say they don't care that much: If they insure the lives of smokers at the same rates they insure the lives of non-smokers, the profit on the group of non-smokers is less.

Dead simple, really.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 09:49 PM

A recent ABC TV Documentary about fallout in Australia being hushed up discussed that 20,000 samples of bone from deceased newborns showed an increase in strontium from tests held in Australia and the Pacific - but fallout form all the US Russian Chinese French atmospheric tests eventually spread all around the planet anyway. You should be able to find it on the ABC (Aust) site.

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: DMcG
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 03:22 AM

Dr. Schrauzer's professional memberships include, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Institute of Nutrition, the American College of Toxicology and Association of Clinical Scientists. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN), a Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS) and a Life-Member of the American Board of Forensic Examiners.

But no mention, you notice, of International Association of Bio-inorganic Chemists. Can you be certain this is the same Dr Schrauzer?

There are plenty of other reasons to treat this article with great caution. Did you notice that when it is talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki it quietly switched from 'lung cancer' to 'cancer', for example?

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: *daylia*
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 07:42 AM

I'm pretty sure it's the same person, DMcG. Here's a March 1983 report of Dr. Schrauzer's research and activities:

Schrauzer was a CTR Special Projects Researcher. (N.M. Tobacco Companies Personnel List)
.... Dr. Schrauzer in 1981 for a two-year investigation into the presence of selenium (an anti-carcinogenic trace element) in tobacco smoke. Reports return of unexpended $10,000 to CTR following one year's research. Describes Dr. Schrauzer's current interest in international data collection "to compile a comprehensive data bank of lung cancer risk factors and perform statistical calculations to test various etiologic models."

And perhaps not surprisingly:

They have knowledge and/or participated directly in the tobacco industry's suppression of scientific research, directed the Center for Tobacco Research (CTR) special projects and conspired to wrongfully employ the attorney/client, and/or attorney work product privileges to prevent the production of tobacco industry documents.

I still don't quite understand who was suppressing what, but I've found nothing to indicate that Dr Schrauzer himself was responsible for any wrongdoing.

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: robomatic
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 05:20 PM

Sounds like revisionism of the same kind of thinking that maintains the Holocaust never happened. Just because it's got a website don't mean its true.

There are plenty of knaves, fools, and con-artists who have PHD after their names. Not for nothing is it known as: "Piled Higher'n Deeper."

Cigarettes were referred to as 'coffin-nails' well before the Surgeon General got involved. Cigarette smoke is full of many chemical compounds and one of the most heavily researched items in medical history. I believe that in addition to the smoke, nicotine is involved. Chewing tobacco and pipe smoking are both associated with mouth and lip cancer.

Oh, and I checked out that web article referenced in the first message. The guy running it appears to be a fruit-loop.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST,Augie
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 11:35 AM

Daylia, let me take a wild guess. Could it be that you smoke cigarettes?
If not, I apologize, but if so, and you're looking to this theory to provide you with a sense of security regarding your behavior, I hope you won't find yourself terminally disappointed 10 or 20 years down the road.For many people it's not a harmless habit. Smoking stole my Aunt, my Grandfathers and my Dad from me, all way,way before their time,and I miss their presence in my life single every day. I pray your loved ones won't feel this way in the future.
Best Regards

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: *daylia*
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 12:49 PM

Thanks for the good wishes, Augie.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 04:31 AM

BaldEagle2 said, "They don't profess to know why, and they say they don't care that much: If they insure the lives of smokers at the same rates they insure the lives of non-smokers, the profit on the group of non-smokers is less."   That sounds reasonable, but having worked for an insurance company once, I'm not sure that's the whole story. Any excuse to charge more, any excuse to pay less. Gouging the customer seemed to be S. O. P.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Wolfgang
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 07:32 AM

Bio-inorganic Chemists???

life based on chemistry without carbon?

The man's pulling our legs or is a crank.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 09:33 AM

Silicon-based. Ask Pam Anderson.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: *daylia*
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 09:44 AM

Bio-inorganic Chemists??? Well, I've yet to find another reference to this alleged "organization", Wolfgang.

life based on chemistry without carbon? Huh? If he said that, the guy IS a froot-loop (worse yet, he must think everyone else is too)

The people who put that website together may indeed have had ulterior motives and slanted the material, but I'd still feel more comfortable if I could find some absolute proof that the claims made about nuclear fallout/gov't cover-up of scientific research regarding cancer are indeed false.

(NOt that I could do anything about it one way or the other, I suppose).

*sigh*    daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 09:56 AM

German scientists established the link between smoking and lung cancer in the 30s,and I believe legislation was being conisered to controll it. After the war, much positive work from Germany was discarded for political reasons. This maybe not have been so unreasonable at the time, I suppose,considering the huge negative side of things; but it's a pity it wasn't disclosed so much earlier.

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Pied Piper
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 09:58 AM

Bioinorganic chemists are real, I assume they study the many "inorganic" elements in living systems, things like the Iron in Haemoglobin and other Transition Elements which make up the active sites of many
Enzymes.
Having said that, the article is nonsense.


PP

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 10:00 AM

... and here's a link to some further details on the net.

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Wolfgang
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 10:05 AM

Thanks, PP, I stand corrected.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST,MarkS
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 10:36 AM

Got to believe that if years ago people smoked more and died less often of lung cancer, it was because the overall life expectancy was lower and people often died of other causes before they could live long enough for the smoking caused lung cancer to develope.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Peace
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 04:44 PM

11

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: GUEST,Nik
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 03:34 AM

If the article is true, where is the evidence? but then no-one is showing the evidence against it are they? It seems as though any theory that runs against what is the norm needs proof beyond doubt yet no proof is offered either way. Before writing people off as 'fruit loops' (robomatic) show some evidence to back up what you're trying to say. That article and many more on his site are well written and thought provoking, just because you don't agree with his theories (and thats all they are) doesn't make him crazy. Just as your comment doesn't make you a child. Truth is and has been buried by governments for years, so info on these subjects is very hard to find. Maybe some people should not rely on the net so much and start researching in other places.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 04:04 AM

Let's be clear of one thing - the first article, even if true, does not absolve smoking from the charge of causing premature death; it simply takes cancer out of the equation, leaving still the damage to arteries, heart disease etc.

What the article does is to raise the spectre of a conspiracy theory implying that there are bad things "out there" in the air that are not smoking-related and cause cancers.

Well, blow me down with a feather! The world is riddled with such substances. Only this week in the UK hundreds of food products have had to be recalled because they contain a cancer-causing dye (sudan 1) that slipped through the net of the administration. And that is just ONE incident.

The article further implies that the cause of the "bad things in the air" is the result of some governmental action. While this would not necessarily surprise me, some proof more solid than "smoking does not cause cancer" is needed.

The line that - for me - discredits the article as being written by someone with a hidden agenda is the one that says "Having screwed your environment completely for 50,000 years, it was time for "big government" to start taking heavy diversionary action".

50,000 years of "big government"? Just slightly exaggerated pehaps? Ever so little...And these are the words of a scientist? Puhleese!

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Amos
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 08:40 AM

That's not what the line means. It means that the nuclear tests won't be clearted up for 50,000 years; again, an unsubstantiated assertion.

I don't know what the numbers are but smoking kills through emphysema just as thoroughly as it does through cancer; and a predisposition to pneumonia, I would expect, as well!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Pied Piper
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 12:16 PM

Don't get me wrong I'm mot in favour of Nuclear power (except for the burning of the obscene amounts of weapons grade plutonium the world has produced), but compared to the risks of smoking the increase in back ground radiation is negligible.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 12:29 PM

Conspiracy to promote false information or not, there has long been anecdotal evidence as to the harm that smoking does. Why is it that we are surprised when someone we know didn't smoke develops lung cancer? We are not surprised when a longtime heavy smoker gets it.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 02:24 PM

Ebbie:
Nevertheless, non-smokers do contract lung cancer. So does cigarette smoking cause lung cancer, or merely aggravate an existing pre-disposition toward forming lung cancer?

Nigel (an ex-smoker)


(but only for the last two years, and it may not be permanent!)

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: robomatic
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 03:48 PM

Guest, nik
(sigh) I took another look at it. Yeah, he/she is a frootluip, any way you want to spell it. Plus there are some obvious flaws of physics and how radiation actually gets disseminated. There is more out there on the net than can possibly be true. How about YOU spending some time and energy and digging up some facts to support the outrageous notion (which I think is actually meant to be a site not of truth, but of outrageousness).

Sounds like you've got the credulosity gene.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Grab
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 06:23 AM

Nigel, you're missing the basic way in which cancers form. They're caused by cells failing to reproduce correctly due to a mutation in the cell. Mutations happen all the time - it's the reason evolution exists (if you're a member of the religious right, ignore that and pretend I said "it's the reason you can breed different varieties of living things", cos that discussion is off-topic). Mutations are caused by a cell's copying mechanism breaking down.

Now spontaneous mutations will always happen, because there's a certain element of randomness involved. But there are many chemicals which attack a cell's copying mechanism to prevent it making correct copies and only copying itself as needed. If a chemical has the effect of breaking a cell's copying mechanism so that it copies itself non-stop, that chemical is a carcinogen - it interferes with copying to produce cancer. The body still has some defences against this, but they're generally less effective, because the first line of defence is getting the copying right to start with.

To take an analogy, think of a tightrope walker. A good one can run up and down the rope with a miniscule risk of falling off. Now suppose you throw stones at the tightrope walker until they lose their balance and fall off. What you've done is taken a miniscule risk and applied outside influences to increase that risk until the disaster happens. And this is precisely what carcinogens do to cell reproduction - they take an existing small possibility and greatly increase the chance of it happening.

Regarding the guy running the website being a "fruitloop", I have to agree. Not only does he claim that cigarettes actively *prevent* cancer, but he also claims that the Bali bombing was a "micro-nuke" planted by Israeli and US forces, and that the 9/11 hijackings were achieved via some remote-control system secretly installed into all airliners worldwide by US authorities.

Daylia, if you've spent weeks investigating this, I suspect you need to be reminded about Google. A simple Google search for "mouse lung cancer study smoking" came up with this link which is pretty conclusive: http://monographs.iarc.fr/htdocs/monographs/suppl7/tobaccosmoke.html. In other words, if this Prof Schrauzer says that this has never happened, either he was lying or all the people running the referenced studies were lying.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 12:38 PM

It is possible he is a kind of nut

Schrauzer himself speaking

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Help wanted: Scientist
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 01:34 PM

Someone said:

Nevertheless, non-smokers do contract lung cancer. So does cigarette smoking cause lung cancer, or merely aggravate an existing pre-disposition toward forming lung cancer?

Two comments:

The first sentence of course brings up the dangers of secondhand smoke. If you don't smoke, but your work (or life-pattern otherwise) makes you spend a lot of time in heavy tobacco-smoke areas, it's quite possible to be exposed to as much tobacco smoke as you might if you smoked.

The last quoted sentence (merely aggravate; what's "mere" about it?)really doesn't matter. If a substantial portion of the population have such predisposition and the cancer-trigger is tobacco smoke, it's still the tobacco smoke that's to blame. Blame the bullet, not the target.

And from the original post, a portion of the remarks went as follows:

By the early 20th Century almost one in every two people smoked, but the incidence of lung cancer remained so low that it was almost immeasurable.

It is misleading or disingenuous (if not outright fraudulent) to cite the experience in the early years of the 20th Century in comparison to today, because over the years the tobacco industry has added chemicals to the tobacco which are known to be harmful, and thus comparative statistics between the period are at least suspect. Cigarettes sold in the 20s are not the same as cigarettes sold in say the 90s.

Dave Oesterreich