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Surgeon General's Warning: Living Causes Cancer
The CDC seems to be simultaneously defending and backing away from its warnings that a few errant molecules of secondhand smoke just might give you heart disease or lung cancer. Last summer, in a statement that accompanied his report on secondhand smoke, then-Surgeon General Richard Carmona claimed "even brief exposure...increases risk for heart disease and lung cancer." Responding to criticism that such statements are scientifically unfounded and biologically absurd, since these diseases take decades to develop even in smokers, Terry Pechacek, associate director for science at the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, recently told Inside Bay Area "we can't quantify what is 'brief.'" Could it be, say, 40 years? Pechacek won't say. At the same, Pechacek "explained the reason for the Surgeon General's warning that even brief exposure could trigger cancer. 'There is some risk that even a very small amount can damage a cell,' he said, setting off a chain reaction that causes cancer.'"
This position renders irrelevant any attempt to determine what level of exposure to a possibly dangerous chemical is associated with a measurable increase in cancer risk. It implies that any substance that causes cancer in some doses under some circumstances should not be tolerated in any dose under any circumstances. Michael Siegel sums it up well on his tobacco policy blog:
By this reasoning, the CDC should also be warning the public that:
• A single chest X-ray causes cancer.
• Being in the sun for thirty seconds causes cancer.
• Breathing in diesel fumes for ten seconds causes cancer.
• Eating peanut butter causes cancer.
• Eating a single char-broiled burger causes cancer.
• Drinking a sip of chlorinated water causes cancer.
In fact, just the process of living every day could be said to cause cancer, since there is always damage being done to our cells that could potentially trigger cancer. The body has defense mechanisms that repair this damage constantly. This is the reason why it takes more than a single exposure to cause cancer. The exposure has to overwhelm the body's ability to repair the damage....Once you are willing to state that a single exposure to a carcinogen that could potentially damage one cell is enough to warrant a public statement that the exposure causes cancer, then all of your statements about carcinogenic exposures become meaningless.
|1.17.07 @ 5:00PM|#
And what is the CDC going to do about all that carbon 14 in my body that is constantly emitting radiation and damaging my cellular structure?
|1.17.07 @ 5:05PM|#
I love Michael Siegel, and I love even more how he is the turd
in the punch bowl among anti-smoking advocates.
Nitpicky pedantic note: Smoke is a colloidal suspension, not a
homogenous cluster of molecules, although I'm sure you already know
that and were just taking a shortcut.
|1.17.07 @ 5:12PM|#
A single chest X-ray causes cancer.
Check
• Being in the sun for thirty seconds causes cancer.
Check
• Breathing in diesel fumes for ten seconds causes cancer.
Missed it
• Eating peanut butter causes cancer.
Triple points on this one.
• Eating a single char-broiled burger causes cancer.
Double points
• Drinking a sip of chlorinated water causes cancer.
Lost count here
Five out of six ain't bad.
Funny, I don't feel dead.
|1.17.07 @ 5:20PM|#
In related news, PA Governor Rendell today proposed a new
health
plan that basically is going to guarantee health coverage to
everyone in Pennsylvania and improve the quality
of healthcare in Pennsylvania. Sounds tough, I know, but it's
really simple.
He's going to introduce "...a series of quality and safety
initiatives to tackle hospital-acquired infections and other often
preventable medical errors. His administration estimates it could
save billions of dollars and reduce the human toll from preventable
complications during care." Billions! Who knew a handful of new
regulations could accomplish so much?
But I digress. The real reason this is related is that Rendell
wants to make PA a "smoke free state". Smoking would be banned in
all workplaces, bars, restaurants and public places, and
it would be partially funded through "a new tax on smokeless
tobacco and cigars, [and] an increase in the cigarette tax".
Because, of course, tobacco use is the main obstacle to working
socialized medicine in this state.
|1.17.07 @ 5:25PM|#
I missed the peanut butter reference, but:
Eating foods with vitamin E, like whole grains, peanuts, nuts, peanut butter, vegetable oils, and seeds, can help reduce the risk of Alzheimer's, according to two break-through studies just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The same benefits did not hold true for vitamin E from supplements, making the case for getting antioxidants from a healthy diet, instead of a bottle of pills.
And haven't I heard somewhere that antioxidants help prevent
cancer?
|1.17.07 @ 5:27PM|#
"But smoking is bad!"
Watch the Rob Riener episode of South Park, and this will all make
sense.
Ron Hardin|1.17.07 @ 5:28PM|#
Once you are willing to state that a single exposure to a
carcinogen that could potentially damage one cell is enough to
warrant a public statement that the exposure causes cancer, then
all of your statements about carcinogenic exposures become
meaningless.
Nonsense. You'd have to issue a lot of absurd statements over a
period of time ; an occasional one is just the normal hazard of
writing.
I look forward to better posts in the future.
thoreau|1.17.07 @ 5:38PM|#
all that carbon 14 in my body that is constantly emitting
radiation and damaging my cellular structure
Actually, radioactive decay is just a theory. It's possible that
radioactive decay doesn't work the way that scientists think it
does, and so the earth is really much younger than they
think.
:)
|1.17.07 @ 5:42PM|#
Even if the dangerous effects of secondhand smoke are a pipedream, the world sure seems nicer without clouds of tobacco smoke everywhere. Smokers are free to smoke in private. Isn't that enough?
The Wine Commonsewer|1.17.07 @ 5:44PM|#
Yeah, but secondhand smoke smells terrible.
Depends upon how long it's been since your last smoke.
Some quitters become Nazi's, others encourage smokers to blow a
little smoke their way.
The Wine Commonsewer|1.17.07 @ 5:48PM|#
Thow-row, by old buddy Gonzalez aged a chunk of 2 x 4 by putting
in the bushes by the Sunset Blvd onramp to the 405 for a semester
(trimester?).
He got a hellaciously old carbon dating on it. It was for some
project he was doing at UCLA before they kicked him out of the
Anthropology program for stealing an entire human skeleton and
arranging it to lie in state on his glass top coffee table complete
with potted pothos growing out of the rib cage. We never could
figure out how they knew.
The Wine Commonsewer|1.17.07 @ 5:54PM|#
Edward, I'm as happy as anyone to be free of swirling smoke. I'd
be really happy to be free of the perfume wafting from old ladies
whose nostrils are decayed from decades of cocaine snorting or old
age, one. The unhappy result is that they can't smell the crap
until they're drenched in it. I'm allergic and it smells a lot
worse to me than cigarette smoke. Can we please ban these people
along with the smokers?
Disclaimer: I let people smoke in the house but most of them step
out onto the deck out of courtesy anyway. I don't let people smoke
in my car.
It goes without saying though that the property owner should get to
set the rules, at least it did according to the First Edition of
Libertarian rules and regs on morals, rights, and ethics.
|1.17.07 @ 6:18PM|#
Some quitters become Nazi's, others encourage smokers to
blow a little smoke their way.
I love the smell of cigar smoke.
TrappedEastOfTheBigMuddy|1.17.07 @ 6:21PM|#
> Warning! Most of you will die at some point in your
lives.
At the end, I believe.
|1.17.07 @ 6:49PM|#
"Even if the dangerous effects of secondhand smoke are a
pipedream, the world sure seems nicer without clouds of tobacco
smoke everywhere."
Yes, because there's nothing that makes the world a blue-skied,
puppy 'n' kitten-eyed utopia quite like the unspoken threat of
government force.
|1.17.07 @ 7:18PM|#
Smokers are free to smoke in private. Isn't that
enough?
.. like a privately owned restaurant or bar??
.. Hobbit
|1.17.07 @ 7:39PM|#
C'mon Russel, spit it out.
i recently had a conversation about smoking in bars with my father.
In Tempe, AZ the bars are smoke free. I went to Chicago for New
Year's Eve, and all the bars we went to were not smoke free. I
commented that it 'was' nice to be able to go out and not come home
smelling to high heave. But, he and I both agreed that I would
rather go to a smoky bar than have the gummint telling me how to
live my life. Also, my parents own a diner in our hometown, they
plan on fighting anyone who tries to tell them they can't allow
smoking. They are both non-smokers.
Guy Montag|1.17.07 @ 7:43PM|#
Amazingly, I never get to run into the bright potheads, I only
get to run into the ones who espouse crazy nonsense like
this.
When I point out to them that inhailing any smoke is harmfuly, they
come back with "nobody smokes enough weed to get cancer" and they
they try to tell me I have been listening to fairy tails.
Basically, only tobcco smoke is bad for people, no other smoke. Now
add to that only radiation from a doctor is okay and no
other.
Yes, I smoke tobacco like a freight train and I don't care what
others smoke, so just do your thing and leave me alone, I don't
want to join you.
Like I sad several times before, when pot is legal the shop keeper
will be prohibited from preventing it, but tobacco is "evil".
|1.17.07 @ 8:43PM|#
• Eating peanut butter causes cancer.
• Eating a single char-broiled burger causes cancer.
I'm attempting to carve a niche as H & R's most frequent poster
of recipes. So, here goes my two favorite uses for the cited
carcinogens:
Thai Peanut Sauce
1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari
1/4 cup peanut butter
2tbls. sesame oil --
1 tsp chili oil
3 tbls. canola or other vegetable oil. Peanut oil if you have it,
as it provides extra bad cancer-things.
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
chopped cilantro
chopped scallions
You can mix everything but the green stuff up to three days before
use.
Karen's special hamburger recipe (amounts stated for 3 pounds of
ground meat)
Spice mix:
1 tbls. ground coriander seeds
1 tbls. cumin
1/2 tlbs cayenne or chili powder
salt
black pepper
Add spices to ground meat along with sufficient Worchester sauce to
soften and bind the meat. Shape into patties and grill -- only
grill, do not even think about using the stove top for this -- to
desired done-ness. (I'm a real idiot and still like my burgers
medium, with visible pink. I'm just extra careful to use ground
meat the day I buy it and only buy it from a grocer I trust.)
Special fanciness:
Cook about two slices of bacon for each burger. Meanwhile, slice
one yellow onion. Separate the rings and saute in bacon fat until
the onions are translucent or lightly browned and slightly
crisp.
Serve on the patties, in your favorite hamburger manner.
If you want to really fake out your biochemistry, serve the peanut
sauce on broccoli, which contains potent antioxidents. You can
drink red wine with the burgers.
|1.17.07 @ 8:52PM|#
"The exposure has to overwhelm the body's ability to repair the
damage...."
This statement is erroneous.
An interesting article on cancer...
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/116/2
It differs from the above post by providing actual information.
|1.17.07 @ 9:01PM|#
Karen, you rule. I love Thai food. And that all looks pretty
simple! I'll try it.
This meal needs a heart-healthy chocolate cake for dessert, though.
=)
|1.17.07 @ 9:01PM|#
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer/CA00003
for basics on the biology of cancer.
|1.17.07 @ 9:01PM|#
2tbls. sesame oil
I hope you mean roasted sesame oil. If not, you should try
it.
dhex|1.17.07 @ 9:18PM|#
"Like I sad several times before, when pot is legal the shop
keeper will be prohibited from preventing it, but tobacco is
"evil"."
are you imagining some sort of hippie takeover of the united states
where pot suddenly becomes a protected form of intoxication?
|1.17.07 @ 10:23PM|#
pigwiggle, the original recipe called for regular sesame oil, but I'll bet substituting one tablespoon of the roasted kind would be wonderful.
Ray G|1.17.07 @ 10:29PM|#
Shortly before George Burns died, an interviewer asked him what
his doctor thought of his smoking cigars.
Burns said "Aw, he's dead." Or something to that effect.
Beautiful.
biologist|1.17.07 @ 11:23PM|#
well, Guy, far be it from me to resist responding to a straw man
set up by a troll, but tobacco and marijuana are two different
species of plants. they contain different chemicals. the chemicals
that are released in the smoke when they are burned are also
different. therefore, it is entirely possible that tobacco smoke
causes cancer and marijuana smoke does not. In fact, there are
studies that suggest that the preceding statement may be factual.
they have been reported on this very blog in the past.
as for "fairy tails", I'm reminded of VM's Noam Chomsky blow-up
doll, for some reason.
Jennifer|1.17.07 @ 11:46PM|#
Thanks for the peanut sauce recipe, Karen! I like Bangkok Padang brand peanut sauce, but I was trying to find a homemade recipe because the bottled stuff can get a tad pricey at times.
|1.17.07 @ 11:47PM|#
Both the government and the media continue to play the no
acceptable risk/exposure mantra which will increasly become the
defacto regulatory limit. This is (and always was) dangerous and
stupid and will begat even more egregious regulatory and spending
bonanzas.
Every congressional bill should come with a cost benefit and risk
reduction analysis. Unfortunately, Congress would ignore the
conclusions and the Executive Branch would build up a whole new
federal agency to do the work that they would manipulate to their
ends.
Sigh.
Russell|1.17.07 @ 11:59PM|#
Sorry the posting software hiccuped earlier -
As there are fewer grams of air in the Earths atmosphere (
Paul|1.18.07 @ 12:04AM|#
In fact, just the process of living every day could be said
to cause cancer, since there is always damage being done to our
cells that could potentially trigger cancer.
All of this reminds me of the suggestion that if a man lived his
entire life on a desert island having no exposure to cigarettes,
but dies of a heart attack, it can be said that he died of
something 'smoking related'.
Paul|1.18.07 @ 12:07AM|#
All we can hope is that theser smokin bans which are so popular will finally put a stop to second-hand THC.
Paul|1.18.07 @ 12:08AM|#
apologies for the typos... i'm one handed after I broke my wrist on a snowboard this weekend. Not smoking related.
Russell|1.18.07 @ 12:13AM|#
As there are ten times fewer grams of air in the Earths
atmosphere than molecules in a single mole of any chemical compound
, it is a mere fact of natural history that every one-gram breath
of air we draw tends to contain not one but many molecule s of
every known carcinogen man or nature has produced .
Wild tobacco is a widespread weed . With lightning strikes
perpetually igniting brush and forest fires, no human has ever
drawn a breath without inhaling well traveled first-hand smoke.
Like it or not, your lungs constantly contain not one, but many
molecules of all the carcinogens smoke contains - whether it's from
incense ,creosote , or tobacco does not greatly signify.
The Wine Commonsewer|1.18.07 @ 1:24AM|#
Karen, coriander is the BOMB for anything vaguely resembling bbq sauce.
The Wine Commonsewer|1.18.07 @ 1:25AM|#
Oh, and coriander is the seed of, well, cilantro. Strange world we live in.
|1.18.07 @ 1:26AM|#
Watching anti-smoking PSAs made by self-congratulating college assholes will give you cancer.
Guy Montag|1.18.07 @ 6:28AM|#
Russell,
Yea, thanks for reminding me about that horrid incense, especially
punk.
Somehow there is not endless drumbeat of attacks on incense
producers. I suspect a hidden agenda.
What is the markup on that stuff anyway? Betcha it is a lot more
than tobacco or oil. No windfall profits taxe in the works
there?
Guy Montag|1.18.07 @ 7:34AM|#
Russell also reminds me that i am having a molar problam. Anybody have Dr. Avagadro's number?
Ellie|1.18.07 @ 8:41AM|#
"Yeah, but secondhand smoke smells terrible."
So do farts!
They've already made that comparison. There's a radio PSA with a
solemn baritone voice intoning "Passing gas ... it's rude ... it
releases deadly chemicals ... cracking a window is not enough ...
it can be deadly" interspersed with kids theatrically coughing and
whining "I'm eating here!" and "Gross, Dad!" and then at the end
you find out that passing gas means secondhand smoke! Because
there's gas! But you thought it was a fart! Those wacky PSAs!
|1.18.07 @ 9:20AM|#
Reason is published by the Reason Foundation, which is
funded by Philip Morris.
But I'm sure you were going to mention that soon.
Incidentally, two pro-smoking posts in two days? They're definitely
getting their money's worth.
Guy Montag|1.18.07 @ 9:27AM|#
ajay,
So what? Greenpiece is funded by every hippy with a trust fund.
That does not make their hypocracy and fake science false, it is
the hypocracy and fake science on it's own that makes what they say
false.
Reason happens to be correct, unless it is something in
agreement with TNR, IMHO.
|1.18.07 @ 10:05AM|#
Anything not good for you is bad, therefore, should be
illegal.
The mantra for the Democrats is: Too much Freedom, not enough
Rules.
|1.18.07 @ 10:46AM|#
Cathy Siepp is currently suffering from lung cancer. She says having the disease gives one perverse pleasures; scaring the hell out of people by explaining that she is thin, has always ate properly and exercised and never smoked or lived with a smoker, yet still has lung cancer.
Sam Franklin|1.18.07 @ 11:14AM|#
This position renders irrelevant any attempt to determine
what level of exposure to a possibly dangerous chemical is
associated with a measurable increase in cancer risk.
Well, you have apparently thought about these issues considerably,
Big J. Where do you, Jacob Sullum, Reasonwriter and policy
maven, think the line should be drawn on the issue whose relevance
you are here noting?
|1.18.07 @ 11:31AM|#
John:
Granted this is all first hand non statistical data, everyone I
know, and there are several, who died from lung cancer were
non-smokers.
Perhaps the smokers died of heart attacks before they got lung
cancer. But...
What pisses me off is the sheer volume of money spent on
"educating" smokers to quit (think Bloomberg's 125 million)compared
to the amount spent on early detection and actual lung cancer
research. Guees if you are a non smoker with lung cancer, as more
people will be due to longer lives, well screw you.
Christ on a Cracker|1.18.07 @ 11:44AM|#
If a 95 year old women, who smoked her whole life, dies of a heart attack - is her death still "smoking-related"?
|1.18.07 @ 12:00PM|#
If a 95 year old women, who smoked her whole life, dies of a
heart attack - is her death still "smoking-related"?
If you are an anti tobacco zealot, undeniably.
|1.18.07 @ 12:19PM|#
It's the "no threshold" theory of carcinogenesis. Theoretically
you could get cancer from one molecule of a carcinogen. The problem
is that we are exposed to a host of carcinogens in daily life, so
it would be impossible to attribute developing cancer to a minute
exposure to one thing due to all the background noise created by
baseline exposures.
Paracelsus said almost 500 years ago "Poison is in everything, and
no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or
a remedy."
BTW
--peanuts may contain aflatoxin from mold
--charcoal grilled food contains pyrolysis products and
polyaromatic hydrocarbons from burning organic material
|1.18.07 @ 2:13PM|#
I never get to run into the bright potheads
Actually, I'll bet you do, you just don't know they're potheads,
and they just don't trust you enough to tell you.
|1.19.07 @ 3:38AM|#
Actually there's a great deal of science to prove what common sense observes. It's indeed necessary for the body's defenses to be "overwhelmed" before a cancer is initiated, and for almost every everyday substance under the sun, that takes a truly gigantic dose. For proof of that, google the work of Bruce Ames, a beyond-reproach scientist.
|1.21.07 @ 4:15AM|#
"It's indeed necessary for the body's defenses to be
"overwhelmed" before a cancer is initiated"
This sesms to be a misunderstanding of Ames work. And ignores a
great deal of good science.
Apurinic sites produced in DNA from the loss of depurinating
adducts can be converted into mutations by error-prone repair,
which may initiate cancer and other diseases. This does not require
the system to be "overwhelmed" in the sense that Sullum
implies.
Here's a review worth reading.
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/NoSafeThresh.html
|1.21.07 @ 4:23AM|#
The point being that sometimes low dose can lead to cancer. It
depends on the type of cancer, the type of exposure, and the
interaction of a many complex processes.
It only takes unrepaired or misrepaired damage to a single
cell.
Statistically, low doses have a smaller chance of causing cancer.
This does not mean that the large doses overwhelm the bodies repair
systems.
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