Wonderful article

A great article resurrected for the Telegraph online today from the late Doctor Denson - smoking is not all evil
http://tinyurl.com/27nchz

Nice find Helen. Here it is in its full context for anyone who hasn't seen it:

Sir - Sir Liam Donaldson (report, July 4) is misinformed.

A recent study of 118,094 Californian participants of the American Cancer Prevention Study concluded that non-smokers exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) had no greater risk of heart disease or lung cancer than those not exposed.

The largest and most recent assessment of ETS exposure by the US National Centre for Environmental Health showed that exposed non-smokers had on average only 1/500th of the exposure of the active smoker. How, then, does Sir Liam substantiate a 70 per cent increase in risk of heart disease for an active smoker and 30 per cent for an ETS exposed non-smoker?

Cot deaths are weakly linked to passive smoking, but much more strongly linked to low maternal age, low maternal education and paternal unemployment, which are highly linked to parental smoking. It thus becomes impossible statistically to say whether passive smoking has any effect on cot deaths. The association between ETS and middle ear disease is equally tenuous.

Far from it causing asthma, many studies have shown a reduced incidence of eczema, hay fever and atopy with maternal or pre-natal smoking. In the largest study of its kind, involving 56 countries, those with the greatest air pollution (and ETS exposure) had by far the lowest incidence of asthma, and those with the cleanest air had the highest.

How does Sir Liam explain the more than twofold increase in childhood asthma in Britain during the past two decades, when active smoking has been halved and ETS exposure reduced even more?

Smoking is not all evil. Compared with non-smokers, smokers have half the risk of Parkinson's disease and a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease. Women who smoke after their first full-term pregnancy have half the risk of developing breast cancer. Would it not be more honest to allow smokers the choice of an increased risk of lung cancer and heart disease, or an increased risk of Parkinson's or Alzheimer's diseases?


From:
Dr KW E Denson, Thame Thrombosis and Haemostasis Research Foundation, Thame, Oxon

It wasn't my find really. I found it on another forum

helend498 wrote:It wasn't my find really. I found it on another forum

It was still your find on here. Well done!