Trivia:<p><i>Polonium-210 in tobacco contributes to many of the cases of lung cancer worldwide. Most of this polonium is derived from lead-210 deposited on tobacco leaves from the atmosphere; the lead-210 is a product of radon-222 gas, much of which appears to originate from the decay of radium-226 from fertilizers applied to the tobacco soils.</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Tobacco" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Tobacco</a>
This has some legal implications. You can now prove fairly conclusively that your lung cancer came from smoking. I wonder if it will lead to a new wave of tobacco litigation.<p>I think even Fisher would be convinced [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://priceonomics.com/why-the-father-of-modern-statistics-didnt-believe/" rel="nofollow">https://priceonomics.com/why-the-father-of-modern-statistics...</a>
>'Prof Stratton said in these organs smoking seemed to be accelerating a natural mutational process, but how it did this was "mysterious and complex".'<p>Wow, just wow. This is standard Armitage & Doll model that has been taught since the 1950s.<p>Every time a cell divides there is some chance of a genetic error occurring. The more generations away from the zygote a cell is, the more genetic errors it will have accumulated.<p>Activities that damage tissue, etc and necessitate cell division to replenish the cells will contain cells with more errors.<p>Now that is a vague sketch, but many people have implemented mathematical/computational models based on that idea, beginning with Armitage and Doll in 1954. Unless he is going to reject the model that has been driving cancer research for half a century (which should be noted in the interview), there really is no mystery at all.
Unless I am misunderstanding something, their figure 3 seems to be plotting effect size vs p-value... So all it would be showing is that they had more data from lung adenocarcinomas (ie sample size is larger for that cancer type). It isn't 100% clear to me if they shared the data used for that figure, but here are the frequencies each cancer type appeared in table S1:<p><pre><code> Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) Bladder
202 399
Cervix Colorectal cancer
168 559
Esophageal Adenocarcinoma Esophageal Squamous
242 292
Gastric cancer Kidney
472 257
Larynx Liver
123 392
Lung Adeno Lung Squamous
678 175
Oral cavity Ovarian cancer
363 458
Pancreas Pharynx
239 76
Small Cell Lung Cancer
148
</code></pre>
It is essentially just figure 1 from here:
<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0081" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0081</a>
So how much more is it compared to a non-smoker? I understand the idea of shock factor but everyone gets mutations, it would be nice to get a baseline.
I suspect there are multiple reasons for the DNA changes. One that comes to mind is the number of times the lungs have to repair themselves due to the tar and other contaminants. The hot smoke might even contribute to the tissue damage. Cancer is uncontrollable cell growth. The cell/body's ability to control a certain type of cell division has been lost.<p>So, my thinking is, in the same way that you lose quality as you make a copy of a copy in a copy machine the same happens to the cell's DNA. The more a cell has to divide the less the DNA can remain without errors. DNA can tolerate a number of errors but it can eventually lead to cancer. My guess is that not one issues causes the DNA changes but and array of them given the number of substances a cigarette has.
What about the study that said 15 years after you quit smoking, your chances of dying are the same?<p><a href="https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/are-former-smokers-safe-after-15-years-121685128937.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/are-former-smokers-safe-after-1...</a>
I wonder if there were studies that analyzed the effect of smoking non-industrialized cigarettes. I smoke 2-4 cigarettes per day and make my own cigarettes from tobacco leaves that I dry/shred myself. The leaves in turn come from a few organically grown plants.
while there are some studies that do not put marijuana smoking as high on the danger list [1] I am really curious that as legalization increases what will we see in the future. Then of course there is the loosely regulated area of vaping and who knows what is in some of those fluids. For the most part I am quite sure they have to be safer than smoking but I would love some hard regulation.<p>2005 study on marijuana smoke > <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277837/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277837/</a>
That reminds me of the British information video:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWfOLN9Z1yw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWfOLN9Z1yw</a>
Is there anything you can do to help your odds of not dying from lung cancer once you have stopped smoking?<p>Any yearly tests to perform?<p>I was a 10cigs a day smoker for 15 years(quit some years ago) and it really weights heavy on my mind that there is nothing I can do about my past mistakes.
So, could we detect what properties of smoking map to which DNA changes, and design a cigarette that maximizes net-positive DNA changes while minimizing harmful/negative ones?
A significant amount of the shredded brown innards of most modern cigarettes is a paper product called "reconstituted tobacco" or "homogenized sheet tobacco," which is made from a pulp of mashed tobacco stems and other parts of the tobacco leaf that would otherwise go to waste. Manufacturers spray and impregnate reconstituted tobacco paper with nicotine and other substances lost during the process, along with as many as 600 chemical additives. These include several that may come as a surprise, such as ammonia, which aids in the delivery of nicotine, and chocolate, which masks the bitter taste of tobacco. Finally, the 'recon' is sliced to resemble shredded leaf tobacco.
So basically good research should compare people smoking quality cuban (once a week) with pipe smoker (once a day) with this poor creature addicted to synthetical 'tobacco' on her 20/day. And of course, since urban people are exposed to contaminated air from cars, control group must be taken from rural areas. I predict result that tobacco is not responsible for lung cancer, in absence of other air contamination factors.
You know, more than 90% of people with lung cancer ate cucumbers. So think twice before blaming tobacco.
What the author was smoking? 20 a day of what? Cigarettes? These things have nothing to do with tobacco. Cigarettes are purely synthetical things. The real research could compare say, avid snus user with cigars smoker with pipe smoker with cigarettes smoker with marijuana smoker, with non smoker exposed to industrial work, with non-smoker exposed to work in civil construction, and so on. Poor isolation of factors and lack of statistics are signs of fake research.