This Just In, 30 Years Later
Years ago I had the Quixotic idea (I have made a career out of Quixotic ideas) that if only enough people could see through the obvious, and admitted, lies of the people making a fortune off of the anti-smoking crusade, they would accept reasonable restrictions on smoking and abandon their plans for prohibition. I was wrong. I won't bore you with the details of the t-shirts, city council meetings, trips to South Carolina to meet with the growers and industry people, other to say that I lost my ass. Other than that, yes, I do smoke.
During the course of my ill-fated counter crusade, I came across some interesting facts. Notably, the fact that the discredited EPA study, since retracted, concerning second hand smoke is still used to justify takings of property; and that numerous scientific studies about the benefits of 'scourge nicotine' in relation to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's prevention were suppressed. Another study that measured comprehension rates of students at UCLA was also actively suppressed. In the case an early Parkinson's and Alzheimer's study, the researchers added a disclaimer about smoking, though the findings showed a direct correlation between how much an at risk individual smoked and the onset and severity of the disease(s).
In recent years, moneys that could have helped further research in these areas have been hard to come by because of the political element involved, and, I suspect that the money sucking lawyers and politicians wanted to get their faces in the trough first. What am I going on about? FOX News just aired a segment that says 'new' studies show a link between nicotine and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Not only that, but attention deficit disorder, short term memory loss and depression. Go figure.
Let's tackle the word 'New.' According to this 2001 study from the archives of the National Institute of Health (NIH):
An inverse association between cigarette smoking and idiopathic Parkinson's disease has been reported in several retrospective studies....In both cohorts, the strength of the association decreased with time since quitting (among past smokers), increased with number of cigarettes per day (among current smokers), and increased with pack-years of smoking. These prospective findings confirm that an inverse association between smoking and the incidence of Parkinson's disease exists in both men and women.
In 2002 World Health Net reported on Parkinson's:
Analysis of more than 60 studies revealed that current smokers were roughly 60% less likely to develop the neurodegenerative condition, and coffee drinkers had a 30% lower risk of developing the disease.
Of course that was followed by exhortations that smoking is really bad and it causes everything from warts to spontaneous hysterectomies. On 8 May 1999 Professor Niall Quinn addressed the Parkinson's Disease Society of the United Kingdom referencing an almost 20 year old study:
An early 1980s study of Parkinson patients, who were identical twins, found a very low prevalence of Parkinson's in the other twin (ie. a low concordance rate). Some years later however the data and the twins were re-examined with up-to-date technology. PET scans of the clinically unaffected twins showed that many had pre-clinical signs of Parkinson's, thus reviving the idea of a genetic basis for the disease....From all the studies linking environmental factors with Parkinson's only one consistent indication emerges - the link with non-smoking. The conclusion that tobacco smoking could be neuroprotective is difficult to accept: one alternative explanation is that people with pre-symptomatic Parkinson's may just be less likely to smoke.
Twenty years later this guy "finds it hard to accept" that some tiny little thing good could come out of smoking. According to the Neuroscience Information Center:
"For 30 years, various studies have turned up an association between smoking and lower risk of Parkinson's disease, according to the authors of the new study. But a biological explanation has remained elusive, and some have suggested that smoking itself is not protective. Rather, some genetic characteristics may underlie both Parkinson's and the tendency to smoke."
For thirty years amid dozens of studies educated people have known that smoking has beneficial side effects, as well as not so beneficial ones. Yet people that expect to have any future standing in the scientific or medical community, or have any hope of ever getting money for future research are scared shitless to come right out and say so. It falls to knuckleheads like these guys to round up the information, and then present it like a commercial for miracle hair grow lotion.
It's been ten years since I gave up on trying to talk sense to people about legal precedents and deals with the devil/government/extortionists, such deals that the airline industry as well as the tobacco and restaurant industries have made. All three industries have been further victimized by the government and/or sue happy lawyers. Show weakness once, and you invite further abuse.
So the moral of the story is: who the fuck knows? I'm crawling back into my bunker for a smoke.
