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T140730obacco was introduced in the Old World at the close of the 15th century by New World adventurers, treasure hunters and profiteers who discovered the noxious weed had been used for centuries by Native Americans for a variety of purposes other than smoking. Eastern American tribes and Caribbean cultures would carry large pouches of tobacco which they would use for bartering. Tobacco was not quite so much used recreationally, but usually for medicinal purposes. Taken in large doses, tobacco became a hallucinogenic (that was usually administered by a shaman or medicine man to drive out bad spirits). Tobacco was used as a poultice, or to cure toothaches or ear aches or, mixed with desert sage, to cure colds. Tobacco roots were used medicinally for other illness and infestations. Mixed with balsam roots, tobacco was thought to cure asthma and tuberculosis. Of course, today, we know the opposite is true especially if you're smoking that tobacco.

While Sir Walter Raleigh is generally credited with introducing tobacco to Europe, in reality two of Christopher Columbus' crew members, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, smuggled tobacco plants on board the Santa Maria after watching the Indians dry and cure the tobacco, were allowed to smoke tobacco in a pipe.

When Columbus arrived in Cuba in November, 1492 (believing he was in China), he sent Jerez and Torres inland to explore the land and make contact with the inhabitants to learn how to reach the Khan of Cathay (China). Torres and Jerez were allowed to watch the Cubans harvest the tobacco leaves, hang and cure them, and they watched as the natives rolled the tobacco leaves around maize stalks and smoked them. Both men smoked the proffered tobacco leaves.

History records Jerez was the first European smoker in history. After witnessing the fate of Jerez for smoking in pubic, Torres became the first European to quit smoking. When the Santa Maria returned to Spain and Jerez returned to his home in Ayamonte, he planted his tobacco and began introducing the noxious habit to his neighbors. When Jerez began smoking in public, he frightened the townspeople who saw smoke belching from his mouth and thought he was demon-possessed. The Spanish Inquisition jailed him for witchcraft. Jerez remained in prison for seven years. By that time, most of Spain's men were either smoking or chewing tobacco. And doctors began adopting the medicinal practices of the natives of Cuba and the native Americans in North America. Tobacco was no longer viewed as a sin against the church. Tobacco had become the important cash crop from the Americas. Money outweighed sin. Even in the days of the Inquisition, the princes of the realm had the wealth to change church law.

The first eight cases of breast cancer in history were identified and recorded on papyrus in Egypt in 1500 BC. Evidence in the Egyptian medical archives revealed that the medicos 3,514 years ago could distinguish the difference between a malignant tumor and a benign one—without a CATscan, MRI or PETscan. The Egyptian physicians surgically removed the benign tumors and destroyed the malignant tumors by frying them with a hot piece of metal called a "fire drill." If the cancer was caught and the fire drill performed before the cancer cells spread beyond the original tumor, the woman lived much longer that women who experience a mastectomy and chemotherapy today.

It seems to me that the primitive doctors 3,514 years ago had more scientific acumen than our 21st century oncologists who see their role as "treating" cancer, not curing it. Because if you cure the cancer patient, the revenue stream dries up.

As we have noted, cancer's been around at least 3,514 years. Smoking hasn't. In the medieval industrialized world, smoking has existed since 1493 or 2,993 years after the first reports of cancer were recorded in Egypt. Do the math and you realize the math doesn't work. Blaming cancer on smoking is a little like blaming your mother for the fact that you're eventually going to get old and die. (Perhaps you were unaware of the fact that the Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board that determines your eligibility for medical procedures will deny that procedure if you have one of several identified terminal disorders. On that list is a common one. It's called old age.)

Initially, doctors believed that cancer was a contagious disease that was spread by coughing. The cause of cancer and how humans contract it (by breathing it into their lungs) was first hypothesized by British surgeon Percivall Potts in 1776. Cancer of the scrotum was a common disease of chimney sweeps, who contracted it by breathing chimney dust. Note that not all of the chimney sweeps contracted lung cancer. More commonly they got testicular cancer. Since the chimney sweep breathed the chimney ash through their lungs, why then a prevalence for testicular cancer and not lung cancer or cancer of the larnyx or esophagus? Or, why cancer of the scrotum at all? Potts' discovery created a mystery that was tackled by other physicians who joined the investigation of how cancer is contracted and how it travels though the human body. In the 1800s, the medical community discovered the conduit which cancer cells use to traverse the body was the blood stream—from lymph node to lymph node and, from them, to other organs in the body.

The genetic basis of cancer was figured out by Theodor Bovin in 1902. In 1926 Janet Lane-Claypon published what the medical community viewed as the most definitive syllabus on comparative cancer epidemology. But as good as Lane-Claypon's work was, it took the world on its first wrong turn in the study of the cause of cancer because it blamed cigarette smoking as the likely cause of breast cancer. In 1913 a group of 15 doctors and businessmen founded The American Cancer Society which, until 1945, was called The American Society for the Control of Cancer. Notice the verbiage..."for the control...:" of Cancer. Not to seek a cure for cancer, but merely to find methods to prolong the life of its victims.

Once that door was open, blaming a culprit already accused became easier and, finally, it became imperative. Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry and the American Cancer Society continued to point the finger of blame at tobacco. Richard Doll and Austin Hill, wrote the book "Lung Cancer and Other Causes of Death Related to Cancer" in 1956. Again, with no physical evidence that tobacco was a carcinogenic although the American Cancer Society, the AMA, and the Food & Drug Administration [not known by that name] (was created in 1848 by Lewis Caleb Beck, the head of the US Patent Office, to carry out chemical analysis of the ingredients of food products to make sure they were safe to eat.

In 1906 when Congress passed the Pure Food & Drug Act, they transferred the FDA [still not called the FDA] from the Patent Office to the newly created Department of Agriculture. It remained there until Franklin D. Roosevelt became America's third dictator. When Congress enacted the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 the FDA became the most powerful bureaucracy of government and the politicians' best tool for securing bribes (i.e., campaign donations) from the manufacturers regulated by scores of new FDR agencies.)

In 1950 epidemiologist and Director of Cancer Control for the State of New York, Morton Levin, published an article in the May 27, 1950 issue of JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] on all of the cancer patients who died in Buffalo, New York between 1938 and 1950. devil's weedLevin concluding that smoking likely caused the deaths of all of those deceased cancer victims, adding that smokers were twice as likely as non-smokers to get lung cancer. In the same issue of JAMA, Ernst Wynder and Evarts Graham authored "Tobacco Smoking as a Possible Etiologic Factor in Bronchiogenic Carcinoma: A Study of 684 Proved Cases" claimed that 96.5% of lung cancer patients interviewed were moderate heavy-to-chain-smokers.

On June 12, 1957, then Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney issued a statement, declaring that it was the official position of the US Public Health Service "That the evidence points to a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer." There is, of course, a major difference between "evidence pointing to..." and "evidence proving." Declarations of fact created by peer pressure can't be construed as truth because credentialed officials believe its likely true even if the media chooses to believe it is based on the "peer review opinion." In the 15th century everyone believed the world was flat. Men who disagreed with the "obvious reality that the world was flat" were imprisoned although today we know the world is round and the heads of most "peer review" opinionators are flat—and empty. Sometime between 1504 and 1514 Nicholas Copernicus wrote a detailed outline of what he believed was the heliocentric theory of the solar system without the use of mathematics, based on the triple motion of Earth. In 1515 he put his thoughts into a thesis which he very cautiously shared with a handful of astronomers. His views were read and approved by Pope Clement VII. Approval of the Church would not help Galileo Galilei (usually monogamously known simply as Galileo), whose heliocentric views—proven by mathematics and the use of the telescope—contradicted the views of Pope Urban VIII and the Jesuits who held the Catholic view that man stood in the center of the universe, and that all solar objects revolved around Earth. The Roman Inquisition summoned the world's leading astronomers and investigated the question in 1615. Afraid to contradict the views of either the Jesuits or Pope Urban, the investigative body ruled that heliocentricity was false because they could not observe any stellar parallax, which they claim would exist if the Earth circled the sun (varying distances between any fixed object in the sky in its relation to Earth). Telescopes in 17th and 18th century were simply not strong enough to detect the stellar parallax. It was not until 1838 that astronomer Friedrich Bessel made the first successful parallax measurement on the star 61 Cygni at the Konigsburg Observatory in Prussia using a heliometer. (The Konigsburg Observatory was destroyed by Allied bombs during World War II.)

If enough self-proclaimed "experts" rally around fiction, it becomes truth. The best example of accepting fiction as truth today is the "proclaimed fact" that global warming is caused by humankind when, in reality, global warming is a cyclic event caused by solar cycles. As we experience global warming and global cooling, so does Venus and Mars—whose temperatures fluctuations dovetail with those of Earth. Those comparable fluctuations have been measured by NASA. Why would someone create such a lie? Because the environmentalists who sold the world the phony bill of goods about global warming are becoming billionaires selling carbon credits—which the taxpayers in the industrial nations are paying for.

On March 7, 1962 the United Kingdom's Royal College of Physicians issued a report which they said, "...clearly indicates cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer." It was this report which the anti-smoking agencies in the United States used to pressure President John F. Kennedy to declare that smoking was the cause of lung cancer. The problem is, there is not, nor ever has been, any hard evidence that links smoking to lung cancer. None. In fact, statements by anti-smoking advocates that secondhand smoke also causes lung cancer is false as well. If it's not true, why would men of science say it? Because those men of science needed a logical explanation that if smoking is the cause of lung cancer, how do people who have never smoked get lung cancer? How else? By breathing in secondhand cigarette, cigar and pipe smoke from an offending smoker.

When you examine the claims of anti-smoking advocates who insist that direct or indirect inhalation of tobacco, nicotine and/or tar causes lung cancer in 85% to 90% of all reported cases, their argument is contradicted by the fact that 25% to 30% of all cases of bronchioalveolar carcinoma, a form of cancer completely unrelated to tobacco, is the cause of many of the reported cases of lung cancer in nonsmokers. Some people just get cancer. And, the majority of those who smoke and get cancer did not get cancer because they smoked. They got cancer because, genetically, they are predisposed to getting cancer.

If smoking was the primary catalyst of cancer, then the only cancer nonsmokers should ever get would be lung cancer, cancer of the esophagus or larynx, the nasal passages or those organ involved with the inhalation and exhalation of smoke.  smoking lungsUsing that logic, nonsmokers should never get cervical or ovarian cancer, or male or female breast cancer, or cancer of the prostate. Smoking foes, of course, will rightfully argue that once cancer cells break off from a primary cancer, they travel through the bloodstream or lymphatic system to secondary locations, which means the secondary cancer can end up anywhere in the body from the little toe to your brain. That's how cancer metastasizes. However, the fact remains, to believe smoking is the primary cause of cancer, then oncologists with smoking patients that have breast cancer or ovarian cancer, should assume those cancers are secondary, and that the primary cancer should still be in the lungs, esophagus or larynx.

However, blowing away the argument that smoking causes lung cancer, on June 8, 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization issued a joint statement in which they said that smoking does not cause lung cancer. In an opening statement on an article in the Journal of Theoretics dealing with the CDC/WHO findings, Dr. James P. Siepmann, MD began by saying: "Yes, it's true. Smoking does not cause lung cancer. It is only one of many risk factors for lung cancer. Initially, I was going to write an article on how the professional literature and publications misuse the language by saying 'smoking causes lung cancer,' but the more that I looked into how biased the literature, professional organizations, and the media are, I modified this article to one on trying to put the relationship between smoking and cancer into perspective. (No, I did not get paid off by the tobacco companies, or anything like that)....The data used [by the advocates against smoking] is biased in the way they are collected."

The leftwing social progressives not only insist it's not bias, but that even without any hard scientific evidence to prove its contention, they have made it clear that the debate is over because the US federal courts have ruled that it is. The federal courts have decided that smoking causes cancer, and are awarding billion dollar judgments to cancer sufferers who claim smoking caused their cancer. (Now we see who the real expert is: the idiot who can't read the warning label on a pack of cigarettes put there by another idiot—the Surgeon General of the United States which used to say: "Smoking may cause cancer." Prior to that warning, the claim read: "Smoking may be dangerous for your health." Today, the truthful warning reads: "Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide.") Once the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control published their findings that smoking does not cause cancer the politicians were hard-pressed to keep their "smoking causes cancer" warning on the side of the cigarette pack. However, since the social progressives are convinced that, regardless what anyone says they will continue to push their anti-smoking agenda even harder by simply banning smoking because its a nasty, noxious habit.

But, here's the problem. If their hypothesis was correct and smoking does cause cancer, then logic suggests that the cancer cells slowly growing into tumors in every smoker would necessarily begin in their mouths, their throats, and/or lungs since, when you inhale all those carcinogenics that the socialists claim are deliberately inserted into the tobacco by the cigarette industry to addict the smoker, every smoker would have either throat or lung cancer even if the cancer cells, as they devour healthy tissue in the throat or lungs, break off and enters the blood stream, changing direction when those microscopic cells hit a "transfer station," (i.e., a lymph gland) and end up in a woman's ovaries or a man's prostate gland.

A second tobacco report was issued in 1968 by the London Medical Research Center which created the Oxford Unit for Cancer Epidemology. By this time, the AMA, the American Cancer Society, FDA and the mainstream media were so convinced that smoking was the catalyst for all forms of cancer, particularly lung cancer which was the flashpoint where carcinomas enter the human body, the medical community made it abundantly clear to those who claimed there was not one confirmed smidgeon of hard evidence that definitively linked any inhaled carcinogenics to any infected organs that the views and opinions didn't matter since the discussion was over. The federal government and the mainstream media were convinced that smoking causes cancer in both smokers and non-smokers who are infected from second-hand cigarette smoke. End of discussion.

Nothing amazes me as much as the elitist arrogance of elected and, particularly, appointed bureaucrats who never face the voters but who see themselves as the masters of the rest of us. Once the social progressives arrive at a consensus that something is true, and they decree it thus—even if all of the real evidence says its' not true—the elites, the media and the federal courts declare it to be true. And, once again, that becomes the end of the discussion except for the amount of money the cancer victim receives in the judgment.

The Cancer Research Center in the United Kingdom offers the most definitive explanation of how cancer occurs. A cancer cell is created when a healthy cell is damaged and begins to multiply out of control. The body copies (or rather, tries to copy) the correct DNA strand of the damaged cell, but an error happens. The body checks the DNA to make sure it has replicated correctly. Was it copied okay? Or was there a mistake?. Usually a cell with damaged DNA dies. But,in rare occasions, it doesn't die and the damaged cell continues to divide The cell checks the DNA which does not die off and the cell builds a scaffold (called a spindle) which then attaches to the DNA to create the genetic code of the cell. Again, usually DNA with a faulty spindle will die. But, sometimes the cell ignores the warning signs and the cell begins to split anyway.

The problem is, each new cell does not have the right number of chromosomes. Some cells don't have enough genes, others have too many. The faulty chromosomes no longer have the correct genetic instructions so they start to multiply out of control. And, cancer is born—with absolutely no help from Marlboro, Winston, Camels or Lucky Strikes.. Smoking or not smoking had nothing to do with the misfortune that individual person will ultimately suffer when the tumor which began as a damaged cell begins to devour the healthy cells around it, gorging itself on the flesh of its host, and growing in size until its victim feels a lump and goes to a doctor. It doesn't matter where the "lump" is, and it doesn't matter if you smoked one, two, three or more packs of cigarettes a day, those cigarettes did not cause the lump which will be identified as cancer.

So, does that mean cigarettes are not harmful? No. Just the opposite. The death you will suffer from smoking will be far worse, and much more frightening than the death you will suffer from any form of cancer other than lung cancer. When the cancerous lump is ultimately discovered (usually five to ten years after the healthy cell mutated into a defective cell with too many or too few chromosomes), the race to determine what was going to kill you—the cancer which was not caused by the cigarettes you smoked or the much more agonizing death you will suffer will be emphysema. The majority of people who are diagnosed with emphysema (or chronic bronchitis) [commonly known as COPD chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] are heavy smokers. There is no cure for emphysema. You can slow the disease down by quitting smoking. But once the smoking damages the inner walls of the air sacs [alveoli] in your lungs, they weaken and eventually rupture creating one large sac instead of scores of small ones. That reduces the surface area of the lungs and the less oxygen that will enter your bloodstream.

Here's a refresher course in breathing in case you've forgotten what happens when you breathe. You inhale air that is 21% oxygen. That's what keeps you alive. As your heart pumps that rich red 21% oxygenated blood through your arteries and organs, it acts like a detergent, cleaning your blood. When you exhale, you expel carbon dioxide—the bad stuff. People with emphysema, or COPD, have trouble exhaling, hence the second word in COPD—obstructive. People with chronic bronchitis have the same problem, only their lungs get clogged with mucus.. When they cough, to break up the phlegm that makes it hard to breathe, they cough with a loud cracking sound.The only death I envision that is worse than emphysema is drowning. The only blessing-in-disguise the heavy smoker gets before suffocating to death from COPD is the only gift smoking brings. Cardiac blockage followed by a sudden death heart attack.

Sadly, if the medical scientific community decided 50 to 100 years ago to tell the whole truth about smoking without trying to scare us when there is no proven scientifically /evidence to confirm their rhetoric—a lot less people would smoke today. If the medical community stopped lying about cancer and told people that while there may be causal links between smoking and cancer, the link between smoking and heart and pulmonary disease are proven facts.

If you smoke you will get one or more of those nasty, deadly diseases. But usually, years before COPD kills you by drowning you in your own mucus, or suffocating you to death, you will die from a heart attack, a stroke or a brain aneurysm caused by weakened vein or artery walls compounded by plaque (caused by cigarette tars and nicotine) both of which are extremely good glues that capture minute particles in your blood and glue them to a vein or artery wall. So even if there is no proof that cigarettes cause cancer, there is tons of evidence that cigarette smoking is a fatal pasttime.

Usually before the victims of the three most preventable smoking-related health tragedies end human life, the victim learns about them from their physician who they are seeing because they are already experiencing the symptoms—just before they are diagnosed with COPD, arteriosclerosis, congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease or peripheral artery disease.

Sadly, once they are diagnosed with any of these smoking-related diseases, they are usually well along the road to the frightening death that awaits them. When you quit smoking for a couple of years or so, your lungs will slowly regain a healthy rosy hue. But your capillaries, veins and arteries have no self-cleansing mechanism. When blood no longer flows through the veins and arteries back to the heart, you're going to have a heart attack—and, you're going to die.

Well, I've been waiting for the biggest question of all. It's the WHY question. You've come this far, and I wonder how many people have thought to ask themselves that question. If the AMA, the American Cancer Society, the National Institute of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services and Congress definitively knows that there is no hard, physical evidence that scientifically proves that cancer is caused by smoking (or from breathing second-hand smoke), why has Congress never forced the medical community to lay that physical proof out for all eyes to see and every ear to hear the irrefutable evidence that when smokers and non-smokers get cancer, where are the cancer cells that would necessarily have to be in their mouths, nasal passages, esophagus, larynx or lungs? Isn't that why the American Cancer Society and the National Institute of Health, Big Pharma and the AMA explained that people who never smoked in their lives but ended up with lung cancer, cancer of the esophagus or lungs contracted it from second-hand smoke? The fact that cancer existed became their "evidence" that smoking was the defacto cause of cancer. Their claims suggest the presense of cancer cells in the pulmonary system is the prima facie evidence that proves smoking caused those cancers. Or is there another, far more sinister, reason?

The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment [OEHHA]. division of the government of the State of California, under Proposition 95 listed 90 "...pharmaceuticals listed as known to cause cancer." Thirteen of them violate Labor Code section 62382 (b)(1) and (d); 11 were removed by court order; 43 were banned by the State's qualified experts; 15 were removed by the State's authority body; and 8 others were formally removed. The following pharmaceuticals are being considered due to high carcinogenicity concerns: bleiomyein (and bleiomyein salts), Isophosphamide, estraediol mustard, ICRF-159, Loveastatin, Methylphenidate and its hydrochloride (Ritalin) and Phenelzine and its cider salts. Four are not considered high carcinogenicity concern. They are antipyrine (phenazone), dibromomannitol, Diltiazem and Omeprazole. One had inadequate data for the CA advisory board to make a determination:1-0Butanol. All of the above pharmaceuticals are still on the market.

There pharmaceuticals are viewed by the State of California as drugs that are potentially problematic and, according to the report, can cause cancer—including 22 drugs which are actually used in cancer therapy. How many times have you sat watching a favoritie TV program and, by chance, viewed a commercial for a pharmaceutical productwith which you were at least somewhat familiar?. First you see the rosy picture of life once you begin taking some miracle drug that makes you feel young, healthy and vibrant again. Then, in a marathon-speed voice, the announcer races through the negative side affects of the of the pharmaceutical with the clarity of an auctioneer. But every now and then, among the side-affects, you hear negative warnings of symptoms like "heart attacks," "cancer" or "tuberculosis" or warnings that the medication, in some people, can cause kidney, liver or lung problems, and advising anyone experiencing those problems to immediately seek medical attention.

Why would the State of California decide to test Big Pharma's products which are sold in there? Because pharmaceutical drugs are now the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. People know that unlike most over the counter herbal healthcare products, pharmaceuticals are chemical based. In many cases, the pharmaceutical engineers are attempting to replicate the affects that the herbal remedies our parents and grandparents took when they got sick, with chemicals. Why? So they could patent them, drive the natural remedies from the store shelves and make millions of dollars in profits from the chemical products. Many of them are accidental byproducts of experiments trying to invent some other product.

Take aspartame for example. G.H. Searle & Co. pharmacologist James Schlatter was experimenting with compounds he felt might be a link between phenylketonuria (PKU) and ulcers.. PKU is a rare condition in which the body cannot process phenylalanine (foods that contain protein such as beef, pork, poultry, fish, milk, yogurt, eggs, cheese, soy and certain nuts and seeds). Schlatter was experimenting with. D-aspartate and D-phenylalanine, fused together with methanol. Methanol is an ingredient found in anti-freeze. Instead of finding a cure for ulcers, Schlatter hit the pharmaceutical jackpot. He invented aspartame. Searle called their new product Nutrasweet™. But further tests revealed in the Congressional Record, SIS835: 131, August 1, 1985 contains the testimony of the late Dr. Adrian Gross who was a former senior FDA toxicologist. According to reports, Gross testified that he took part in an onsite investigation at Searle Laboratories and found documentation of studies carried out by Searle Labs that show the safety of aspartame was "...to a large extent unreliable...At least one of those studies established beyond any reasonable doubt that aspartame is capable of inducing brain tumors in experimental animals and that this...is of extremely high significance."

In his testimony Gross also said, in his view, aspartame was capable of producing not only brain tumors but, brain cancer. For that reason, he said, the FDA should never have been allowed to approver a substance that posed the risks aspartame poses when consumed by humans.In the same Congressional hearings, Searle admitted that they had to consider the possibility of aspartame's complete conversion of diketopiperazine (a brain tumor agent), admitting they did not give that information to the FDA because, they said, the FDA would not have approved aspartame as a dietary supplement. Searle recognized that aspartame was going to be a litigious product which is why they sold their rights to it to Monsanto. (Note. the hyperlink [above] referencing "aspartame" is one of the most important articles in this website. Run your cursor over the words in the last part of the last sentence in the last paragraph. If you have never read that article which was written on Nov. 25, 2011, read it now. If you drink diet soft drinks or eat diet foods, it will eliminate many of the aches and pains you now feel, and may down the road, save your life.) This was one example of how pharmocologists accidentally create products when they are looking for something else.

Two other accidental pharmaceutical gold mines were Viagra, the little blue sex pill and, of course, Rogaine™ the male hair restorer. Pfizer scientists were searching for a cure for AIDS when they created Viagra™ and Johnson & Johnson was working on a high blood pressure medication when they discovered their formula did a better job growing hair on balding men.

Any drug—even the safest drugs on the market—can kill you if its mixed with some other over-the-counter pharmaceutical that interacts with it in a dangerous manner. A 30 year old woman goes to a walk-in clinic with a painful urinary tract infection. The doctor prescribes an antibiotic called Ciprofloxacin, commonly called Cipro. No tests were run to find out what type of bacterial infection the patient had because Cipro is a broad spectrum antibiotic and it will kill just about any bacteria. After finishing her two 500 mg per day regime for ten days, the patient feels better except for the menstrual cramps she is now experiencing. She takes ibuprofen for the cramps. Her hands and feet swell up. She goes to her regular doctor who puts her on Benadryl which increases the swelling. The doctor then puts her on Prednisone. (which is called "medicating by guesswork"). Now the doctor decides it might be a good idea to run some tests. She is now diagnosed as having Fibromyalgia. The patient asks how a urinary tract infection treated with Cipro, Benadryl and Prednisone becomes Fibromyalgia? She does not get an answer,. She gets another prescription. Lyrica—one of those prescriptions with a rapid-fire series of health warming in its TV commercial. Since she is now having trouble with all of her joints, she is rediagnosed as having Rheumatoid Arthritis.She starts seeing a Rheumatologist who puts her on Humira. The Humira reduces some of her symptoms. She is on the drug for two years. After two years she is diagnosed with hepatosplenic T-cell lymphoma—cancer. She dies on the operating table. She was 34 years old when she died. Her name was Kerstin. If she had been a smoker, or was married to a smoker, the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs she took over that three year period would have insisted that smoking caused the cancer.in her body, or that second hand smoke caused the T-cell lymphoma in her throat that ended her life .

Tobacco products over the past 60 years have been the easiest scourge to blame for every case of cancer in the world—whether the cancer victim smoked or not. Escaping blame are the behemoth pharmaceutical companies who theoretically create the cures for the diseases killing us. The United States holds 4% of the world's population but accounts for 35% of the global sale of pharmaceuticals. In 2013, the 35% cut Big Pharma USA took out of the global pharmaceutical market was a gargantuan $328 billion.

Let's consider how much of that $328 billion was spent in the United States on treating cancer (since nobody is really looking for a cure). As it has since 2008, cancer is the number two killer in America, causing 23% of all deaths. despite spending $24 billion a year on surgical procedures and chemotherapy to keep people alive and an additional $4.3 billion annually on prescription drugs.

The number one killer in the United States (not on Big Pharma's list) is heart attacks. There are over 600,000 fatal heart attacks in the United States every year—or 25% of all deaths. Every year another 720,000 Americans suffer a heart attack. Two hundred and five thousand of them are repeat offenders. They just can't give up puffing on those cigarettes. Five hundred fifteen thousand suffer their first heart attack. Another 380,000 are diagnosed with coronary heart disease—which can honestly be called "smokers heart disease," since what happens is the nicotine and tar the smoker inhales liquidizes and plugs up the small veins, capillaries and arteries with plaque. Most of the victims to this disease are young to middle-age, pre-menopausal women. The estrogen a woman produces liquidizes the nicotine inhaled from cigarettes plugging up the smallest veins and capillaries first, then moving to the larger veins and arteries. This is why women are more often victims of first heart attack fatalities. Men, on the other hand suffer more often from "widow-maker" heart attacks. What clogs up with plaque first is the main aorta—the primary trunk artery. The stenotic left main coronary artery or the proximal left anterior descending coronary artery gets completely blocked and the victim has a massive sudden-death heart attack..The blockage is almost always caused by a buildup of cholesterol plaque. If you are a heavy smoker and eat a lot of fatty foods, this type of plaque can build very quickly—in months rather than years.

This was the type of heart attack I suffered in 2001. Only, the two stems of the aorta that feed the left and right ventricles of my lungs were blocked 99% and the main aorta in my chest was blocked 100%. Fortunately, I have a lot of faith in God and prayed healing over my heart several times a day. My body grew bypasses around the blockages and I had a 35% blood flow through my aorta. Keep in mind, that even smaller amounts of plaque in these areas, for reasons not understood, can cause the artery to rupture resulting in death almost instantly,

Did that give you a new perspective on smoking? If you're a smoker, your biggest fear shouldn't be of cancer. Your biggest fear should be two fears. First is the fear of a fatal heart attack caused by clogged arteries. If you're male, the odds are your first heart attack will not be fatal unless your main aorta gets plugged up and you have a widow-maker heart attack, When I was waiting to go under the knife for my triple bypass, I talked to another patient who was recovering from his third quad-bypass. Women who smoke aren't that lucky. Most of them are part of the 600,000 who die when they suffer a heart attack, even if it's their first one. Second, you should fear COPD. Not being able to breathe in enough oxygen to live would be terrifying. Just as terrifying is not being able to exhale the carbon dioxide that will also kill you.

I've often wondered why the AMA, the FDA, the American Lung Association or any other pulmonary organization haven't opted to put out the truth about smoking. To me, the thought of suffocating at age 25, 30 or 35 is a lot worse than getting cancer at 50, 60 or 70 for any reason.

Life is a series of choices. Smoking should never be one of them.

 

 

 

 

Just Say No
Copyright © 2009 Jon Christian Ryter.
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