Comments on: Same name, different lung cancer

By: John S.

John S. — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:20:29 +0000

“Cigarettes are addictive, asbestos is not.” — http://www.weitzlux.com/smoking-mesothelioma-risk_1962672.html If they banned products with very little appeal for individuals (not talking about appeal for businesses), I think that would put a dent in the lung cancer numbers, though you’d have to wait a couple decades to see it take effect.

By: Jenny Leonard

Jenny Leonard — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:03:56 +0000

David, a researcher responded today to a reader’s comment (http://futurity.org/health-medicine/depressed-anxious-aren%E2%80%99t-we-all/#comment-873). Futurity hopes to continue to foster such interactions.

By: David Colquhoun

David Colquhoun — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:16:01 +0000

So still no response from the authors, I’m beginning to wonder whether Futurity is more about PR than about science.

By: vêtements enfants

vêtements enfants — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:43:40 +0000

This site is really quite good

By: David Colquhoun

David Colquhoun — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:02:59 +0000

Some interesting questions have been posed by the people who have made comments so far, but I see no sign of a response from the people who did the research. If they don’t propose to respond, much of the point of allowing comments is lost.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:45:37 +0000

@buck:

That doesn’t seem to be in line with any research I’ve seen. Very recent studies on the effect of public smoking bans show that heart attack hospitalizations drop by 17% just one year after the ban goes into effect, even if they don’t significantly alter the overall rate of smokers to non-smokers. If you look at these two studies together, what it seems to say is that lung cancer is the primary threat of smoking to smokers, but non-smokers are more likely to suffer from complications other than lung disease, and in fairly large numbers. Unlike lung cancer, heart disease is the leading killer in the US, so dropping the hospitalization rate in that category by 17% is very much statistically significant.

Here’s a source for the smoking ban data:
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2009/09/23/Smoking-ban-cut-heart-attacks-by-one-third/UPI-40631253728946/

By: Sreethar Venkatesan

Sreethar Venkatesan — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:45:13 +0000

This is a sad realization for me. I am from India and lost my dad recently due to lung cancer. As the article describes he was a non-smoker with an excellent blood profile for his age (78yrs) and was walking 3miles/day. The doctors were stunned at the speed at which the cancer manifested especially since the fluid collected from his pleura came negative for cancer cells with no definitions in radiology. 3 months down the lane a repeat CT scan showed cancerous growth already metastasized to abdomen. I lost my dad just 7 months after the diagnosis. Probably if I knew about this before I could have had more time with my father. However I wish all those out there with this diagnosis good hope.

By: buck

buck — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:52:56 +0000

I welcome this site, but bring high expectations. While everyone who smokes should be encouraged to quit, this site should not give credence to weak reports of second-hand smoke killing people. If it did, all smokers would be dead. The highest estimate of second-hand smoke deaths I have ever seen in 3,000 annually. Clearly, with 25 million smokers ion the US, this number falls below any provable threshhold, particularly in the absence of any discussion of genetic propensity in this group. Surely the truth is bad enough and need not be embellished by PC reporting. I agree with Adair’s comment, above, that this article has “attitude.” It shouldn’t.

By: Adair

Adair — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:36:02 +0000

“Lung cancer in never-smokers is the sixth-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States.”

If you’re gonna break up lung cancer into lung cancer (smokers) and lung cancer (never-smokers), I bet you could break up one of the other four leading causes of cancer death into groups. I don’t completely trust that the rank of lung cancer (never-smokers) wouldn’t change. I was glad to see the article later mentions the actual number of cases, but how much does it tell us to say it’s the sixth-leading cause of cancer death? That it kills more people than liver cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, once we do a quick Google search? I would question the choice of including that sentence since it seems to promote impressive-sounding but meaningless (to the audience) statistics.