When cigarette companies used doctors to push smoking (2018) | Hacker News Reader

When cigarette companies used doctors to push smoking (2018)

history.com

153 pointsbenpiper191 comments

Look at the timeline:

  1930  - first cigarette company uses physicians in their ads
  1950s - evidence starts mounting that smoking causes lung cancer
  1964  - US Surgeon General report on the link between smoking and cancer
  1998  - cigarette companies still maintained that the link is controversial

So it takes 70 years, or nearly an entire generation, before all of the machinery at play (businesses, government, healthcare, scientists) can effectively come to the conclusion that they messed up badly and sold people poison. Grim.

Yeah who knows what unequivocal advice we could be getting from experts right now that will be thoroughly debunked 70 years from now.

(Are dairy and grains still food groups... I could easily go on)

>(Are dairy and grains still food groups... I could easily go on)

I don't get it. Are you saying that grain shouldn't be a food group? I think for the purposes of categorizing foods, "starchy staples" is a pretty useful categorization, even if the recommendation to eat 8 servings a day or whatever is misguided.

He's probably referring to the food pyramid, in which those food groups were put forth as foundational building blocks of a healthy diet according to the USDA. [1] That saga overlapped with the sugar lobby blaming fats for heart issues [2], and using their weight with the FDA to keep % Daily Values for sugars off food labels until very recently. [3]

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8375951/

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...

[3] https://www.vox.com/2016/5/20/11719796/new-nutrition-label-a...

High Fructose Syrup is the one I'm holding out hope on.

Social Media consumption is another.

Vegetable/seed oils is one I’ve been seeing recently.

some humans have been drinking animal dairy for so many thousands of years that some ethnicities have evolved to have a lactose breaking down mutation into adulthood

The amount of dairy and refined dairy products people consume today, like meat, is orders of magnitude bigger than back in the day.

>evolved

Not disagreeing, but that's a much nicer way of saying that nobody wanted to mate with the ones having constant diarrhea.

That vaping and nicotine is harmless (just like coffee!) despite seeing the negative effects of nicotine intake on developing fetuses.

Yet the current zeitgeist is "Trust the experts, fool!"

We never frikkin learn.

Using the word "science" to frame your argument automatically discredits any counterpoint.

This is why there is supposed to be separation of church and stage, but such rules didn't anticipate "science" becoming religion that is exempt from the criticism of religion. We need some updated principles that separate dogma and faith from legitimate motivations

https://www.bicyclerepairman.cc/laymans_guide/

Labomotomies won the Nobel prize.

They were supported by the mainstream medical and science establishments. Rosemary Kennedy, JFKs relative got one.

People were giving labotomies to their kids to calm them down, advised by their doctor.

Great article on Howard Dulley one of the kids whose parents gave him a lobotomy advised by a doctor.

https://www.npr.org/2005/11/16/5014080/my-lobotomy-howard-du...

> Labomotomies

Fat fingered! Great catch!

What a disturbingly scary article!

> He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says 'I don't know.'

Doesn't this description fit most kids in the world? It was used to justify the lobotomy of a poor boy.

Yep. Doctor recommended! They would give their wife a lobotomy if she talked too much.

Unfortunately, especially historically, psychiatry intersects with "managing bothersome people". Children who wouldn't sit still. Elders who wouldn't stay quiet. Wives with independent personalities. Lobotomies fixed those "problems".

It hasn't really fully separated itself from that today. Some cynical types describe the extremely high rates of psychotropic drugs used in American schools and retirement homes as "chemical lobotomies". In many cases, the drugs are being used to make someone "manageable" (i.e., quiet and compliant) rather than improving their health or quality of life.

(Of course, a mentally sick person who's truly unmanageable, is in fairness, unlikely to have much health or quality of life. But that's the linchpin of justification both historically for actual lobotomies, and today for the widespread use of these drugs. Much caution in medical treatments to make it more convenient to "manage" people is warranted.)

Yeah. It seems like alot of things within the practice of medicine are brutal and crazy looking back.

I wonder what things from present time future humans will look back on and marvel at how insane they were.

I guess that when an appropriate treatment for dental cavities is found, the current practice will be seen as barbaric.

When genetic engineering to give humans regeneration happens all modern medicine will probably look barbaric.

One in a long history of barbarism-as-medicine. Some would say we're still in that era.

I can think of some recent experimental treatments recommended by the medical establishment that appear less effective than advertised and the long term effects unclear.

Shock therapy for one.

A generation is more like 20 years. You’re talking about a lifetime, which is even more insane.

can you imagine if that was happening now? haha no way right

Generally, 25 years is considered a generation.

so nearly 3 generations.

The issue is that with wealth comes an ever increasing focus on risks as you address the most severe first.

Come visit a developing country and you’ll find that wearing a seatbelt or drinking clean water is still not widely accepted. They have bigger problem right now.

there was plenty of research available that smoking was bad as early as the 1920s, it just got silenced. Mainly because Germany was one of the countries that led the movement. Plus billions of dollars working to stop anybody trying to end the money printing from the tobacco industry

>In 1930s Germany, scientific research for the first time revealed a connection between lung cancer and smoking, so the use of cigarettes and smoking was strongly discouraged by a heavy government sponsored anti-smoking campaign

>After the Second World War, the German research was effectively silenced due to perceived associations with Nazism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_control

>After the Second World War, the German research was effectively silenced due to perceived associations with Nazism

That's really interesting. I dug a little more into it[0]. Apparently the underlying reasoning was that the Nazis associated smoking with "degenerates" and damage to "bodily purity." So when the research hit the US, people must have associated anti-smoking with those Nazi ideas. I wonder if tobacco companies latched onto this momentum to keep their public image healthy?

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_...

That tradition hasn't died out yet. There are a ton of common sense things done in many European countries that aren't implemented in the US because of apparent links to "communism."

It is different, because USA was never communist country. And those who argue by "it is like communistm" typically have only very superficial understanding of history of Comunism and of culture it had. Or none at all often.

Could you give some examples? I am from a post communist country and am interested in what could be percieved as communist in the US. My guesses are publi transport and universal health care on the top 2 spots.

Universal health care is probably the best example. Another example is universal maternal leave.

Any sort of employee protection, paid vacation, maternity leave or sick time. Public transit as well.

Depends how deep into the south you go. It fares from clear ones, like government run anything, to extremes like mixing races, homosexuality, and anything the CDC says right now.

Basically Fox news uses "Communism" as a synonym for "things I don't like"

When did Big Tobacco start using all of the additives to up the addictive level of the things? Does that correlate to the timing of when they started using the "physician approved" nonsense?

I don't have a citation, just a hunch this coincided with the chemical revolution of the 1950's. I strongly suspect though smoking may have been correlated with poor health before then, that there probably were not 400K Americans dying of smoking-related illnesses every year until after the chemical revolution and the cigarette industry intentionally taking advantage of addiction by standardizing on precise and elevated nicotine-dosing as well as the infusion of 300 some carcinogens. So Big Tobacco loses a big case in the 1990's, must pay billions of dollars for intentionally making their product extremely addicting, but this punishment is lifted in the early 2000's without full payment. But, astoundingly, the Big Tobacco case and settlement overlooked a major detail (that the intentional addition of 300+ carcinogens, for the purposes of increasing addiction, were, in fact, extremely deadly, and that the industrialized process of creating deadly cigarettes isn't at all necessary for producing and selling tobacco products), which allowed Big Tobacco to continue creating a far more deadly and far more addicting product than tobacco, and thus, inexplicably actually, go on killing 400K Americans annually, and however many more worldwide. It really is the craziest thing.

It's longer than that, the term "tobacco heart" was around in 1880! I remember reading a short story from around then (I think by Mark Twain), where the character is criticized for the unhealthy habit of smoking.

Maybe lung cancer was 1950s, but health in general? Much, much earlier than that.

The time to reach that level of consensus for lots of things is longer than 70 years - it can easily be infinite. It's not really clear why the final date in your timeline is 1998 since it doesn't mark a time when 'all the machinery in play effectively came to the conclusion'. The dangers of smoking tobacco were widely known through much of the period you've picked and this is also reflected in your timeline.

The tobacco lawsuits of the 90s brought the episode to a close. Tobacco companies now have to admit the health harms of smoking. Philip Morris does so at the top of marlboro.com and in several other places.

From the article, 1998 was the year that the Tobacco Institute and the Committee for Tobacco Research disbanded, which I am perceiving as symbolic of the last formal resistance to the idea that smoking causes cancer.

Sure but it's a pretty arbitrary cutoff. Many other significant limits on smoking (workplace bans, indoor bans, airlines, etc) and various limits on tobacco advertising happened both earlier and later. Some big tobacco lawsuits happened later. Just about any doctor in the 70s, 80s or 90s would have told you smoking is bad for you, public perception and knowledge of the dangers changed over time, etc, etc, etc. The whole thing doesn't really fit in a neatly bracketed time period in a meaningful way.

This kind of worries me wrt to my vaping nicotine habit long term

It's just now coming to your attention that nicotine might be unhealthy?

You forgot: 1994 - seven top tobacco CEOs testified to Congress that they didn't believe nicotine was addictive.

That's a great reminder to not get too dogmatic about anything, even when business, government, healthcare and scientists are all aligned.

I'm curious if there were doctors and scientists who dissented from the cigarette consensus prior to the 60s? And how were they treated in such an environment?

There certainly were doctors and scientists who saw the harm of smoking prior to the general consensus. It seems as though this consensus is a result of both mounting medical evidence and a fundemental shift in the way medicine approaches disease, with the field of epidimiology expanding from the study of infectious disease to include a variety of chronic disease and cancers. IIRC, I've read references and anecdotes of smoking and tobacco having obvious negative health impacts as far back as the US Civil War (1860s).

There's a good record in "Research on Smoking and Lung Cancer: A Landmark in the History of Chronic Disease" (The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 1989) [0]:

> By the 1930s, some evidence had been obtained that the incidence of lung cancer among males was increasing. The evidence came from three sources: official mortality statistics, pathologists' reports of autopsy findings, and the observations of physicians who specialized in the treatment of lung disease.

> Speculation about these factors continued, but there was also much criticism of the view that the reported increase in lung cancer was credible. . . . Factors which were listed as likely to be responsible for an artificial increase were better diagnosis of the disease and increased longevity of the population.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2589239/pdf/yjb...

Those would be the "conspiracy theorists".

In my culture, one generation is often defined as 30 years. Probably the years between own births to giving births.

Big money is playing a long game.

The tech industry is way ahead of any hint of regulations with regards to things like privacy, security or safety. New generations of people are brought unwillingly onto social media by parents. Some problems are hard to reel in by design.

And this is for something that the scientific community did not have vested interest in protecting. That is, the scientific community did not come up with smoking as some boon to humanity.

Now imagine if that was the case here; That the big business and the scientific community had a natural alignment in promoting and protecting a practice with huge commercial interests...

Future possible headlines:

When Pharmaceutical Companies Used Doctors to Push Opiates

When Pharmaceutical Companies Used Psychiatrists to Push Amphetamines

Are you really convinced that, from a medical perspective, those are on the same playing field as tobacco?

absolutely. the degree to which amphetamines are pushed on children is insane. I was one such child ~16 years ago.

psychiatry in general is a pretty ridiculous field, at least as practiced here in the US. just yesterday I had my every-three-months checkup where I basically tell my psychiatrist everything is still going good, so can I have three more months' prescriptions of the thing you got me dependent on when I was a teenager, please. I was making some small talk about my life as per usual, talking about how work has been a bit stressful but that I've noticed I've become much better at handling work-related anxiety, compared to in the past, and she asked if I wanted to try any kind of prescription to help with it. it seems like the whole job is basically listening to people with issues and prescribing them pills to attempt to fix the problem. if a prescribed pill doesn't do anything after a certain amount of time, or has negative unintended effects, then oh shit stop taking it, let's try something else instead... another pill, of course, not any kind of counseling or literally any other kind of treatment at all, just more pills.

>so can I have three more months' prescriptions of the thing you got me dependent on when I was a teenager, please.

You could try to wean yourself off. Take a bit less every day. Dependencies don't have to last forever.

Curiously enough, there are some legitimate medical uses for nicotine, just as there are some legitimate medical uses for opiates and amphetamines.

> Colleen McBride, director of the cancer prevention, detection and control program at Duke University Medical Center... says there is a growing body of evidence that nicotine actually relieves some symptoms of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and appears to help those with severe depression focus.

https://today.duke.edu/2001/08/mm_medicaluses.html

The question is, to what extent are current medical uses of such substances actually necessary, i.e. to what extent has it all been about getting those sales numbers up?

But cigarettes are also in a whole another other ballgame than nicotine

In the United States, it’s peculiar that relatively useless pharmaceuticals with a low therapeutic index are heavily advertised, whereas actually useful pharmaceuticals are rarely mentioned at all.

Yeah, but that is past. Now we can absolutely, truly believe on doctors, as it is all based on science.

Since you used "absolutely" and "truly" I'm assuming you're being sarcastic? If not, you just need to look at OxyContin to know this isn't true.

I think he is being sarcastic, and you're right, OxyContin is a great example as to why blind trust in medical institutions which are in the pocket of big pharma can be very dangerous.

The Sackler family pushed opioids onto middle America in a rather spectacular fashion. In any functioning society - including with a death penalty - they’d be contending with the harshest possible penalty. Just not in America.

They killed Tom Petty and Prince and still seem to be getting away with it.

This makes me think of the Drake meme. Making billions of dollars by selling cannabis (until recently): bad. Making billions of dollars by selling opioids: this is fine.

There used to be an old fashioned concept called noblesse oblige. That’s no longer a thing in society, and the elites - barring performative actions and fashionable statements- are not invested in the well-being of average Americans.

It seems that lately, questioning the "doctors" in public places can make you a pariah (and I won't go any further with that).

On another note, I was prescribed a medicine 20 years ago called Propulsid. When I went to fill the prescription, the pharmacist told me that he would not recommend I take it. I contacted the doctor and he was pissed that the pharmacist had given me that recommendation. In the end I didn't take it, which is a good thing because it was removed from the market several years later for causing heart issues.

>WARNING

>Serious cardiac arrhythmias including ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, torsades de pointes, and QT prolongation have been reported in patients taking cisapride.

https://www.rxlist.com/propulsid-drug.htm

I finally learned the term "pill mill" last year when I looked up a doctor I had seen for a physical when they prescribed me over 8 medications when I had never taken nor needed any prior. I didn't fill any of the prescriptions and believe it or not all my vitals with my new doc are just fine for my age without any new prescriptions.

Money and fear of losing money has infected almost every profession and business lately, especially due to the pandemic. Even online reviews and advice are hit or miss and even fabricated completely. Getting a second opinions and asking my elders (65+) questions have served me better so far in life than just outright trusting what random professionals on the Internet and TV regularly tell me. I am vaxxed mind you, enough facts were there and I'm pretty reasonable.

Pill interactions are also a big big issue... A doctor sees each patient for maybe an hour, its important to be able to make sure you also feel comfortable with following their advice (live or die) of course.

It’s fine to question magazine articles that contain lines like “4 out of 5 doctors recommend…”.

It’s fine to question individual doctors.

It’s fine to question corporate-sponsored think tanks.

Is it fine to question a scientific consensus on effective ways to fight a global pandemic?

>Is it fine to question a scientific consensus on effective ways to fight a global pandemic?

Yes, it is always fine to question scientific conclusions with legitimate concerns.

Or we could always revert to letting the church decide what valid science is, I guess.

Yeah, except majority of those were nit legitimate questions. They were partisanship or other immediate political goal motivated bullshit.

> Yes, it is always fine to question scientific conclusions with legitimate concerns.

See, scientific consensus is usually based on data and certain statistics. Those who question it usually express opinions without addressing the data and methodology. An opinion is not enough, you need to be very specific.

Questioning something does not require an opinion.

Questioning something without facts to back it up is pointless.

I'm not sure what that means. Whoever makes the claim provides the facts. If you aren't convinced by those facts then you don't accept the claim. You don't need to bring facts of your own to refuse to believe a claim.

In high-context environments that correctly incentivize truth seeking and long form debate? Sure!

In low-context, short form meme warfare with the only intention of spreading an opinion that the consensus believes is both incorrect and detrimental? Absolutely not. That's what you're doing right now. Knock it off.

> Is it fine to question a scientific consensus on effective ways to fight a global pandemic?

If it cannot be questioned, is there really a consensus?

When it becomes impossible to be able to reasonably comfortably speak against a consensus, that consensus loses any sort of meaning because it becomes impossible to determine whether it's being upheld by coercion or not. It also becomes completely impossible to carry out science in such an environment because such pressures invariably leak into e.g. universities, career opportunities, grants, and so on.

So without being able to reasonably comfortably speak against a scientific consensus you end up with neither science nor a consensus.

My grandmother was prescribed cigarettes for anxiety in the 1950s. She quit in the '80s after developing emphysema, but it was too late. After years on oxygen her lungs were unable to sustain her and she suffocated.

What is the current state of research into the safety of e-cigs? The things have been around for over a decade now, but I haven't seen studies to show how much of a carcinogen they are for regular users. Has the product not been on the market lot enough for studies to be able to prove much of anything in either direction?

I read a bit about that, and now that tocopherol is no longer used as an additive, the only questions seem to be 1) if flavorings are not turned into bad things by the vaporization process 2) if nicotine has enough negative side effects when inhaled to warrant restricting what's an efficient and self-directed smoking cessation method.

About 1) the solution for the FDA has been to ban flavorings, under the "think about the children" idea. While the risk of childen getting addicted to nicotine could be a concern, given the lack of measured risk, it could be as innocent as enjoying beer. About 2), nicotine seem to have negative effects on arteries and the skin mostly, causing premature aging (increase elastases and metalloproteases).

We may have more data in a generation or two, but it would be advisable to plan on reducing your use of e-cigs.

Tocopherol wasn't used as an additive as far as I know, at least any any reputable ejuice vendor, and from I recall the timing on the flavored vape juice ban was oddly around the same time as first COVID cases. It is likely that they jumped to conclusions and then used "some" vendors adding vitamin E as an excuse for such a drastic terrible measure.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but tocopherol was not a flavoring agent. It was likely the cause of the mysterious lung issue affecting vapers, that stopped after it was removed.

I believe those cases were black market THC vape liquid that the news lumped in with above board nicotine vape liquid.

Research is great but common sense is a good starting point.

We know lungs are very sensitive and easily accumulate shit in them. Therefore the reasonable position is to assume that anything you point into your lungs is harmful, unless you have extremely strong evidence that it's not (as opposed to assume that something is safe until evidence that it's not.)

So: assume that e-cigs will give you lung cancer.

But of relative safety viz-a-viz regular cigarettes: is it not possible to assume that e-cigs are safer than regular cigs?

> This content is not available in your area.

Really making good use of that global network we got goin' here, history.com.

https://i.imgur.com/3bPAFQA.png

Where should I book a plane ticket to, so I can view this article?

edit: https://archive.is/aAf3K

I have long suspected that all the doctors and studies that confirm that vaping is a perfectly safe alternative are to be taken with a similar grain of salt.

I'm reminded of the Ethyl corporation funding the studies that said lead wasn't very harmful.

... Of course, that's the thing about science. The people doing research are separate from the ones providing the money. And people will put money behind the research that they believe is correct. This does, of course, incentivize some unethical folks to fudge numbers, but in general, the right way to approach this is to separate the funding from the science. See what the science says. Then, if you see an outlier paper and you need to understand why it's so different from the consensus... It might be helpful to see who is funding it to understand.

Going the other way (discounting the science based on who is funding it) is forming theories without data.

> people will put money behind the research that they believe is correct

s/they believe is correct/the narrative of which benefits them.

Unfortunately it's hard to separate funding from the science. What can one do? Ban privately funded research? Force funders of a study to fund another attempting to find contrary results/pick it apart?

While I agree that some source of funding doesn't automatically invalidate a study, but anecdotally (and probably empirically), studies surprisingly often agree with the people who fund them.

> Force funders of a study to fund another attempting to find contrary results/pick it apart?

That's not a bad idea. The national counter-research unit. Any privately funded research is taxed at some percentage and all proceedings go to debunking that very research!

I understand this is only tangentially related, but you can understand with the background of some of the medical profession, that some people are anti-vax (with respect to covid-19). To be clear, I'm very pro-vax - but yeah

The statistician R. A. Fisher contributed a great deal to the confusion, as well.

https://www.nature.com/articles/182596a0.pdf

Site not accessible from outside the US? lovely.

Mirror: https://archive.is/aAf3K

Easy to look back and make fun of those commercials [0]. It's more sad than anything else if someone does that since they'd be applying their current knowledge of harms of tobacco to people who didn't have said knowledge. This is a cognitive bias called the Curse of knowledge [1]. I see so much of this happening not just on Youtube comments, but even here on HN, it's almost disturbing.

The fair thing to wonder about is what things are we doing today that will seem ridiculous and obviously harmful to people in 100 years from now. Staring at a bright flat screen hours a day just to interact with a random stranger who vehemently disagrees with you about petty subjects?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

Mirror: https://outline.com/Gzv9W6

Thank goodness no companies are using doctors to push their products today.

Yes after cigarettes, opiates, and amphetamines I feel that the medical and pharmaceutical industry has now finally learnt their lesson and padded their bank accounts enough that they would never stoop so low again.

The absolute worst part is that all of the above are actually extremely valuable and useful tools, that now have unnecessary hysteria and stigma around them.

How do you see cigarettes as a valuable tool? As an ex smoker, I agree smoking is enjoyable, but it's so addictive and objectively unhealthy I don't really see a place for it (of course I do support people's right to make their own choices, but I'd never call it valuable)

Read above, ulcerative colitis.

Chemicals are just tools.

I'd be very suspicious of a claim that even if some compound(s) in tobacco smoke help with ulcerative colitis or any condition, that the clinical recommendation is to take up smoking cigarettes. But I'm open to being proven wrong

You'd probably change your mind as soon as you'd receive a devastating diagnosis, such as parkinson's.

if you knew, that nicotine could at least potentially arrest the progression, how sick would you need to get before you would try nicotine patches?

would you rather wait until you are unable to walk, talk, eat, wear adult diapers, but never ever attempt anything on your own?

"clinical recommendation" is nothing more than an OPINION, not some eternal dogma to be venerated.

Marijuana is being used medicinally en masse in many countries today. Still not a "clinical recommendation" in the US, and even an absolutely illegal drug with apparently no known medicinal use, but somehow thousands of epileptic kids manage to control their disease with Charlotte's Webb.

Strange how official "recommendation" can be total lies, no?

> Marijuana is being used medicinally en masse in many countries today

I suspect "medicinal" marijuana is just a ruse to get it legalized. Not to say there are not medicinally beneficial compounds. I also support legalization. But it's a pretty big coincidence that the only medicine with "roll it into a joint and smoke it" as the delivery mechanism happens to be used recreationally in exactly the same way. Just like alcohol was "medicinal" during prohibition.

Where does the line between recreational and medicinal really end?

Having a glass of wine after a stressful day, instead of Xanax, is that medicinal or recreational? You could argue either way, I suppose.

I don't think medicinal is smoked.

Archive link please? Content is geoblocked (connecting from Australia)

Edit: here it is https://web.archive.org/web/20220120011739/https://www.histo...

If it was that bad in the 40s, imagine now with a mountain of student debt. Money is more tempting than ever.

Drinking fluoride is still good for your teeth right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_campaigns_of_...

It's a bit funny that some commenters relate this to vaccines. I also see a similarity, but maybe in a slightly different way.

The tobacco industry paid doctors to become outliers and promoted them to imply expert consensus and push their product.

People not very fond of vaccines also promote outliers attempting to imply some form of consensus or at least scientific validity. Quite a few of them also have products or a whole world view to sell (which often includes buying specific products).

Mercola and RFK Jr both make a good living from their anti-vax positioning.

Do you really believe the financial and other incentives are greater for the people pushing _against_ vaccines and Big Pharma as opposed to the politicians, “experts“, and doctors who are pushing the vaccines so aggressively to the point where they are okay if you lose your job if you don’t take them?

That is a bit of an upside down view of the power structure in society. Pharmaceutical companies are literally making hundreds of billions of dollars off of their products. These companies are not exactly innocent. They have very little morals and are generally okay with mass suffering as long as their profits are increasing (look at the opioid epidemic as an example).

If anything, I think it is much more likely that the reverse is happening. The scientists, doctors, etc. are designing studies in a way to paint a more favorable view of the products that they are looking at. They are cherry picking data to show that they are good while ignoring any data to the contrary. It looks a lot more like they are in the pocket of Big Pharma to me.

In addition, there is a social stigma where if you take an unpopular view here, you will likely be seen as a “conspiracy theorist”, or face the possibility of losing your job, friends, family members.

Most of the people against Big Pharma promote living a healthy lifestyle, taking supplements, going outside, getting sunlight, eating well, exercising, etc. It is not like they are trying to sell you some expensive products.

When governments all around the world are providing billions of taxpayer money to pharmaceutical companies who have legal indemnity and can’t be sued if people have adverse reactions to their products, and those same governments are forcing their citizens to take the products (often against their will) in order to be allowed to participate in society, it is probably time to start questioning who the “good guys” really are here.

I would never agree with this comment above, but today we see nurses fired over this whole vaccine issue. Nurses, who worked frontlines during the first wave when vaccines weren't available, contracted and recovered from covid, and have antibodies to prove it.

They were called heroes.

Today, none of that apparently matters, valuable medical staff were fired anyway, in a middle of pandemic. Why???

Only to turn around, and demand that the vaccinated, but COVID-positive workers (who'd normally have to isolate) work the COVID wards instead?

Couldn't they just ask those that declined vaccination, but previously infected with COVID, work in those wards?

They've done that in 2020, and if they are willing to do that again, are they not heroes, risking their own lives to save others? Well, suddenly they are now pariahs instead of heroes, and must be fired and ridiclued.

How does any of this make sense???

I'm lost at this point.

> They've done that in 2020, and if they are willing to do that again, are they not heroes, risking their own lives to save others? Well, suddenly they are now pariahs instead of heroes, and must be fired and ridiclued.

If you treat a gunshot victim with napkins from McDonalds because it's the only thing you have, that's great. If a year later you've got better options and you're still using the napkins, you're an asshole.

It was brave of folks to work in healthcare before we had the vaccine, knowing that there was a very good chance they'd get sick and that there wasn't much they could do to prevent it. It is stupid to take that risk now, when there is something they can do.

"I'm not taking the vaccine because there isn't one" and "I'm not taking the vaccine despite there being one" aren't comparable, and it's weird to pretend they are.

> “ It is stupid to take that risk now”

This is just handwaving. Where is your data to support that it’s in your own words “stupid”? This seems like an emotional feeling rather than a thesis well supported by data.

I’ve specifically stated “with antibodies to prove it”, which you conveniently ignored. This would be a much higher bar than even previous infection, and perhaps even unnecessary.

Vaccination isn’t some ritual we must perform to exorcise some mythical ghost.

It’s a medical intervention, with measurable results and risks, but also consumes a scarce resource, and therefore must be offered ONLY when appropriate.

vaccinating people who don’t even need it results in denying life-saving vaccines for people who actually DO need them. Like the entirely unvaccinated billions around the world who live on 2 dollars per day. Numerous guidelines recommend postponing vaccination after positive results by months. Mayo clinic recommends 90 days or even longer, depending on the situation at hand. Is Mayo Clinic “stupid”?

Please explain how this guideline is “stupid”: https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-if-a...

As you can see below, from BMC and Lancet, reputable journals, reinfection is very infrequent in health care workers. 2-8 incidents per 100,000 people-hours. Case fatality is at 0.13%, nearly 30 times lower than non-HCW, and I believe a lot of these have been primary infections too.

Do you have any numbers to provide support your thesis that it’s “stupid” at all? You’d only have to prove that infection controls and previous exposure is a less effective intervention than a vaccine, specifically in HCW setting, and that its so ineffective it supports denying vaccine supply to those at 30 TIMES MORE RISK.

In essence your statement reads: 1) “hospitals can’t control infectious agents”, 2) “we should NOT prioritize those 30x at risk and too poor to afford it”, 3) “HCW are too “stupid” (in your own words” to assess risks of infection controls they themselves institute and operate; and risks of the disease they themselves see every day”

Seems like big claims to me.

Looking forward to your data to support your thesis.

Actual data: Reinfection rate in HCW: “2.5 reinfections per 100,000 person-days)”

https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...

“The incidence density was 7·6 reinfections per 100 000 person-days in the positive cohort, compared with 57·3 primary infections per 100 000 person-days in the negative cohort, between June, 2020, and January, 2021. The adjusted IRR was 0·159 for all reinfections (95% CI 0·13–0·19) compared with PCR-confirmed primary infections. The median interval between primary infection and reinfection was more than 200 days.”

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

“case fatality (0.13% versus 2.77%, p<0.001) were significantly lower in HCWPs compared with non-HCWPs.”

https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(21)00564-6/ful...

> Do you really believe the financial and other incentives are greater for the people pushing _against_ vaccines and Big Pharma as opposed to the politicians, “experts“, and doctors who are pushing the vaccines so aggressively to the point where they are okay if you lose your job if you don’t take them?

Definitely. I must confess that I am much more familiar with the situation in Germany, where the commercial entanglement of doctors and pharma companies may be much weaker. We do have a lot of Anti-Vax propaganda, however, which I follow somewhat, so I do know their ways. From what I know they are similar (if not more radicalized) than their counter parts in the US.

> Pharmaceutical companies are literally making hundreds of billions of dollars off of their products. These companies are not exactly innocent. They have very little morals and are generally okay with mass suffering as long as their profits are increasing (look at the opioid epidemic as an example).

I agree! They must be tightly controlled. They're not all evil, though. Like most companies they also have some utility to society: They produce medicine that clearly works, in some cases even remarkably well (sure, arguably at inflated prices). This is the case with vaccines.

> In addition, there is a social stigma where if you take an unpopular view here, you will likely be seen as a “conspiracy theorist”, or face the possibility of losing your job, friends, family members.

I try not to do this, but you're right. Sometimes it's a bit hard because the stereotype is often true. I do have an anti-(corona)vaccine friend and while I think her considerations are irrational here, it's not like she's malicious herself. Especially when wanting to convince her of my changing her mind, there's nothing good not treating her respectfully will do.

> Most of the people against Big Pharma promote living a healthy lifestyle, taking supplements, going outside, getting sunlight, eating well, exercising, etc.

This is where things get hairy. Going outside, getting sunlight, eating well and exercising are all fabulous things and I am all for promoting them.

The issue begins to appear when you insinuate that these can be better than a proven treatment for a given sickness, like telling people to just take more walks outside and the cancer will solve itself. That is what harms people. And it's something a large portion of people in this bubble definitely do. That is where the issue lies.

> It is not like they are trying to sell you some expensive products.

Many influencers out of this bubble absolutely are, especially regarding the supplements you previously mentioned (plus some weird devices, sculptures, things with magnets ...). They can contain nothing of much value and just be ineffective at curing illnesses, leading to people not seeking real treatment and wasting their money, they can also be actively harmful, see "Miracle Mineral Solution", which contains literal bleach [0]. That is doubly harmful and absolutely to be fought. These people are enriching themselves from gullible people by telling them fantasy stories and it is highly despicable.

------

Of course there's a spectrum. Not everyone who as safety concerns about the vaccines automatically believes in wild conspiracy theories. However the seed of "look at what shady things people up there are doing" can often grow into "all the system is evil and we must fight it with fire" and that's what I'm afraid of. That this radicalization frequently happens is at least supported ancedotally (I have been in that loop for a short while myself) and why I'm so passionate about this topic.

Real conspiracies exist! But please use your critical thinking skills to evaluate the evidence and likelihoods of things.

End of rant, I guess.

[0]: https://scimoms.com/coronavirus-mms/

> It's a bit funny that some commenters relate this to vaccines.

This is literally the only comment chain in the entire thread to reference vaccines

It looks like they were rightfully flagged.

Japan Tobacco employed scientists to conduct research about the benefits of smoking as recently as 2009. My students when I worked there were said scientists.

fun fact: cigarette usage does appear to at least decrease the chance of you getting ulcerative colitis

still a shitty habit to pick up though

There are better means to that end.. such as immuno-modulating parasites. The good old hookworm is a fine example.

(Not actually kidding)

That trial failed

do you have a link? i thought failed studies aren't usually published?

Last thing I've read: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4403024/ seems to leave it at the very least as an open question. It's not a matter of 'a study' passing or failing. It's not controversial to assert that many parasites are immunomodulating , and there are no shortage of cases where it at least appears on the surface that they may ease some autoimmune maladies. My personal anecdote is from a friend whose allergies were strongly suppressed after getting worms.

I don't really have skin in this game, though, and mostly posted to make the humorous juxtaposition of literally getting worms as a preferable and less harmful alternative to smoking for autoimmune relief.

A highly addictive habit. If 99% of smokers could enjoy one cigarette a day with morning coffee or afternoon drink then smoking would never become a big issue. Most of them end up with 1-2 packs a day damaging theirs and their family health.

I remember hearing somewhere that even one cigarette will paralyze your alveoli for 24 hours. This would, I assume, make you more susceptible to contagions since foreign particles will make contact with your blood for longer period. If this were true, then even one cig a day would be a real problem, especially in Covid-times.

There isn't evidence to suggest cigarette smokers are more likely to catch covid

There is evidence that if you smoke and catch COVID, it will be more severe.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/27/smokers-much...

No evidence of that there. Only that "current smokers were 80% more likely to be admitted to hospital and significantly more likely to die from Covid-19 if they became infected" -- did they control for other factors, that tend to go along with smoking, like obesity (and socioeconomic status)? Where's the link to their paper?

All the genetic stuff too is super suspicious, I would be _shocked_ if "genetic predisposition to smoking" had no impact whatsoever on any other variable that could cause more severe COVID.

Here's some actual studies:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33420786/

> We conducted a cross-sectional, observational study on the 1769 sailors of the same navy aircraft carrier at sea exposed at the same time to SARS-CoV2 to investigate the link between tobacco consumption and Covid-19.

> Current smoking status was associated with a lower risk of developing Covid-19 but cannot be considered as efficient protection against infection. The mechanism of the lower susceptibility of smokers to SARS-CoV-2 requires further research.

https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...

> A total of 7162 patients were included, with 482 being smokers. The POR was 0.24 (95%CI 0.19–0.30). Unlike the original study, the association between smoking and disease severity was not statistically significant using random-effects meta-analysis (OR 1.40, 95%CI 0.98–1.98). In agreement with the original study, no statistically significant association was found between smoking and mortality (OR 1.86, 95%CI 0.88–3.94).

> An unusually low prevalence of smoking, approximately 1/4th the expected prevalence, was observed among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Any association between smoking and COVID-19 severity cannot be generalized but should refer to the seemingly low proportion of smokers who develop severe COVID-19 that requires hospitalization. Smokers should be advised to quit due to long-term health risks, but pharmaceutical nicotine or other nicotinic cholinergic agonists should be explored as potential therapeutic options, based on a recently presented hypothesis.

Current anecdata says what smoker's lungs are more 'trained' for an abuse so smokers are less susceptible for infection.

I find this slightly amusing, considering what there are multiple cases where otherwise healthy non-smokers have a very severe symptoms.

My sense is that smoking is related to changes in ACE2 expression in the lungs, which would have some effect on CoV-2.

> did they control for other factors, that tend to go along with smoking, like obesity

Obesity is anti-correlated with smoking, though smoking can cause a lot of the same health problems as obesity.

...It's complicated, apparently, depending on how much you smoke, and whether you were a former smoker: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4401671/

> Overall, current smokers were less likely to be obese than never smokers (adjusted OR 0.83 95% CI 0.81-0.86). However, there was no significant association in the youngest sub-group (≤40 years). Former smokers were more likely to be obese than both current smokers (adjusted OR 1.33 95% CI 1.30-1.37) and never smokers (adjusted OR 1.14 95% CI 1.12-1.15). Among smokers, the risk of obesity increased with the amount smoked and former heavy smokers were more likely to be obese than former light smokers (adjusted OR 1.60, 95% 1.56-1.64, p<0.001). Risk of obesity fell with time from quitting. After 30 years, former smokers still had higher risk of obesity than current smokers but the same risk as never smokers.

>In the 1930s and 40s

smoking was cool back then. it was a social thing to do. you can see that in old Hollywood movies.

Why not 1850s? )) I am sure even in the 80s and 90s there were plenty of smokers in the movies

Smoking especially in excess wasn't actually all too common until cigarettes started being mass produced in the early 1900s, and WWI and WWI got two generations addicted to rationed cigarettes (especially fig 1 from this):

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4843a2.htm

The timing on this story is coincident with the recent outspoken professor.

“When Doctors Recommended Smoking As A Science-Based Health Practice”

FTFY.

Intentional, malicious disinformation campaigns should be viewed as fraud against the American public.

Especially when they are in collusion with the healthcare system.

So, the entire advertizing industry, then?

they used all kind of tactics, political wars, gender wars, cultural wars; name them all. Thanks to the mastermind Edward Bernays.

In a pure quantitative basis, considering only the deaths and not even the social and economic cost (which indirectly leads to more deaths, or at least impacts quality of life) there's no much reason not to include tobacco into the list of great genocides. Objectivelly, all those executives, salesman, advertisers are guilty of crimes against humanity.

Bringing these things up during the early days of the pandemic would have gotten you blacklisted/shadowbanned on sites such as this one, as "please don't spread unfounded rumors - dang"

That doesn't sound like something I'd post, and there's no occurrence of it in HN Search.

"When asked 'What cigarette do you smoke, doctor?' More doctors said 'Camel' than any other brand."

Abbott and Costello were sponsored by Camel. C-AM-EL-s

C for Comedy

A for Abbott

M for Maxwell

E for Ennis

and L for Lou Costello, put them together and they spell, CAMEL!

https://otrr.org/hotrod/hotrod7.html for episodes.

And now Tobacco companies have latched on to, and are promoting Marijuana - something that is even more addictive, and both mentally and physically more harmful (in the long run).

> Marijuana also affects brain development. When people begin using marijuana as teenagers, the drug may impair thinking, memory, and learning functions and affect how the brain builds connections between the areas necessary for these functions. Researchers are still studying how long marijuana's effects last and whether some changes may be permanent. Long-term marijuana use has been linked to mental illness in some people, such as: temporary hallucinations, temporary paranoia, worsening symptoms in patients with schizophrenia ...

Source: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana

Reply on news.ycombinator.com