pellies: Kevin72: pellies: Kevin72: Anyway, try not to forget the 1950s where all the peer reviewed scientific studies said that smoking was good for your health.

Citation needed as this is a ridiculous statement. Not to mention it was 63 years ago. I'm glad nothing changes.

Like I say, the thing that has changed in 63 years is that big business has more stranglehold on reasearch funds. Here is your citation needed. Enjoy your smoking, hfcs, gmos, beeless agriculture, etc.

Medical Consensus Summarized
Perhaps the best and most judicious summary of the most generally accepted medical viewpoint is to be found in an editorial published a few years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Actual surveys indicate," it stated, "that the majority of physicians themselves smoke cigarettes. From a psychological point of view, more can be said in behalf of smoking as a form of escape from tension than against it. There does not seem to be a preponderance of evidence that would indicate the abolition of the use of tobacco as a substance contrary to the public health."To that authoritative statement it might be well to add the advice given me by a Washington physician after a long evening of discussing the pros and cons of smoking. Together with two cancer researchers and a statistician, we had all puffed away for hours while we analyzed the medical evidence for and against the cigarette. When we finally quit, at three in the morning, a deep blue haze filled the room."Summing it all up, Doctor," I asked, "would you advise me-an average, sedentary, moderately healthy character-to keep on smoking or to quit?"Cigarette in hand and glancing at the overloaded ash trays, he laughed.Then he leaned over and whispered, "I'm going to tell you exactly what I tell most of my patients. Don't smoke-unless you like it."Source: Albert Q. Maisel, "Don't Smoke-Unless You Like It, Collier's, November 4, 1950, 18.

Well that is all peer reviewed science. You win. Also there is no citatio ...

gfid: Kevin72: Colliers Magazine, JAMA. I'm not your mother. Go ahead and only believe only when peer reviewed science tells you. By then it's too late, as it will be for beeless agriculture, when it turns the pesticides kill the bees, not the parasite they're blaming it on. Just like it was too late for the smokers of the 50s and 60s when the real truth came out.

I found the actual editorial from Colliers online, but bear in mind it only cherry picks a few sentences from a JAMA editorial "from a few years" earlier which mentions surveys (not studies) that say most doctors smoke.

The JAMA editorial goes on to relate an amusing anecdote about 4 guys sitting around smoking until 3 AM (I'd be willing to bet they were drinking too, but it doesn't say) concluding that you shouldn't "smoke unless you like it".

The overall tone of the Colliers editorial seems to be quite pro-smoking and Colliers wasn't a scientific journal nor even a magazine focused on medicine.

It did however note that some that some people suspected smoking as the cause of many ills including heart disease and cancer.

Another quote from the same Colliers editorial:

Americans, most of all, have taken the cigarette to heart. More than three quarters of all our adult men, and more than 40 per cent of all women, now smoke. We consume almost 400,000,000,000 cigarettes each year. We average nearly a full pack each per day.


For research above and beyond the call of duty, I now have you favorited.
Recently, however, the ranks of the antitobacco forces have been swollen by new recruits. Serious scientists and physicians have solemnly reported the results of intensive research in authoritative medical journals. These studies, if only because of their source, cannot be laughed off as were the denunciations of "the filthy weed" by the wild-eyed soapboxers of generations past.