john@ur-tut.UUCP (John Gurian) (09/12/85)
I would be interested in knowing what peoples' attitudes towards smoking are; e.g. how many of you smoke, and if you do, if you have any desire to quit or not. Smoking is one of the major public health problems in the U.S. and I haven't seen it discussed much on the net. Of similar interest to me would be what people think of the "media coverup" of smoking-related illnesses. Basically, it works like this: most newpapers and magazines get huge advertising revenues from the smoking industry. So, if they decide they want to do an article on cancer, little mention of smoking is made, since the tobacco companies basically censor the information by threatening to withdraw their advertising. The only magazines immune to this are Reader's Digest & Seventeen, which I believe are the only two that prohibit cigarette advertising (radio & TV also are free from this problem). In fact, a number of months ago Newsweek did an article on "Living with Cancer" - no mention was made of lung cancer or the role of smoking (I believe they focused on leukemia). Pretty remarkable when you consider that lung cancer is right up at the top in terms of cancer deaths (I don't want to say #1 since I don't have the stats handy). ------ John Gurian ------ Univ. Rochester School of Medicine
ix21@sdcc6.UUCP (David Whiteman) (09/13/85)
I just wanted to add a small addenda to this article about smoking. At the end of the posting the author said he did not know the stats about how prevalent lung cancer is. At the same time I was reading his posting I heard on the radio that the National Cancer Insitute just announced that for females lung cancer is the most common form of cancer. For a long time among females breast cancer was more prevalent than lung cancer, but now because of the increase in the number of female smokers lung cancer is more prevalent. For males lung cancer was always the most common form of cancer. -- ---- David Whiteman, University of California, San Diego