Tobacco could kill 1 billion this century if current trends hold

[Kadie]

Tobacco could kill 1 billion this century if current trends hold

Monday, July 10, 2006; Posted: 1:05 p.m. EDT (17:05 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- If current trends hold, tobacco will kill a billion people this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, public health officials said Monday.

Tobacco accounts for one in five cancer deaths, or 1.4 million deaths worldwide each year, according to two new reference guides that chart global tobacco use and cancer. Lung cancer remains the major cancer among the 10.9 million new cases of cancer diagnosed each year, according to the Cancer Atlas.

Reducing tobacco use would have the greatest affect on global cancer rates, health officials said. Improving nutrition and reducing infection by cancer-causing viruses and bacteria could also cut rates dramatically, they said.

"We know with cancer, if we take action now, we can save 2 million lives a year by 2020 and 6.5 million by 2040," said Dr. Judith Mackay, a World Health Organization senior policy adviser.

The new Cancer Atlas and updated Tobacco Atlas were released Monday at an International Union Against Cancer conference. The American Cancer Society published the two atlases with help from the Union, WHO and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

more...
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/07/10/tobacco.cancer.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

[tritsofme]

1. If trends hold, 6 billion will die

in the next 70 years or so.

[jus_the_facts]

2. Pffft...what about industrial pollution and CAR EXHAUST?

....those are much more damaging to the entire planet than people who use tobacco much less those who're near someone using tobacco. :eyes:

[ladjf]

4. Transportation and manufacturing are necessities. Smoking

isn't. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't eliminate pollutants from the former.

[jus_the_facts]

5. Yeah excuses abound don't they.......

.......there have been alternatives to the combustion engine for decades...but money talks and bullshit walks...I didn't ask to be born into a time when EVERYBODY smoked in my presence and low and behold I became a smoker too...and a driver and user of industrial made products...perspectives and priorities...s'all a cluster fuck no matter what I dare say.

[Mojorabbit]

6. They are not really necessities

The human race did ok without them in the past.

[Touchdown]

7. It doesn't matter

The nanny Staters and those who need an enemy will always blame cigarettes on everything. It's been that way ever since the ALA cooked their numbers with the SHS studies more than a decade ago. Terrorists release gas in a subway. Everybody's choking and coughing, but the smokers are not coughing because of the poison, but because they're smokers.:eyes:

[CountAllVotes]

3. my mother died of lung cancer & she smoked for 40 years

However, the lung cancer was not caused by tobacco. It was metasticized from another point of origin believed to have been the ovaries. She had been using estrogen replacement for about 30 years btw.

:dem: :kick:

[TahitiNut]

8. Nonetheless, it'd be tallied as "smoking-related"

That's the 'art' of medicine-by-statistics.

[Lindacooks]

10. Smoking raises the risk of ovarian cancer too.

So yes, it probably was caused by smoking.

http://womens-health.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/2002/924/1

[TahitiNut]

9. By the end of this century ...

... we're lucky of global warming doesn't kill more ... and wipe out the tobacco growers, too.

I think I'm glad I won't be around to see it - and don't have children.

[yella_dawg]

11. How many deaths will be caused by auto accidents?

How many by wars started by arrogant pricks?
How many by global-warming induced weather anomalies?

Perspective, friend, perspective.

People smoke. People will smoke in the future. People will do many dangerous, dumb, and unnecessary things. It's human nature. You wanna save us from ourselves? Put your efforts into safe mass transit. Save a lot more lives that way; you'll knock out accident victims and pollution victims.

[slackmaster]

12. The tone of the article is as if this was a bad thing

:shrug:

[RagAss]

13. Who funded the study????