I have been perplexed by the lack of boasting by ASH ET AL about how much diminished lung cancer deaths have been since smoking prevalence started to diminish from about 1950 – in men. ASH do not boast about it and I would have thought that they would. After all, if smoking causes lung cancer, the diminishing of smoking prevalence must surely produce a reduction in lung cancer after a suitable period of elapsed time (allowing for the ‘delayed effect’, which Doll said MUST be the case since it takes so long for smokers to develop LC, if they develop it at all).
In the pamphlet “Fifty Years since Smoking and Health”, Professor Martin Jarvis, Emeritus professor of health psychology, University College London, said:
“Declining smoking prevalence led to substantial reductions in cardiovascular and respiratory deaths, but most strikingly in deaths from lung cancer, which for young men in their thirties declined by 90% between 1960 and 2000.”
Because of my investigations, I felt instinctively that this statement was very unlikely to be true, unless the Emeritus Professor was talking about some obscure place and not the UK. I do not know whether he was or not. He does not say what part of the world his 90% reduction applies to. But since he is generally talking about the 1962 Chief Medical Officer’s Report, it would be reasonable to believe that he is talking about the UK.
I just happen to have the basic data of mortality statistics from 1960. By searching, I found that the total number of male deaths from bronchus and/or lung cancers in the age range 30 – 39 in the year 1960 was 155. If there had been a 90% reduction by the year 2000, then one would expect a figure of about 20. In fact, the figure for 2000 was 42. It follows therefore that the reduction was not 90% but more like 45%.
We do not need to figure out the reasons for the 45% reduction. All we need to figure out is that:
EMERITUS PROFESSOR MARTIN JARVIS IS A LIAR.
Playing fast and loose with statistics for propaganda purposes may be fun when dealing with politicians, but it is hardly wise to publish your fun as though it were true in an official paper.
But what do we expect? No one is monitoring these quacks, just like no one monitored the Climate Change fraudsters.
[Access to the statistics can be found here:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm:77-215593
But be prepared for a hard slog extracting the data]
06/02/2013 at 13:10
Most all the LC cases are in the 80 year old group Cousin! smoker and non-smoker alike……..
06/02/2013 at 13:14
http://www.scotsman.com/edinburgh-evening-news/latest-news/pub-closure-blamed-on-rising-prices-and-smoking-ban-1-2772938
You might want to follow the exchange between kinfree and Rollo
It deals directly with what your discussing here.
06/02/2013 at 16:38
Slightly less than 2% of all lung cancer deaths occur to people under the age of 44.
155 out of the thousands of total deaths is a very small part of the total.
There are no usefull conclusions that can be made from such ‘cherry-picked’ data.
After all, the decrease can be partially explained by the decrease in the number of people in that age group once the ‘baby-boom’ generation passed through.
06/02/2013 at 20:15
Hi Just to let you know I got the results of my latest CT scan on Friday and I am still clear of cancer despite never stopping smoking. My surgeon is pleased and I think he is really starting to have second thoughts about smoking! At first it was definitely the smoking that caused it but now he doesn’t seem so sure. Trouble is most people when diagnosed with lung cancer and who smoked feel guilt,panic, blame themselves and stop so of course if they survive it is because they stopped. I read the evidence and decided to carry on as always or what’s the point. Maybe sewing a little doubt along the line will help.
06/02/2013 at 21:09
That’s FANTASTIC NEWS Cherie. Brill!
My cousin got lung cancer in Aberdeen and they never once suggested she quit smoking. She did, though she went over to e-fags, and two years later she succumbed.
My point is that Aberdeen sees far more cancers from living in granite houses than anything to do with smoking. And my cousin always lived in whacking great big ones, with her bed not 3 feet away from that nicely finished facade containing about 40 cms of solid granite.
06/02/2013 at 21:26
Thanks, thats two years six months since surgery with, so far, no problems. I know Aberdeen well, grew up in Glasgow in the 50s with all that smoke from cigarettes and a local steel works. I really should be dead I suppose! I did tell my surgeon I would lie if it made him feel better, at least he had the grace to laugh, he is one of the good guys really.
07/02/2013 at 01:49
@ Cousin HR.
So Rollo has surfaced again. I had a read of some of the comments. Frankly, I would not engage with him. He leaps about all over the place. On the last occasion on which I was commenting on the same thread as he was, I deliberately refrained from engaging with him directly. I addressed the subject, and not him. In the newspaper article you link to, the subject was ‘pub closures and the smoking ban and rising prices’. Rollo distracted attention from the subject by talking about smoking and LC. Had I been commenting (it is too late now since the discussion took place two days ago), I would have said:
1. Adults can decide whether to take a risk (if any).
2. Adults can decide whether or not to work in a smoking bar.
3. It is not for the Government to dictate to adult entrepreneurs, adult smokers and adult workers.
@ Garyk.
The diminishing numbers of younger people may certainly be involved, but it would be hard work to investigate. What might be more important for these younger people might be the improvement in treatments which have taken place since the 1960s. As you rightly point out, the cherry-picking is shameful.
@ Cherie.
I echo smokingscot’s sentiments. Good news indeed. Your surgeon must be aware that smoking is only a possible factor. One of the facts that have struck me in my recent investigations is that, in any given year, lung cancer deaths follow almost exactly the same progression – a very, very, very few very, very, very young people succumb, and thereafter there is a gradual escalation as people age. An oddity, for example, is that there are hundreds of people who die from lung cancer well into the eighties and nineties! If they were smokers, why did they not contract LC earlier? And if they were non-smokers, why did they die from LC at all?
The thought has already occurred to me that perhaps Doll was comparing apples and pears, but I have no idea at the moment what the distinct difference might be! The obvious one is genetic predisposition.
07/02/2013 at 15:39
Thanks, if there is anything I can help with your research feel free, you have my email address. I can also ask on Inspire where you can get answers from all over the world to almost any lung cancer query, there does seem to be a genetic link from some of the posts I have read there. The most common age for diagnoses seems to be 50 – 60 which fits with your research. This seems to be true whether current smokers, never smokers and people who gave up decades ago.