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by paulpauper 37 days ago
It makes you wonder how accurate the smoking cancer stats are. IF everyone smoked, presumably this means a lot of people who are not recorded in the stats despite smoking or former smokers, lowering the mortality rate or risk factor, although obvious smoking is still bad.
2 comments
margalabargala 37 days ago
I would expect it to be the other way around.

If nearly everyone smoked, then even nonsmokers were constantly getting a fair amount of secondhand smoke.

This would raise the background rate of cancer, making it appear that smoking raises your risk by less than it actually does.

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rjsw 37 days ago
Non smokers did get lung cancer [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Castle#Illness_and_death

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margalabargala 37 days ago
Yes, exactly my point.

If the "normal" rate of lung cancer is X, the observed rate in nonsmokers who get secondhand smoke is X+Y, and the observed rate in smokers is X+Y+Z, if you compare nonsmokers and smokers it looks like smoking increases your rate by Z when it's actually Y+Z.

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paulpauper 37 days ago
this agrees with my point because non-smoker are being counted in cancer risk. we're only interested in people who choose to smoke. public smoking bans make secondhand smoke less risky/relevant as a factor. we're only interested in the risk , independent of secondhand smoke, of someone choosing to smoke getting cancer.
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margalabargala 37 days ago
> we're only interested in the risk , independent of secondhand smoke, of someone choosing to smoke getting cancer.

No, that's where you're wrong.

You are only interested in that independent risk.

I, and many others, are interested in how much smoking changes that risk.

Picking random numbers, let's say smoking gives you a 10% chance of lung cancer. It's fine for you to only care about that 10% number, you get to care about what you want to.

But for the rest of us, when making informed decisions based on risk, it matters whether smoking changes it from 9.9% to 10%, or 0.1% to 10%.

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andrepd 37 days ago
About 1/2 of all people who ever died from smoking-related causes were non-smokers.
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IAmBroom 36 days ago
Cite?
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