Apparently the general observation that the number of children recorded as having asthma is inversely correlated to the number of adults who smoke doesn't apply in Wales.
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Or perhaps they have an increased risk of being diagnosed with asthma when exposed to second rate medicos?
"Apparently the general observation that the number of children recorded as having asthma is inversely correlated to the number of adults who smoke "
Where is that proved?
I knew a girl whose asthma was so bad she went to a special boarding school. Her health improved there a lot - away from her father who smoked.
Anonymous, you do realise that moving to a boarding school would mean a large number of changes to what the girl breathed/eat/drank/had contact with? But you believe that the one that made the difference was the smoke. You know this how?
From what I've read, asthma cannot be caused by smoking. It may be that asthma attacks can be brought on by smoking, but that is not the same thing.
The doctor also repeats the oft made claim that smoking costs the NHS. He is woefully badly informed or is deliberately lying. The costs of treating illnesses brought on by smoking are dwarfed by the costs of treating those same people had they not smoked and lived a lot longer. This is without considering tax on cigarettes and the saving in pension payments. For those who are not convinced, here is a rough outline.
On average, each of us consumes £1500 a year in health costs. A 20 a day smoker pays around £1400 in tobacco tax. Anti smoking campaigners claim smokers die 6 years earlier, so saving at least £30,000 each in pension payments. Over a lifetime of 70 years, with 30 years of smoking say, and dying 6 years earlier, a smoker, on average should be entitled not to £1500, but to £2500 a year in NHS resources. None smokers should appreciate this and the better educated of them do.
"Anon"...
When I was a kid, some 50 years ago, almost everybody (80+% of adults) smoked. I never met a single kid at school who suffered from asthma. Nowadays something like 25% of adults smoke and yet childhood asthma is rife - this is called a negative correlation.
It is far more likely that changes in domestic circumstances have had the main effect - centrally-heated houses with fitted carpets which provide a perfect environment for the house-dust mite, a known asthma trigger, are far more prevalent than in my youth. Children spend far more time indoors playing with their "X-Boxes" and thus have more exposure. There's also a suggestion that many present-day children have relatively compromised imune systems when compared to their peers of 50 years ago - kids aren't exposed to "dirt" in the way we used to be...
All of which adds up to a much better case for increased asthma than the standard control-freak cry of "second-hand smoke".
I'm replying to the "anon" of 10:04 BTW.
I agree completely with the 10:42 version. :-)
Are there any figures available for the prevalence of eczema, an auto-immune disorder like asthma, but unlikely to be caused by smoking, or is eczema not so widely studied as it is, er, unlikely to be caused by smoking?
Anon @ 10.04
Stop being a silly billy,according to wackos like you
the Black Death was caused by smoking.
1960-2008 smoking halved
1960-2008 Asthma trebled
Use the FOI to get the stats from
DOH
PS I dont suppose you would know
any "facts" about respiratory
disorders caused by working in
industrial environments such as
foundries,thought not,probably
just another pen pushing,bleeding
heart ,pontificating nanny.
Bessemer Gasper
Anon 10.42, Anon/BG 11.27, yup those are the statistics I meant, ta.
I have a theory, maybe not backed up by too many facts but it is my opinion all the same. In the fifties a lot of people smoked I remember people coming to our non-smoking household and being allowed to smoke, there were even cigarettes in a box in the drinks cabinet for those who may run out whilst they were our guests.
Trains were smoky, as were buses, shops, the underground, offices and so on, the list is endless nearly everyone smoked. I cannot recollect when the lung cancer scare started proper or became an issue but I think it was about early sixties, it was only a murmur then, but it has now grown into the fascist state bans and such like of today,
Now imagine, going back to that time, many thousands of ex soldiers, miners, industrial workers, agricultural workers and so on, as they got older, all turning up at the GP’s with so called lung problems, more and more as time went on. As the list of these people, most of whom were probably smokers, grew, concerns could have been raised about the gas attacks that soldiers had suffered in the past two wars, the DDT and other chemicals agricultural workers had used, the dust and gasses miners had been subjected to, the paint and chemicals industrial workers had used, all of these individuals doing so without adequate protection. Additionally there was of course the smog problems caused by power stations and industry in all the major cities in the UK at the same time as this. It might therefore have been a concern that perhaps some sort of disability payment/compensation/blame might be due from, or pointed toward the state or employers as a result of these workers conditions.
Answers were needed, so the government employ some learned gentlemen to come up with a reason why these people are all suffering from lung disorders (I think we have people like these doing research for the government now regarding climate bollocks, smoking etc.), of course the real brief was, find a way out for the government, the MOD, agriculture ministry and big business in all of this, we do not want to be seen to be liable.
Oh, that’s easy, replied the learned gentlemen, most of the sufferers smoke and most work places are smoky, so that is the reason, and as they do that of their own free will it is their fault entirely not yours, can we have a our fee now please? This farce continues to this day and the reason lung cancer cases have declined is the fact that the people in the occupations mentioned above are so much more protected when they work in dangerous environments or use chemicals etc, additionally a lot of toxic substances are no longer used/produced, it is not because not so many people smoke or smoke around others.
I will not be paranoid until they do get me, I promise.
That's some theory, Facist Hippy and to be fair - it's more believable than what the experts were quoting on the BBC article.
FH, that's a splendid theory and while exaggerated there's probably something in it. Although it would help to have empty lines between paragraphs.
My grand-father died of lung cancer at 79, having spent 53 years working for a major appliance manufacturer, mainly in the paint spray shop.
His protection was half a pint of milk a day free in the canteen, which I don't think he took advantage of.
He packed up smoking three weeks before he died because he wanted to spend as much time as possible with us, silly bugger.
P.S.
There were line spaces and double spaces after full stops when I cut and pasted the original, I do apologise old boy.
"Paul said...
Anonymous, you do realise that moving to a boarding school would mean a large number of changes to what the girl breathed/eat/drank/had contact with? But you believe that the one that made the difference was the smoke. You know this how?"
I didn't say that. There are loads of factors that could have caused it. I just pointed out that it seemed to be different to this theory.
Maybe passive smoking is harmless
(why tobacco companies did not pay for research on animals to prove this amazes me or maybe it IS harmful).
"I cannot recollect when the lung cancer scare started proper or became an issue but I think it was about early sixties, it was only a murmur then, but it has now grown into the fascist state bans and such like of today,"
Aren't there any animal experiments to prove smoking is harmful?
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