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Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

nytimes.com

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Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#161

Post by 15charlimit »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #158
15charlimit wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about throwing stones, or pointing fingers? Nothing in my post indicates that help should be refused to individuals who make poor decisions and then try to recover from them, just that, in a free society, the onus should not be solely on the head of "a higher authority" (govt, industry, etc) to be responsible for doing so. The world you seem to desire would make cellphone manufacturers and service p…

> Start casting blame where it needs to be - on the individual(s). Those are your words, my friend. Maybe I misinterpreted them. I didn't say individuals are 0% responsible. It's a mix, right?. Individuals deserve blame but also support. Companies deserve protection from inane lawsuits but also bear some responsibility. > But if there's a tool that does exactly what it's designed to do, but someone uses it for a comp…

> Sure. That doesn't apply to tobacco or sugar. We're using it in exactly the way the sellers intended.

Moderate tobacco use, in some forms, moderately increases cancer risk. Moderate sugar consumption doesn't overtly increase the risk of heart disease or obesity.

Overuse of most tobacco products dramatically increases your cancer risk, just as overuse of sugar dramatically increases its associated risks.

My point stands that nobody is forcing you to start smoking tobacco or eating large volumes of sugar. Why do you want to push all of the responsibility away from someone who willingly undertakes an optional activity with known risks?

It's not like every widely-available tobacco product hasn't had 50% or more of its packaging plastered with "warning, cancer!" labels for the last 30-odd years.

Should tobacco companies be held responsible for objectively-false advertising and marketing? Yeah, if memory serves they got beat up pretty well for that by the government many years ago. When was the last time you saw an ad for cigarettes on TV? It's been quite a long time since I have. That problem has already been taken care of.

With sugars you might be able to make an argument about a lack of in-your-face warnings - but why should those be required? Moderate consumption is fine. Excessive consumption is where the problem starts kicking in. Various government entities are already kicking up a stink about sugar-heavy products, so I wouldn't be surprised if we got such warning labels in the future anyway.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#162

Post by Tenhundfeld »

15charlimit wrote: post #161
Tenhundfeld wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Start casting blame where it needs to be - on the individual(s). Those are your words, my friend. Maybe I misinterpreted them. I didn't say individuals are 0% responsible. It's a mix, right?. Individuals deserve blame but also support. Companies deserve protection from inane lawsuits but also bear some responsibility. > But if there's a tool that does exactly what it's designed to do, but someone uses it for a comp…

> Sure. That doesn't apply to tobacco or sugar. We're using it in exactly the way the sellers intended. Moderate tobacco use, in some forms, moderately increases cancer risk. Moderate sugar consumption doesn't overtly increase the risk of heart disease or obesity. Overuse of most tobacco products dramatically increases your cancer risk, just as overuse of sugar dramatically increases its associated risks. My point st…

> Why do you want to push all of the responsibility away from someone who willingly undertakes an optional activity with known risks?

Where did I say or even imply that? I just said it's less than 100% – but more 0%. You're obviously quite passionate and/or angry about something, some injustice you've seen or something. I feel like we're talking past each other and you want to have an argument just for the sake of arguing on the Internet. I'm not super interested in that.

I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day. Maybe we'll meet in person one day and debate the issue in a higher bandwidth medium. Cheers.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#164

Post by Pica_soO »

15charlimit wrote: post #146
Tenhundfeld wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, what a nasty little, finger-pointing, stone-casting society you seem to desire. Is there anything that you'd blame on society/industry/government, or is it always 100% the individual's fault?

Who said anything about throwing stones, or pointing fingers? Nothing in my post indicates that help should be refused to individuals who make poor decisions and then try to recover from them, just that, in a free society, the onus should not be solely on the head of "a higher authority" (govt, industry, etc) to be responsible for doing so. The world you seem to desire would make cellphone manufacturers and service p…

Good thing we don't write those apps to be addictive. Good thing we all have clean consciousness - else we might end up compulsively venting guilt by propagating aggressive libertarian ideology's. Good things.

I program Robots for a living, and you know what - im guilty of those peoples lives going to hell when they are let go. They are not guilty that they can not retrain at 40. They are not to blame that there endurance might not be high enough to get a degree. Its also not the CEO who employs me to do my job, which i just do. I could quit my job anytime. Im guilty and thus must work hard, to even that guilt out. I try my best to promote basic income and unshaming unemployment in my home country. Individual responsibility, suddenly sounds less happy, does it? Sounds like hard work and shame.

You arguments sounds suspiciously like shirking responsibility's by idealizing other people. Imagine if a whole society would do that, what a catastrophe, could you even call that a society anymore?

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#165

Post by bbarn »

yaks_hairbrush wrote: post #136
bbarn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as a culture (speaking here in the US) we've made quitting smoking out to be much harder than it actually is. One of the problems with this massive marketing campaign saying things like "You can quit with help!", etc.. is it's focusing on how difficult it's supposed to be. After 20 years or so of being a smoker, I just decided I didn't want to be embarrassed about the way I smelled in elevators anymore, and q…

It's great that you had it easy. I didn't. When I quit nicotine about two years ago, I got kicked into a deep depression that lasted about 3 months (Worth noting: I had a history with depression). I developed panic attacks (and I had no previous history with those). On the plus side: 1. I quit and stayed quit. 2. I'm mostly back to my old self. No more depression or panic attacks. Not now, and never again! 3. The who…

I hear about this depression. I was the opposite. I felt artificially manic/high/excited about quitting I think. It wore off pretty quickly but I was super happy the first few weeks.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#166

Post by geomark »

pkroll wrote: post #159
retrogradeorbit wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is strong evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Cornell%E2%80%93... It's the ratio of plant protein to animal protein in the diet. So no you don't need to go hard vegan. But yes, it is the diet and there is hard evidence.

Criticism of "The China Study" pretty much ends my confidence in it: https://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fa...

Thanks for that link. It's an excellent analysis of the actual data from the study. I'm part way into reading it and right away the author has thrashed some of the claims of the original study. It appears that even some of the basic claims of correlation aren't even correct.

Added: Schistosomiasis infection is such a huge cofounder for colorectal cancer rates that it is ridiculous to have claimed dietary cholesterol from animal sources as the cause.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#167

Post by MicroBerto »

accoinstereo wrote: post #152
MicroBerto wrote: post #108

I recently wrote an article discussing how increased fruits and vegetables can prevent mortality from cardiovascular diseases , yet not cancer.[1] My conclusion was that cancer is best prevented by removing negatives from life, not necessarily adding positives. ie avoid anything from stress to pollution to sunburn to obviously smoking. Interestingly, organic food doesn't seem to matter in the cancer equation, given t…

> "My conclusion was that cancer is best prevented by removing negatives from life, not necessarily adding positives." But diet is a complex system. So while there might not be any magical "direct" benefit from eating a certain fruit or vegetable, they could still produce a significant positive effect. Perhaps the biggest contribution to preventing cancer that fruits and veggies make is to curb negative behavior. The…

That's all well and good, but data on over 800,000 people really didn't show any statistically-significant fewer number of cancer deaths from fruit-eaters.

Obviously there's benefits, but I maintain that adding fruits and veggies to an otherwise awful lifestyle is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. Eat all the fruit you want -- if you smoke, you're not fooling your body.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#168

Post by randomgyatwork »

Declanomous wrote: post #131
randomgyatwork wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, a woman who worked for my mom died of lung cancer, she never smoked once in her life.

Lung cancer is most closely associated with smoking, but lung cancer can be caused by many air contaminants. Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, causing 21,000 deaths each year. About 2,900 of those people are non-smokers.[1] Cancer can be caused by things other than mutagens though. There is a certain rate of transcription errors when cells divide, and these errors can build up in the same way mutation…

Thanks for giving me something to worry about.... But seriously, I had no idea that was a thing, thanks for bring it up.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#169

Post by [deleted] »

piva00 wrote: post #117
bbarn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as a culture (speaking here in the US) we've made quitting smoking out to be much harder than it actually is. One of the problems with this massive marketing campaign saying things like "You can quit with help!", etc.. is it's focusing on how difficult it's supposed to be. After 20 years or so of being a smoker, I just decided I didn't want to be embarrassed about the way I smelled in elevators anymore, and q…

I quit cold turkey after 7 years of smoking and I'm really glad that I did. So with that I can say: the pain of quitting doesn't last only a day, it's good you didn't experience depression, I never had depression before or after that but I was clinically depressed for 3 weeks, I was apathetic about life in general, would wake up and not feel motivation to do anything, I'd do them anyway because it was a routine (eat,…

[deleted]

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#170

Post by tripzilch »

throwaway7767 wrote: post #101
duozerk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pain of cold turkey stopping and the hardship of quitting in general vary widely between individuals; and even to a lesser extent at different periods of time for the same individual, I think. I once stopped smoking for ~3 weeks and I too found it easier than advertised, but not nearly as easy as you; also, the most problematic symptom for me was irritability (I was a complete irrascible bastard while stopping).…

As another anecdote, I've found that it takes about 3 days for me to pretty much lose all the physical addiction. That part is pretty easy as long as you can find a 3 day chunk of time in which you don't have stressful obligations and fill it with some activity (even if it's just binge-watching Star Trek or something). After that, it's all habit. That takes closer to 3 weeks to break. Here I find it helps to create a…

I've quit a couple of times (and I will do so again--for the last time, obviously) and my experiences are pretty much the same.

Best way I found to get over those 3 days is to be sick, drunk, hungover or all of those, coinciding with a strong urge to quit and running out of tobacco (or throwing it out) at the start of it.

And it's not easy. But it might be for some. But I wonder if the ones that can quit really easily are really the ones that need all this anti-smoking advertising, anyway? I mean they can just have a moment of clarity, realize the health risks and quit. Well good on you (I mean it). I'm glad there is all this negative pressure nowadays, means I will have to say "no" less often, and feel supported by it.

And even though I feel quitting is hard for me (compared to people who can smoke once every two months or so, or maybe never, just like that), when I hear these stories about people having physical withdrawal symptoms for weeks, that sucks, I feel for them and wish them strength too.

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