@direpickle, smoking isn't healthy, but it bothers me when people just assert smoking causes cancer. We know it's unhealthy. But it doesn't necessarily cause lung cancer, and it's that kind of bias that keeps research dollars away from needy lung cancer research.

That is all.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^direpickle:
@Fusionaut: AFAIK, smoking pot can and does cause lung cancer, just like anything else that you burn and then inhale. It's not magic.
One study.

One study by the same government that outlaws marijuana use in practically all instances.
A lot of good money has been taken away from lung cancer research because of this kind of bias that tends to lump lung cancer with smoking. Smoking can lead to lung cancer, but it doesn't always and it certainly doesn't lead to all cases of it. Up to 15-20% of lung cancer cases are nonsmoking.


RARGH GOVERNMENTS BAD

Of course not all smoking leads to lung cancer. Of course not all lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. What point are you trying to make?

>> ^direpickle:

@Fusionaut: AFAIK, smoking pot can and does cause lung cancer, just like anything else that you burn and then inhale. It's not magic.
One study.


One study by the same government that outlaws marijuana use in practically all instances.

A lot of good money has been taken away from lung cancer research because of this kind of bias that tends to lump lung cancer with smoking. Smoking can lead to lung cancer, but it doesn't always and it certainly doesn't lead to all cases of it. Up to 15-20% of lung cancer cases are nonsmoking.

@Fusionaut: AFAIK, smoking pot can and does cause lung cancer, just like anything else that you burn and then inhale. It's not magic.

One study.

"And in today's news, Tom Noddy, known to many as The Amazing Bubble Master, has died of lung cancer."

I predict that one day, sooner or later, sometime, Sylvia Brown will be diagnosed with lung cancer.

Bill O'Reilly ALMOST makes sense, in that he is erring on the side of caution. Ann Coulter makes NO sense, as usual. All forms of radiation are harmful, because they cause damage to cells. Certainly low doses are acceptable, because the body repairs those damages automatically.

Radiation Therapy is useful, because it targets cancer cells, but it also does damage to normal healthy cells in the vicinity. That doesn't mean that we should go out and get irradiated to prevent cancer. It also doesn't mean that there is some special radiation (alpha, beta, or gamma) that only targets bacteria but isn't harmful to humans at all.

Radon is still the #2 leading cause of lung cancer (behind cigarette smoke). The levels of radon in a home are VERY dependent on what is underneath it in the ground. It is seemingly random (1 house can have a low level 2 and their neighbor be at level 12) - and these can vary over time. My point is that any extensive radon study would need too many data points to be valid (and such a study would be unfeasible). You can't give an "average" for a whole county and expect to show some correlation.

I upvoted this for lung cancer awareness

Cannabinoids Curb Brain Tumor Growth, First-Ever Patient Trial Shows
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6947

Pot Compound May Offer Non-Toxic Alternative To Chemotherapy
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7433

Tetrahydrocannabinol inhibits lung cancer as well as metastasis
http://www.nature.com/onc/journal/v27/n3/abs/1210641a.html

Inhibition of skin tumor growth by activation of cannabinoid receptors
http://www.jci.org/articles/view/16116/version/1

She hid her hypocrisy with an assumed name. I feel thats the truly disingenuous part about it... that she recognized her hypocrisy but wasn't willing to confront it.

... then again she was fighting lung cancer at the time, so hard to blame her.

you obviously live in canada or somewhere else where public school teaches kids science, math, sex ed and healthy lifestyle choices.. instead of simply the skills they need to work in retail or join the military.

also, humanity as whole doesn't really understand nutrition. there are plenty of decent, resonable parents who don't have a clue what a balanced diet actually looks like and actually try to raise their kids to have good habits.

also, i don't think taking away a 5 cent toy is going to do anything about the people who eat fast food often enough for it to be a major problem. it has already become a habit .. my son probably wouldnt care about going to mcdonalds ever again if he wasnt going to get a toy, but we also eat mostly plants at home and grab fast food less than once a month on average.

banning high fructose corn syrup would do more to curb obesity. this is epicly stupid. like throwing a bigger warning label on a carton of cigarettes and felating yourself for combating lung cancer.
In reply to this comment by Sagemind:
"So basically everyone should be responsible for raising the kids...except their parents? Who's driving the kids to McD? Who's paying for the food? Who ultimately decides to celebrate a kid's birthday at McD? And who fails to provide a healthy diet at home that would lessen the negative impact of an occasional McD meal?" - campionidelmondo



You also have to realize that Education is education. That's what school is there for. I don't teach my kids everything they need to know, some things they learn in school or on their own. Like mine, most kids are smart. Mine will call me on something I get wrong. They do have differing opinions that I don't always share.

As an adult, If I like McDs (though I don't), and I go there all the time. My kids should have that opportunity to learn facts contrary to my habits and be able to call me on it.

The school system is there to help guide our kids in their education in the areas the parents fall short. This is true for science, math and even shop class. If I hate sports, should my kids not be allowed to take Phys Ed? They already have health and nutrition in school (part of science class I believe) why not show them the film and make it part of the curriculum.

We already do it with "Family life" class (or what ever your town calls it) - kids learn all about sex, STDs, personal health and hygiene and are better off for it.
Why should Nutrition be different?

>> ^smooman:

one step closer to a police state?
shut
the
fuck
up
spend some time in china, laos, iran, or (to a lesser extent) russia, or get yerself a time travel machine, head back to italy or germany leading up to wwii or communist russia. compare them with us and tell me how close we are to a police state stupid fuck

Your lung cancer is bad?


shut

the

fuck

up

Spend some time with testicular cancer, brain cancer, prostate cancer, renal cancer, or (to a lesser extent) Leukemia, or get yerself a time travel machine, head back to the 1340s for some Black Death or the 1980s for AIDS. Compare them with your lung cancer and tell me how bad you have it, stupid fuck.

See how dumb that sounds?

>> ^NetRunner:

But here's the thing, unless you're prepared to tell doctors not to treat people with life-threatening illnesses if they can't immediately pay for their own care, you're going to wind up having your tax dollars going to cover the care of people who can't pay their medical bills when they have heart attacks or diabetic shocks (or end-stage lung cancer). Alternatively you're just going to make all healthcare more expensive so providers can cover losses.


Speculation and leading arguments. I'm not prepared to tell doctors anything, and neither should any one of us. I know we're all largely atheists on here, but the predominant number of hospitals tend to be created by churches. Why? Because as much as we may despise dogma, these followers do sometimes hold the belief of taking care of their fellowman. This includes people with life-threatening illnesses.

In fact, currently, hospices are free. When my grandmother passed away recently they didn't charge her a penny for their amazing services. They exist on charitable donations as far as I know.

It's been proven that government intervention in the medical industry has driven the cost of medical care up. By forcing hospitals to treat every person that comes into the hospital, people tend to use it as a welfare clinic and come in with hangnails and common colds. They can then refuse to pay for the service which drives the costs up. That's fact.

If you ordered food at a restaurant, then refused to pay, would it be fair for the government to stop that restaurant from refusing service to you?

>> ^blankfist:
I agree, they shouldn't cost society anything. But isn't that the problem with the leftist agenda? They want socialized medicine...

But here's the thing, unless you're prepared to tell doctors not to treat people with life-threatening illnesses if they can't immediately pay for their own care, you're going to wind up having your tax dollars going to cover the care of people who can't pay their medical bills when they have heart attacks or diabetic shocks (or end-stage lung cancer). Alternatively you're just going to make all healthcare more expensive so providers can cover losses.

The "leftist agenda" is to a) extend care to poor people before they get critically ill because it's morally right, and b) extend care to poor people before they get critically ill so they can have their illness treated more cheaply than last-ditch heroics when they reach final stages.

You may imagine that this will lead to people being put in jail for refusing to do their daily calisthenics, but the "leftist agenda" as far as it actually exists pretty much stops with "people who exercise should get a discount on their premiums" or maybe "health insurance plans should cover gym memberships for people who are overweight".

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

I can get behind Ronnie on this one. The GDP is a poor gauge of the general well being of regular folk.

On that narrow subject, I agree.

Otherwise, Paul doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. In Paul's example, anyone who just thinks for a few minutes about why he's wrong.

Guy with $200k/yr job, and has $300k in existing debt, and loses his job. Paul neglects to mention assets. Generally speaking, people don't take out loans, and then light the borrowed money on fire. If the guy has $300k debt on a mortgage for a home worth $1 million, he's actually in pretty good shape fiscally speaking, though he may have to sell his house. If he can get a million dollar loan even in that situation, say to start a business, he'll probably have a negative net worth for a few years, but it seems to me that if he can get a million dollar loan for a business in that situation, people believe he will be able to make it work...

Same applies with his insinuation that we should subtract debt from GDP. This is like saying that the only number you should look at to judge your financial situation in your private life is your yearly salary, minus all of your debts. That's seriously negative for me, while a homeless unemployed guy would be only $0. Is the homeless guy really better off than me?

The adbusters clip implies that there should be a social utility factor involved in our measurements of economic growth, otherwise we have perverse incentives that lead us into broken window fallacies (e.g. cigarettes are awesome because not only are they profitable in their own right, they also boost sales in the lung cancer treatment industry). Paul makes that argument too, but he myopically picks an example that's government-specific (i.e. war), when it's a problem all over the place in private industry too.