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Pregnant Smokers
- Thread starter FBS1996
- Start date
No, I said it "looks" microscopic based on the evidence up to that point. That wasn't wrong. It wasn't even "mis-speaking".
As these links state, the foundation cannot lobby the government. They do give out grants, some of which are used in lobbying efforts by other organizations. Some of it goes towards education.
The problem is, your argument is that RWJF is convincing people to quit smoking, so JNJ is making scads of money off of patches and gums and its stock is rising as a direct result, benefiting RWJF. The numbers simply don't work.
Calling JNJ, Pfizer and GSK "pharmaceutical nicotine" companies makes about as much sense as calling Berkshire Hathaway a candy company because one of its subsidiaries is See's Candies. (Trust me, it's a lot smaller than GEICO.
)Take your article about smoking cessation products. Let's generously assume that the $500 million sales figure, when Walmart is taken into account and given years of sales growth since 2005, turns into $1 billion in sales in 2010. Now let's also assume in your favor that JNJ, Pfizer and Glaxo are the only makers of these products. The total revenue of these three companies over the trailing 12 months is $150 billion.
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In other words, even with these generous assumptions, smoking cessation products account for 0.7% of their revenue. So no, unless you find a breakdown of JNJ revenues that shows a drastically different picture than is likely, RWJF is not seeing a big payoff from its JNJ holdings as a direct result of the foundation's efforts. Furthermore, the Surgeon General didn't own these shares herself. Conflict of interest--still microscopic at best.
JNJ does not own Pfizer. They bought a unit of Pfizer in a deal that includes the foreign rights to Nicorette. Note how far down in the story it is, denoting its (lack of) significance. The analyst quoted says it "doesn't move the needle on growth" for JNJ.
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You're now claiming the Surgeon General received $500,000 from the foundation? Where is that in your blizzard of links? I don't have all day to read every bit of this Internet filibuster.
OK, in context now. There's nothing you're going to say that will convince anyone that SHS is not harmful to people, especially children (born or unborn). There are dozens of studies that either prove the harm or strongly indicate it.
On a side note, the purpose of any corporation is to increase the wealth of its shareholders. It looks like J&J has found a way to do that while saving lives. Who makes more in the tobacco industry, J&J or R. J. Reynolds? Who kills more people? Who causes more expenditures by insurance companies and the government for health care related to smoking illnesses? Who has the bigger lobby in Washington?
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dam it Jim, i'm just a doctor not a internet expert
ok here goes....Nicotine is a stimulant ...so if your pregnant and smoke. It will stimulate the baby too grow better.
No, I said it "looks" microscopic based on the evidence up to that point. That wasn't wrong. It wasn't even "mis-speaking".
As these links state, the foundation cannot lobby the government. They do give out grants, some of which are used in lobbying efforts by other organizations. Some of it goes towards education.
The problem is, your argument is that RWJF is convincing people to quit smoking, so JNJ is making scads of money off of patches and gums and its stock is rising as a direct result, benefiting RWJF. The numbers simply don't work.
Calling JNJ, Pfizer and GSK "pharmaceutical nicotine" companies makes about as much sense as calling Berkshire Hathaway a candy company because one of its subsidiaries is See's Candies. (Trust me, it's a lot smaller than GEICO.
Take your article about smoking cessation products. Let's generously assume that the $500 million sales figure, when Walmart is taken into account and given years of sales growth since 2005, turns into $1 billion in sales in 2010. Now let's also assume in your favor that JNJ, Pfizer and Glaxo are the only makers of these products. The total revenue of these three companies over the trailing 12 months is $150 billion.
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In other words, even with these generous assumptions, smoking cessation products account for 0.7% of their revenue. So no, unless you find a breakdown of JNJ revenues that shows a drastically different picture than is likely, RWJF is not seeing a big payoff from its JNJ holdings as a direct result of the foundation's efforts. Furthermore, the Surgeon General didn't own these shares herself. Conflict of interest--still microscopic at best.
JNJ does not own Pfizer. They bought a unit of Pfizer in a deal that includes the foreign rights to Nicorette. Note how far down in the story it is, denoting its (lack of) significance. The analyst quoted says it "doesn't move the needle on growth" for JNJ.
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You're now claiming the Surgeon General received $500,000 from the foundation? Where is that in your blizzard of links? I don't have all day to read every bit of this Internet filibuster.
I have provided a compendium of information. RWJF stands to gain more than any other company from any gains with J&J, they are the biggest shareholder. Nicotine is a huge market, the more it is regulated, the more smoking cessation happens, the more nicotine products will be in the market. It is nothing new, J&J & Pfizer have been doing the same thing since inception. From coming out with Oxy-Contin much more addictive than needed and pushing it through doctors, to a wealth of drugs that aren't even vetted properly but pushed like drug pimps. I posted some links on the dangers of Chantix (I personally for health reasons would recommend Electronic cigarettes as a smoking cessation option). It just so happens that J&J as shown above bought up virtually every major nicotine product on the market. It just so happens RWJF their biggest shareholder is the biggest pusher of anti-smoking issues ever including some of the most un-scientific and un-savory studies listed above. It may not be some huge part of their profit, but it is a big enough part to interest plenty of people. If you go to a company and say listen you can make an extra billion here, they are not going to say, well that's just not enough to matter. I don't care how big they are, if you have the potential for billions a year then you throw money at it if necessary even if it is bad science.
Most of the links are from RWJF website itself, listing donors, projects etc. So far almost every study that has been purported here has been one funded by them as well. (By the way if you don't know how the research world works now, they pretty much give you a goal, and if your research doesn't support it, you don't get funded anymore, If you start with a conclusion, there's no surprise the methodology is shaky.) Ask me for more data it seems, I post it, then you don't have time to read through it all. Doesn't matter. You want to yell at me and tell me I'm bad for smoking, or for saying studies put out by companies are exaggerated, fine. Don't attempt to call me out and then when it backfires just try to save face.
The numbers do work, more profit for J&J is in the direct intrests of RWJF, not to mention if you took the time to look at its board and members and noticed many of them have avid interests in J&J itself as well. Stocks don't rise because of one unbelievable venture (those are the rare make it and break it IPO times), they rise from the company profiting, if a company thinks they can invest 500 million dollars and get a billion dollar a year return, you damn right they will. They will as shown, be more than happy to fund anything that has an outset goal that will benefit their business as well. You can write that off however you want, but that is the way things work. Nicotine is a large business, both in tobacco (and they have lied plenty as well, big tobacco) and in drugs and cessation. Which is why J&J and RWJF have also begun funding studies against electronic cigarettes (which really are about the ONLY safe alternative), it is one that doesn't involve their profiteering. The hypocrisy is astounding. We will skirt getting our own drugs to go through vetting procedures others do (Chantix), ignore and gloss over all of the information about terrible side effects, heart risk (much greater than smoking), and the fact that the medications we are doling out half of the time have worse side effects than the disease. Heck we will even push doctors to prescribe drugs that have more of a chance to kill the patient than the disease. Be the single largest source of poisoning, and overdose in the world, but campaign against people smoking water vapor.
Ok, now for the eighth time I will say it yet again, since everyone apparently wants to jump on me without having a clue what I have said.
I AM NOT SAYING SHS is not HARMFUL. I AM NOT SAYING IT IS NOT DETRIMENTAL TO THE BABY IN WAYS. I AM NOT SAYING SMOKING IS HEALTHY. For god's sake.
I am saying the pharmaceutical companies grossly exaggerate the risks of SHS especially (as I mentioned before associated with bans especially which are mostly ridiculous). Not one time, not one have I said it is not harmful. Not one time have I said a pregnant woman should smoke. In fact I said if it was my wife, I would try to get her to lower her intake or quit with her to encourage her.
My contention is the over-exaggerated dangers to others, which has prompted a torrent of anger unleashed at smokers that is vastly un-warranted.
As far as your who costs more, lets see, between failed drug products, drug product side effects, recalled ones, deaths due to drugs (especially pain-killers and other prescription medication), deaths from drug mafia's pushing prescription drugs such as percocet, hydro-codone, etc. Mitigating health side effects that last lifetimes for people. Completely unknown side effects from drugs pushed through legislation so fast, because of the huge lobbying arms of the pharmaceutical companies and their generous donations (they donate far more to PAC's and parties than Alcohol and Tobacco combined). I would say the legalized drug mafia is probably in a solid first.
No surprise there as big of a business as it is, you hardly hear of the screw-ups where they pushed things too fast, like Alli & Xenical, Vioxx, Celebrex, Chantix, and the list goes on and on. All drugs not properly vetted, prescribed despite the condition not being as serious as the side-effects. Then what happens, you get more drugs to deal with the side-effects of other drugs.
You want to trust every study out there that is vastly funded by a group with large interests in the profit off the study, be my guest. I am saying all of these studies everyone keeps posting, you need to be more careful in examining the actual data, instead of relying so heavily on meta-analysis that was decided before the study even began.
As far as SHS goes, there is no evidence anywhere, of it being any more harmful (in fact PEL levels are much lower for SHS than grills in bars even) than a grill in a restaurant. It is mostly hyped by companies set to profit from the restrictions (J&J, Pfizer). A lot of huge companies operate in shady practices like this (Microsoft, Apple, Google to name non-medical ones), people are just so emotional on the subject they fail to see it with pharmaceuticals as much.
It'd be nice if someone responded with substance instead of telling me how I am so wrong about Smoking not being harmful at all. Which I've never said. I did say the above, but if you want to go against it, you better get some PEL and ETS data that supports it, not meta-analysis, but actual data.
Prescription drugs kill far more people than street drugs, but people overlook it for some reason. Invalid Link Removed
Now if you want to come back and quote death numbers from smoking, I'd suggest not using the Surgeon General's report as it arbitrarily assigned over half the deaths it reported. (infant, house-fire, unknown cause deaths)
Seriously though, you can't even take a look and say you know what, there probably is a conflict of interest for all of these studies to be funded by the people that stand to gain the most of all from them? You can't even say that you know, I never have looked at the underlying data, it may be that these things are grossly exaggerated? (As I have said many times now especially relating to SHS and Smoking bans)
I still am of the contention that regardless of what you think the harm may be to the baby (please read what I said I would do if it were my wife above before jumping onto me), its not any of your business.
And Munji, if you think that J&J is in it to save lives, you need a fresh perspective. Saving lives is sometimes a byproduct for them, destroying lives is a byproduct as well. They are no more in it to save lives than a Mexican heroin dealer. They are in it for money. Saving lives makes for good publicity, as long as you can hide all the lives you destroy.
dbhokie said:
I think it's absolutely laughable for you to give anyone recommendations for smoking cessation products!
Stats are manipulated all the time. I think we can agree on that. They don't really become concrete, until you have been in a NICU. Have you ever even seen a three pound preemie, in an incubator for weeks, as a direct result of maternal smoking? I would guess not. I suggest that until you see the damage first hand, all you can do is speculate. No matter how many links you can post here to serve your agenda.
Bottom line: you have the right to smoke if you really want to. You also have the right to try to justify your addiction, too.
dbhokie said:
I agree that there are many causes other than smoking. However, you can't downplay the smoking-related birth defects, just because it's your pet peeve. Something should be done to prevent issues caused by other substances, too. No argument from me there.
Because I smoke I can't recommend something for someone to stop?
I don't particularly have a desire to stop, my choice fine, but it's not like I have failed at everything I have tried. I don't want to. All I am saying is that health-wise it is the best alternative. I don't think there is anything silly about that.
I have seen the damage first-hand. I have seen more premies by women that didn't smoke than did (that doesn't mean it isn't a factor).
I have seen conflicting studies on LBW about the subject as well.
I have seen teachers teach kids about how a smoker's lung turns black (and most American's believe this), despite the fact that your average doctor couldn't tell a smoker's lung apart. It is a cancerous lung that turns black. There can be very slight black carbon build-ups (not tar). Which is why virtually the only time discoloration happens outside of cancer is from coal-mining and peat-moss and the like. Though some morticians and doctors have seen catalyzed polymers from other factories coating the inside. (If you want to throw internet articles at this, be prepared, I have hundreds of doctors who have performed thousands of autopsies supporting this. This is just a good example of propaganda, and false information, that actually most people believe.
Ernst Wynder, then a first-year medical student in St Louis, was witness to an autopsy of a man who had died of lung cancer and he noted the lungs were blackened. The sight roused his curiousity and he looked into the background of the patient – discovering that there was no obvious exposure to air pollution, but that the deceased had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years, he linked the two. Wynder then spent his career ‘proving’ cigarettes caused cancer, although he was forced to admit the data he had compiled was inaccurate (Wynder later published books containing slides of black, cancerous lungs, leading people to assume it was smoking that caused it. He later admitted he was wrong, though.)
The crusades against smoking have produced far more mis-information and lies, than truths.
Oh, and I don't care about justifying my habits. I have no qualms or bad feelings about smoking, and if it kills me, fine. It's a choice I make, and I stand by it happily and the enjoyment and therapeutic use of it.
I just like separating the fact from the fiction.
dbhokie said:
False. You can absolutely tell the difference between long-term smokers' lungs and non smokers' lungs. Even in cadaver labs.
I am not down-playing anything. I said now two times what I would do if it were my wife smoking. I am just objecting to the amount it is over-played. So if you are talking about me wanting to get it to a truthful, honest and factual level rather than an over-played one, and that is downplaying then sure. In that case I downplay everything.
Now I know, you don't know what you are talking about
Thanks.Wray Kephart used to work in hospitals, performing autopsies (usually on the behalf of insurance companies). Kephart claims to have done around 1560 autopsies, and he says it is normally impossible to tell whether the deceased was a smoker or not from autopsy. This was confirmed by Dr Jan Zeldenrust, a Dutch pathologist for the Government of Holland from 1951 - 1984. In a television interview in the 1980's he stated that, translated from Dutch, "I could never see on a pair of lungs if they belonged to a smoker or non-smoker. I can see clearly the difference between sick and healthy lungs. The only black lungs I've seen are from peat-workers and coal miners, never from smokers".
Dr. Ed Uthman MD (Dallas) I don't think one can tell if the deceased were a tobacco smoker or not by the appearance of the lungs. The absence of any black pigment suggests that the person was either a nonsmoker or a very light smoker. Heavy black pigmentation suggests that the person was either a heavy smoker, or lived in a city with heavy particulate air pollution, or was a coal miner, or some combination of the three.
Chemical and electron microscopic studies of the black pigment of the human lung. Joyce K. Newman, A. E. Vatter, and O. K. Reiss. Webb-Waring Institute and the Departments of Biochemistry and Pathology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver. Archives of Environmental Health 1967 Oct;15:420-429. "The black pigment of the human lung has been examined chemically and with the electron microscope. A method has been developed for the isolation of this pigment by means of dissection followed by enzymatic digestion. It is a mixture of inorganic materials (silicates, aluminates, and other trace metals), some elemental carbon, and a highly insoluble pigment, probably organic in nature. Because of the extreme insolubility of the pigment, it has not been possible to characterize it further chemically. Electron microscopic evidence suggests the lung pigments are associated with the lysosomal particles of the cell. Comparison of the composition of lung pigment with the medical history of the individual has failed to reveal any correlation in the group studied. When the case histories of the patients, their smoking histories, and their occupations were compared with the patterns of lung pigments observed in the electron microscope, no correlation was found between them. Other support: U. S. Public Health Service."
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The above two were legal court cases on the subject. Of course they weren't very popular. Schools love to show those pig lungs and scare
There are plenty more, but the people who actually do the autopsies disagree (As well as electron microscope examinations). A Cancerous lung does turn black, whether it be a smoker or non-smoker. A normal non-cancerous smoker's lungs are just as pretty, and if a very heavy smoker, still any discoloration will be very light and small and certainly not on the outside of the lung as shown in school horror shows (which most of the time used a dyed pigs lung).
You are more likely to have blacker lungs from a highly polluted city than smoking (elemental carbon buildup).
This in no way means smoking is healthy, or any more healthy. I am just using it as an example of one of the myths to show the common exaggeration.
Smoking is harmful and bad for you, but pursue it on an intellectually honest level, not scare-tactics and exaggeration.
Now I know, you don't know what you are talking about
Ah, I see. You lump him with all the healthcare professionals and you're obviously smarter than those with the schooling and experience. He has seen the insides of lungs, but he's exaggerating. Got it.
Feel free to post your next "study" how interw3b know-it-alls would make better doctors.
Oh yes, the legal cases I posted..those have nothing to do with it. Nor does the underlying data from electron microscope examinations.
That is what I said, I am so much smarter, I already talked about that once with you, but you just won't give up.
Am I going to trust an internet poster, or some legal cases I can actually look up in dockets that have testimonies of people who I know perform autopsies?
Or the raw data from electron microscopes?
I know since it's been proved in a lower and middle level court, since some of the most experienced morticians in the world say otherwise, and as I said I have tons more on this subject, I should just discount that and believe news stories, webmd articles, and an internet forum poster who just tells me I am wrong?
This thread is fun. Dbhokie, I'm curious........ Do you have any medical or scientific credentials you'd care to share with us?
Neither have you. I now have free time.
Such small details, which is why big picture wins. SEMs produce cool pictures, but that doesn't tell me what a PFT, stethascope, O2 dependence, how many RXs they'll need to maintain basic function, how often they'll need antibiotics for chronic bronchitis, etc.
Absolutely not, and I have not claimed to, as I have been trying to tell them my problems lie mostly with methodology and statistics in all of these scare tactic reports. At no point have I been saying smoking is healthy or claimed to be a medical expert. I am rather well-read in this particular field, and I don't expect anyone to take that nor do I take everything I read as absolute truth. I try to challenge things.
My problem as I said lies more with statistics and manipulation of information. I am quite a mathematician, and very familiar with statistics, which is why I get into those. As far as the black lung thing, I just for that, will rely on other's opinions until I can do otherwise (the opinions of people whom have done thousands of autopsies, elctron microscopes, and legal docketed cases).
It doesn't take a medical expert to see flawed statistics and the greed of pharmaceutical companies.
The tobacco companies are every bit as greedy. They have used propaganda to claim cigarettes are more safe than they really are. I am against that too. The anti-smoking crowd has just become more of a crusade, and well when you get crusaded against enough, you start feeling the need to push back.
dbhokie said:
Dude. All you have proven to me is that you use search engines, like conspiracy theories, have no experience in anything else, other than what you read, and like to argue.
