EDIT: Wow, I obviously tried to make my point FAR too obliquely. For those who are posting about the mechanisms of cancer biology: I am sorry I was not more clear.
This diary has NOTHING to do with smoking OR cancer, except as the topic of argumentation. Would you respond to Plato's analogy of the people looking at shadows on the wall of the cave by bringing up facts he got wrong about spelunking, or human visual perception?
The point of the diary was that the style of argumentation is lifted, in some cases word-for-word, from the anti-fraud diaries that have been appearing the last few days. However, I believe that the point all the "fraudsters" are trying to make, is that there is enough independent lines of evidence (exit poll discrepancies; 10 hour lines in heavily black districts; Ohio's fixing of the 3% random precincts for the spot count; Diebold hiring programmers with wire fraud convictions) to justify further investigation into what happened. Arguing that we don't need investigations because we don't have proof is premature.
Dateline: America, early 1960s.
No, of course smoking does not cause cancer. Don't be paranoid.
Sure, you can look at the big increase in the number of cancer cases in
recent history. You know what? There's a lot more people now, here in
the sixties, than there were a century ago. More people means more
cancer, see? You're not considering every other alternative that could be the cause of this.
No, the fact that its also a per capita increase in the rate of cancer
cases doesn't mean anything. You see, we have better medicine now, so
we're detecting more cases of cancer. Just as many people were dying of lung cancer before, we just didn't know about it. See? A perfectly logical explanation. Quit grasping at straws.
Why do you want to assert that smoking causes cancer? Are you trying to
get us all labeled as paranoid, whacked-out granola-eating hippy freaks?
No rational person would take that idea seriously, and we need to focus
on things that are real.
What's the matter with you? You're making it sound like there's some
diabolical plot orchestrated by the tobacco companies to get us all
addicted to nicotine. I mean, come on... tobacco companies adding 600
chemicals to cigarettes? Ammonia in the tobacco? Fiberglass in the filters?
Gunpowder in the paper so it burns at a rate that makes it more likely
you'll get a bigger dose of nicotine than you otherwise would, making it
more likely you'll get hooked? You make it sound like Mr. R.J.R. Reynolds
is personally out to get you.
Lookout! Behind you! The Marlboro man! Hahahaha! Made you look,
stupid anti-smoker.
Yeah, maybe the tobacco corporations are probably bad entities. And there
is a big conflict of interest in the studies that they commission that
always seem to find there's no link between cancer and smoking. But it
would take a conspiracy of THOUSANDS of people to make and push fraudulent
research like that. One whistleblower and the news media would bust it open.
Quit raving about wild, unproven conspiracy theories. It's too improbable to
have happened, so therefore it didn't happen.
No, it's also not relevant that the scientist or executive who blew the whistle would lose
his very cushy well-paying job. And no, the fact that newspapers
and magazines take advertising from the tobacco companies has nothing whatsoever
to do with this, either. You're delusional.
And I'm completely unconvinced by that study showing a huge percentage of people why develop mouth, throat and lung cancer are smokers. You know what? A huge percentage of the population is smokers. So a huge proportion of any subset of people is going to be smokers. Your statistics showing a correlation between those who smoke and those who develop cancer is just that -- a correlation. Yeah, it's consistent with the explanation that smoking causes cancer, but it doesn't PROVE anything, because there are other explanations you haven't ruled out. Besides, Congress debated about having hearings on this, and Sen. Thurmond from North Carolina convinced everyone that these cancer theories were full of bunk.
And you'll never get anyone to pay attention to your crackpot theories
anyway. People are too concerned with that communist insurgency in
Southeast Asia, don't you know that? We'll get labeled commie-loving pinkos
if you try and raise a stink about smoking and cancer. Stop ruining our
credibility.
I'm so tired of these people who are so CONVINCED that smoking causes
cancer. They'll believe ANYthing that puts the tobacco companies in a bad
light. I mean, look at Dr. Ferris, she's always going off half-cocked with
incomplete or just plain wrong information. She's a nutcase, so you shouldn't
believe anything that any of these people say.
So, this pretty much sums up why I wrote this diary. "I say to you, show me the facts that cigarettes are safe. The burden of proof is on the tobacco companies to prove that." THAT is the fucking problem folks, right there, that people make assertions and believe the burden of proof to support their assertions is not on them. Telling people that the burden of proof is on other people IS stupid. Whether the people who make such assertions are or chose to be stupid is a separate matter. But claims like that are certainly stupid, and have no place in the Age of Aquarius.
Besides, how is smoking supposed to cause lung cancer, anyway? Some sort of
"molecule" that somehow is in the smoke, that enters your lungs and magically
transforms nice lung cells into raving killers? Your mechanism is pure
unsubstantiated fantasy. There's no way that it could possibly happen, it's too
complicated.
We don't need to be wasting our time demanding a study that tries to prove whether or not smoking causes
cancer. You don't have ANY PROOF that smoking causes cancer. Just some
circumstantial lines of evidence that have other explanations that you
haven't conclusively ruled out with hard facts and evidence. You haven't
PROVEN that smoking causes cancer, so stop calling for a study that tries to
determine definitively whether or not smoking causes cancer.
God, are we all getting stupid lately?