RE: Lung Cancer Is Not Just For Smokers
@deviedev
This is a great article. Here's some food for thought.
My family were mostly "down winders".
The smokers in the family never developed lung cancer, eventually living to be very old.
The non-smokers died out during the "down winder blast" of the early 1990s when most down winders died.
I'm not saying that smoking had a "protective" effect for all, most or many. But in my family smokers generally live to their 90s and above, the non-smokers typically die in their 60s.
I have a theory that the tar in the lungs prevents radon, uranium and other carcinogens from coming in direct contact with lung tissue. While in the case of my family, we've managed to evolve some sort of factor that leaves us unaffected by mutagens in the tar.
Flip side of this is a higher than normal rate of disorders related to an over active immune system and a serious problem with blood pressure and blood clots. But cancer isn't a thing for most of us.
Not recommending anyone take up smoking. But I do wonder how much science on this subject is based on assumptive bias vs actual hard numbers that take into account all factors. For example if you examine the raw data and not someone's interpretation, it demonstrates your greatest risk of developing lung cancer isn't smoking or exposure to second hand smoke, it's living in a densely populated area where levels of pollutants in general are much higher.
Highest concentration of centenarians in the world are found in Nagaski followed by Hiroshima and 30 of the worlds top 30 oldest people are Japanese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supercentenarians_from_Asia
Most of whom are regular smokers.
Not saying smoking is harmful or protective per se, but it does look like evolution has begun to select for people who are not susceptible to cancer from environmental radicals.
Maybe a genetic tendency for cancer, causes cancer and the environment just works as a trigger to push you over the edge.
@williambanks Downwinders, wow. I would love to pick your brain about that sometime.
Let me start by saying that I am not an epidemiologist, I am just familiar with the studies concerning environmental contamaninants because of my work in toxic torts. I agree--there are certianly many factors, including environmental pollution and genetics, that play a roll in the progression of diseases like cancer.
We know that cigarette smoke is comprised of a number of carcinogens that, when inhaled, can bind to DNA and create DNA adducts, which are pieces of DNA bonded to a carcinogen (think formaldehyde, arsenic, ammonia, etc). Our body has repair processes that are capable of removing adducts and restoring DNA, but failure to remove them can lead to permanent mutations . . . and so on and so forth. So, while your family's repair processes may be able to handle smoking, others' might not. Nothing is guaranteed, though, so it's a roll of the dice.
@deviedev
Of course, I completely agree. I just wanted to show the other side of that which is that if smoking ain't gonna kill ya. Nothin will :)
I'd be glad to talk to you about downwinders anytime you want. You have to keep in mind I'm a child of the 1970s so it was my parents, my grandparents, my aunts, uncles and cousins etc that all died off in a largish batch from the late 1980s until the mid 1990s. We eventually adopted the motto that "The surest sign there would be a funeral next week was that there was a funeral the previous week". This process went on and on and on, until we literally just ran out of people to bury.
Last ones left standing all seemed to be smokers.
That was also the time frame I was coming of age. Smoking weed, experimenting with drugs and reading everything from Neil Gaiman to Stephen Hawking to figure out, what all this was, that was going on around me. So a lot of my world view is framed in by all of that.
It's not a roll of the dice though, it's genetic russian roulette. :D