Abbott and Costello were sponsored by Camel. C-AM-EL-s
C for Comedy
A for Abbott
M for Maxwell
E for Ennis
and L for Lou Costello, put them together and they spell, CAMEL!
https://otrr.org/hotrod/hotrod7.html for episodes.
> Marijuana also affects brain development. When people begin using marijuana as teenagers, the drug may impair thinking, memory, and learning functions and affect how the brain builds connections between the areas necessary for these functions. Researchers are still studying how long marijuana's effects last and whether some changes may be permanent. Long-term marijuana use has been linked to mental illness in some people, such as: temporary hallucinations, temporary paranoia, worsening symptoms in patients with schizophrenia ...
Source: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana
1930 - first cigarette company uses physicians in their ads
1950s - evidence starts mounting that smoking causes lung cancer
1964 - US Surgeon General report on the link between smoking and cancer
1998 - cigarette companies still maintained that the link is controversial
(Are dairy and grains still food groups... I could easily go on)
I don't get it. Are you saying that grain shouldn't be a food group? I think for the purposes of categorizing foods, "starchy staples" is a pretty useful categorization, even if the recommendation to eat 8 servings a day or whatever is misguided.
Social Media consumption is another.
We never frikkin learn.
They were supported by the mainstream medical and science establishments. Rosemary Kennedy, JFKs relative got one.
People were giving labotomies to their kids to calm them down, advised by their doctor.
Great article on Howard Dulley one of the kids whose parents gave him a lobotomy advised by a doctor.
https://www.npr.org/2005/11/16/5014080/my-lobotomy-howard-du...
> He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says 'I don't know.'
Doesn't this description fit most kids in the world? It was used to justify the lobotomy of a poor boy.
I'm curious if there were doctors and scientists who dissented from the cigarette consensus prior to the 60s? And how were they treated in such an environment?
There's a good record in "Research on Smoking and Lung Cancer: A Landmark in the History of Chronic Disease" (The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 1989) [0]:
> By the 1930s, some evidence had been obtained that the incidence of lung cancer among males was increasing. The evidence came from three sources: official mortality statistics, pathologists' reports of autopsy findings, and the observations of physicians who specialized in the treatment of lung disease.
> Speculation about these factors continued, but there was also much criticism of the view that the reported increase in lung cancer was credible. . . . Factors which were listed as likely to be responsible for an artificial increase were better diagnosis of the disease and increased longevity of the population.
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2589239/pdf/yjb...
The tech industry is way ahead of any hint of regulations with regards to things like privacy, security or safety. New generations of people are brought unwillingly onto social media by parents. Some problems are hard to reel in by design.
Now imagine if that was the case here; That the big business and the scientific community had a natural alignment in promoting and protecting a practice with huge commercial interests...
>In 1930s Germany, scientific research for the first time revealed a connection between lung cancer and smoking, so the use of cigarettes and smoking was strongly discouraged by a heavy government sponsored anti-smoking campaign
>After the Second World War, the German research was effectively silenced due to perceived associations with Nazism
That's really interesting. I dug a little more into it[0]. Apparently the underlying reasoning was that the Nazis associated smoking with "degenerates" and damage to "bodily purity." So when the research hit the US, people must have associated anti-smoking with those Nazi ideas. I wonder if tobacco companies latched onto this momentum to keep their public image healthy?
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_...
so nearly 3 generations.
Maybe lung cancer was 1950s, but health in general? Much, much earlier than that.
Come visit a developing country and you’ll find that wearing a seatbelt or drinking clean water is still not widely accepted. They have bigger problem right now.
When Pharmaceutical Companies Used Doctors to Push Opiates
When Pharmaceutical Companies Used Psychiatrists to Push Amphetamines
psychiatry in general is a pretty ridiculous field, at least as practiced here in the US. just yesterday I had my every-three-months checkup where I basically tell my psychiatrist everything is still going good, so can I have three more months' prescriptions of the thing you got me dependent on when I was a teenager, please. I was making some small talk about my life as per usual, talking about how work has been a bit stressful but that I've noticed I've become much better at handling work-related anxiety, compared to in the past, and she asked if I wanted to try any kind of prescription to help with it. it seems like the whole job is basically listening to people with issues and prescribing them pills to attempt to fix the problem. if a prescribed pill doesn't do anything after a certain amount of time, or has negative unintended effects, then oh shit stop taking it, let's try something else instead... another pill, of course, not any kind of counseling or literally any other kind of treatment at all, just more pills.
> Colleen McBride, director of the cancer prevention, detection and control program at Duke University Medical Center... says there is a growing body of evidence that nicotine actually relieves some symptoms of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and appears to help those with severe depression focus.
https://today.duke.edu/2001/08/mm_medicaluses.html
The question is, to what extent are current medical uses of such substances actually necessary, i.e. to what extent has it all been about getting those sales numbers up?
On another note, I was prescribed a medicine 20 years ago called Propulsid. When I went to fill the prescription, the pharmacist told me that he would not recommend I take it. I contacted the doctor and he was pissed that the pharmacist had given me that recommendation. In the end I didn't take it, which is a good thing because it was removed from the market several years later for causing heart issues.
>WARNING
>Serious cardiac arrhythmias including ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, torsades de pointes, and QT prolongation have been reported in patients taking cisapride.
About 1) the solution for the FDA has been to ban flavorings, under the "think about the children" idea. While the risk of childen getting addicted to nicotine could be a concern, given the lack of measured risk, it could be as innocent as enjoying beer. About 2), nicotine seem to have negative effects on arteries and the skin mostly, causing premature aging (increase elastases and metalloproteases).
We may have more data in a generation or two, but it would be advisable to plan on reducing your use of e-cigs.
We know lungs are very sensitive and easily accumulate shit in them. Therefore the reasonable position is to assume that anything you point into your lungs is harmful, unless you have extremely strong evidence that it's not (as opposed to assume that something is safe until evidence that it's not.)
So: assume that e-cigs will give you lung cancer.
Really making good use of that global network we got goin' here, history.com.
edit: https://archive.is/aAf3K
... Of course, that's the thing about science. The people doing research are separate from the ones providing the money. And people will put money behind the research that they believe is correct. This does, of course, incentivize some unethical folks to fudge numbers, but in general, the right way to approach this is to separate the funding from the science. See what the science says. Then, if you see an outlier paper and you need to understand why it's so different from the consensus... It might be helpful to see who is funding it to understand.
Going the other way (discounting the science based on who is funding it) is forming theories without data.
s/they believe is correct/the narrative of which benefits them.
Unfortunately it's hard to separate funding from the science. What can one do? Ban privately funded research? Force funders of a study to fund another attempting to find contrary results/pick it apart?
While I agree that some source of funding doesn't automatically invalidate a study, but anecdotally (and probably empirically), studies surprisingly often agree with the people who fund them.
That's not a bad idea. The national counter-research unit. Any privately funded research is taxed at some percentage and all proceedings go to debunking that very research!
The fair thing to wonder about is what things are we doing today that will seem ridiculous and obviously harmful to people in 100 years from now. Staring at a bright flat screen hours a day just to interact with a random stranger who vehemently disagrees with you about petty subjects?
Edit: here it is https://web.archive.org/web/20220120011739/https://www.histo...
The tobacco industry paid doctors to become outliers and promoted them to imply expert consensus and push their product.
People not very fond of vaccines also promote outliers attempting to imply some form of consensus or at least scientific validity. Quite a few of them also have products or a whole world view to sell (which often includes buying specific products).
still a shitty habit to pick up though
(Not actually kidding)
smoking was cool back then. it was a social thing to do. you can see that in old Hollywood movies.
FTFY.
It’s fine to question individual doctors.
It’s fine to question corporate-sponsored think tanks.
Is it fine to question a scientific consensus on effective ways to fight a global pandemic?
Yes, it is always fine to question scientific conclusions with legitimate concerns.
Or we could always revert to letting the church decide what valid science is, I guess.
In low-context, short form meme warfare with the only intention of spreading an opinion that the consensus believes is both incorrect and detrimental? Absolutely not. That's what you're doing right now. Knock it off.
So without being able to reasonably comfortably speak against a scientific consensus you end up with neither science nor a consensus.
If it cannot be questioned, is there really a consensus?
Money and fear of losing money has infected almost every profession and business lately, especially due to the pandemic. Even online reviews and advice are hit or miss and even fabricated completely. Getting a second opinions and asking my elders (65+) questions have served me better so far in life than just outright trusting what random professionals on the Internet and TV regularly tell me. I am vaxxed mind you, enough facts were there and I'm pretty reasonable.
Pill interactions are also a big big issue... A doctor sees each patient for maybe an hour, its important to be able to make sure you also feel comfortable with following their advice (live or die) of course.
That is a bit of an upside down view of the power structure in society. Pharmaceutical companies are literally making hundreds of billions of dollars off of their products. These companies are not exactly innocent. They have very little morals and are generally okay with mass suffering as long as their profits are increasing (look at the opioid epidemic as an example).
If anything, I think it is much more likely that the reverse is happening. The scientists, doctors, etc. are designing studies in a way to paint a more favorable view of the products that they are looking at. They are cherry picking data to show that they are good while ignoring any data to the contrary. It looks a lot more like they are in the pocket of Big Pharma to me.
In addition, there is a social stigma where if you take an unpopular view here, you will likely be seen as a “conspiracy theorist”, or face the possibility of losing your job, friends, family members.
Most of the people against Big Pharma promote living a healthy lifestyle, taking supplements, going outside, getting sunlight, eating well, exercising, etc. It is not like they are trying to sell you some expensive products.
When governments all around the world are providing billions of taxpayer money to pharmaceutical companies who have legal indemnity and can’t be sued if people have adverse reactions to their products, and those same governments are forcing their citizens to take the products (often against their will) in order to be allowed to participate in society, it is probably time to start questioning who the “good guys” really are here.
They were called heroes.
Today, none of that apparently matters, valuable medical staff were fired anyway, in a middle of pandemic. Why???
Only to turn around, and demand that the vaccinated, but COVID-positive workers (who'd normally have to isolate) work the COVID wards instead?
Couldn't they just ask those that declined vaccination, but previously infected with COVID, work in those wards?
They've done that in 2020, and if they are willing to do that again, are they not heroes, risking their own lives to save others? Well, suddenly they are now pariahs instead of heroes, and must be fired and ridiclued.
How does any of this make sense???
I'm lost at this point.
Definitely. I must confess that I am much more familiar with the situation in Germany, where the commercial entanglement of doctors and pharma companies may be much weaker. We do have a lot of Anti-Vax propaganda, however, which I follow somewhat, so I do know their ways. From what I know they are similar (if not more radicalized) than their counter parts in the US.
> Pharmaceutical companies are literally making hundreds of billions of dollars off of their products. These companies are not exactly innocent. They have very little morals and are generally okay with mass suffering as long as their profits are increasing (look at the opioid epidemic as an example).
I agree! They must be tightly controlled. They're not all evil, though. Like most companies they also have some utility to society: They produce medicine that clearly works, in some cases even remarkably well (sure, arguably at inflated prices). This is the case with vaccines.
> In addition, there is a social stigma where if you take an unpopular view here, you will likely be seen as a “conspiracy theorist”, or face the possibility of losing your job, friends, family members.
I try not to do this, but you're right. Sometimes it's a bit hard because the stereotype is often true. I do have an anti-(corona)vaccine friend and while I think her considerations are irrational here, it's not like she's malicious herself. Especially when wanting to convince her of my changing her mind, there's nothing good not treating her respectfully will do.
> Most of the people against Big Pharma promote living a healthy lifestyle, taking supplements, going outside, getting sunlight, eating well, exercising, etc.
This is where things get hairy. Going outside, getting sunlight, eating well and exercising are all fabulous things and I am all for promoting them.
The issue begins to appear when you insinuate that these can be better than a proven treatment for a given sickness, like telling people to just take more walks outside and the cancer will solve itself. That is what harms people. And it's something a large portion of people in this bubble definitely do. That is where the issue lies.
> It is not like they are trying to sell you some expensive products.
Many influencers out of this bubble absolutely are, especially regarding the supplements you previously mentioned (plus some weird devices, sculptures, things with magnets ...). They can contain nothing of much value and just be ineffective at curing illnesses, leading to people not seeking real treatment and wasting their money, they can also be actively harmful, see "Miracle Mineral Solution", which contains literal bleach [0]. That is doubly harmful and absolutely to be fought. These people are enriching themselves from gullible people by telling them fantasy stories and it is highly despicable.
------
Of course there's a spectrum. Not everyone who as safety concerns about the vaccines automatically believes in wild conspiracy theories. However the seed of "look at what shady things people up there are doing" can often grow into "all the system is evil and we must fight it with fire" and that's what I'm afraid of. That this radicalization frequently happens is at least supported ancedotally (I have been in that loop for a short while myself) and why I'm so passionate about this topic.
Real conspiracies exist! But please use your critical thinking skills to evaluate the evidence and likelihoods of things.
End of rant, I guess.
This is literally the only comment chain in the entire thread to reference vaccines
Shock therapy for one.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8375951/
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
[3] https://www.vox.com/2016/5/20/11719796/new-nutrition-label-a...
Not disagreeing, but that's a much nicer way of saying that nobody wanted to mate with the ones having constant diarrhea.
I don't really have skin in this game, though, and mostly posted to make the humorous juxtaposition of literally getting worms as a preferable and less harmful alternative to smoking for autoimmune relief.
You could try to wean yourself off. Take a bit less every day. Dependencies don't have to last forever.
If you treat a gunshot victim with napkins from McDonalds because it's the only thing you have, that's great. If a year later you've got better options and you're still using the napkins, you're an asshole.
It was brave of folks to work in healthcare before we had the vaccine, knowing that there was a very good chance they'd get sick and that there wasn't much they could do to prevent it. It is stupid to take that risk now, when there is something they can do.
"I'm not taking the vaccine because there isn't one" and "I'm not taking the vaccine despite there being one" aren't comparable, and it's weird to pretend they are.
This is just handwaving. Where is your data to support that it’s in your own words “stupid”? This seems like an emotional feeling rather than a thesis well supported by data.
I’ve specifically stated “with antibodies to prove it”, which you conveniently ignored. This would be a much higher bar than even previous infection, and perhaps even unnecessary.
Vaccination isn’t some ritual we must perform to exorcise some mythical ghost.
It’s a medical intervention, with measurable results and risks, but also consumes a scarce resource, and therefore must be offered ONLY when appropriate.
vaccinating people who don’t even need it results in denying life-saving vaccines for people who actually DO need them. Like the entirely unvaccinated billions around the world who live on 2 dollars per day. Numerous guidelines recommend postponing vaccination after positive results by months. Mayo clinic recommends 90 days or even longer, depending on the situation at hand. Is Mayo Clinic “stupid”?
Please explain how this guideline is “stupid”: https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-if-a...
As you can see below, from BMC and Lancet, reputable journals, reinfection is very infrequent in health care workers. 2-8 incidents per 100,000 people-hours. Case fatality is at 0.13%, nearly 30 times lower than non-HCW, and I believe a lot of these have been primary infections too.
Do you have any numbers to provide support your thesis that it’s “stupid” at all? You’d only have to prove that infection controls and previous exposure is a less effective intervention than a vaccine, specifically in HCW setting, and that its so ineffective it supports denying vaccine supply to those at 30 TIMES MORE RISK.
In essence your statement reads: 1) “hospitals can’t control infectious agents”, 2) “we should NOT prioritize those 30x at risk and too poor to afford it”, 3) “HCW are too “stupid” (in your own words” to assess risks of infection controls they themselves institute and operate; and risks of the disease they themselves see every day”
Seems like big claims to me.
Looking forward to your data to support your thesis.
Actual data: Reinfection rate in HCW: “2.5 reinfections per 100,000 person-days)”
https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...
“The incidence density was 7·6 reinfections per 100 000 person-days in the positive cohort, compared with 57·3 primary infections per 100 000 person-days in the negative cohort, between June, 2020, and January, 2021. The adjusted IRR was 0·159 for all reinfections (95% CI 0·13–0·19) compared with PCR-confirmed primary infections. The median interval between primary infection and reinfection was more than 200 days.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
“case fatality (0.13% versus 2.77%, p<0.001) were significantly lower in HCWPs compared with non-HCWPs.”
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(21)00564-6/ful...
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/27/smokers-much...
All the genetic stuff too is super suspicious, I would be _shocked_ if "genetic predisposition to smoking" had no impact whatsoever on any other variable that could cause more severe COVID.
Here's some actual studies:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33420786/
> We conducted a cross-sectional, observational study on the 1769 sailors of the same navy aircraft carrier at sea exposed at the same time to SARS-CoV2 to investigate the link between tobacco consumption and Covid-19.
> Current smoking status was associated with a lower risk of developing Covid-19 but cannot be considered as efficient protection against infection. The mechanism of the lower susceptibility of smokers to SARS-CoV-2 requires further research.
https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...
> A total of 7162 patients were included, with 482 being smokers. The POR was 0.24 (95%CI 0.19–0.30). Unlike the original study, the association between smoking and disease severity was not statistically significant using random-effects meta-analysis (OR 1.40, 95%CI 0.98–1.98). In agreement with the original study, no statistically significant association was found between smoking and mortality (OR 1.86, 95%CI 0.88–3.94).
> An unusually low prevalence of smoking, approximately 1/4th the expected prevalence, was observed among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Any association between smoking and COVID-19 severity cannot be generalized but should refer to the seemingly low proportion of smokers who develop severe COVID-19 that requires hospitalization. Smokers should be advised to quit due to long-term health risks, but pharmaceutical nicotine or other nicotinic cholinergic agonists should be explored as potential therapeutic options, based on a recently presented hypothesis.
Basically Fox news uses "Communism" as a synonym for "things I don't like"
It hasn't really fully separated itself from that today. Some cynical types describe the extremely high rates of psychotropic drugs used in American schools and retirement homes as "chemical lobotomies". In many cases, the drugs are being used to make someone "manageable" (i.e., quiet and compliant) rather than improving their health or quality of life.
(Of course, a mentally sick person who's truly unmanageable, is in fairness, unlikely to have much health or quality of life. But that's the linchpin of justification both historically for actual lobotomies, and today for the widespread use of these drugs. Much caution in medical treatments to make it more convenient to "manage" people is warranted.)
I wonder what things from present time future humans will look back on and marvel at how insane they were.
Chemicals are just tools.
See, scientific consensus is usually based on data and certain statistics. Those who question it usually express opinions without addressing the data and methodology. An opinion is not enough, you need to be very specific.
Obesity is anti-correlated with smoking, though smoking can cause a lot of the same health problems as obesity.
> Overall, current smokers were less likely to be obese than never smokers (adjusted OR 0.83 95% CI 0.81-0.86). However, there was no significant association in the youngest sub-group (≤40 years). Former smokers were more likely to be obese than both current smokers (adjusted OR 1.33 95% CI 1.30-1.37) and never smokers (adjusted OR 1.14 95% CI 1.12-1.15). Among smokers, the risk of obesity increased with the amount smoked and former heavy smokers were more likely to be obese than former light smokers (adjusted OR 1.60, 95% 1.56-1.64, p<0.001). Risk of obesity fell with time from quitting. After 30 years, former smokers still had higher risk of obesity than current smokers but the same risk as never smokers.
I find this slightly amusing, considering what there are multiple cases where otherwise healthy non-smokers have a very severe symptoms.
if you knew, that nicotine could at least potentially arrest the progression, how sick would you need to get before you would try nicotine patches?
would you rather wait until you are unable to walk, talk, eat, wear adult diapers, but never ever attempt anything on your own?
"clinical recommendation" is nothing more than an OPINION, not some eternal dogma to be venerated.
Marijuana is being used medicinally en masse in many countries today. Still not a "clinical recommendation" in the US, and even an absolutely illegal drug with apparently no known medicinal use, but somehow thousands of epileptic kids manage to control their disease with Charlotte's Webb.
Strange how official "recommendation" can be total lies, no?
I suspect "medicinal" marijuana is just a ruse to get it legalized. Not to say there are not medicinally beneficial compounds. I also support legalization. But it's a pretty big coincidence that the only medicine with "roll it into a joint and smoke it" as the delivery mechanism happens to be used recreationally in exactly the same way. Just like alcohol was "medicinal" during prohibition.
Having a glass of wine after a stressful day, instead of Xanax, is that medicinal or recreational? You could argue either way, I suppose.
I don't think medicinal is smoked.
