According to three medical doctors writing in the journal Medical Hypotheses, giving up smoking can kill you.

The doctors were “struck by the more than casual relationship between the appearance of lung cancer and an abrupt and recent cessation of the smoking.” In 182 of the 312 cases they treated, habitual smokers of at least a pack a day for at least a quarter-century developed lung cancer shortly after they gave up smoking.

They surmised a biological mechanism protects smokers against cancer, which is strengthened by years of determined smoking. When the smoker quits, “a surge and spurt in re-activation of bodily healing and repair mechanisms of chronic smoke-damaged respiratory epithelia is induced and spurred by an abrupt discontinuation of habit,” and “goes awry, triggering uncontrolled cell division and tumour genesis.”

Likewise, indirect evidence for the dangers of not smoking comes from the 150th anniversary number of Atlantic magazine. P.J. O’Rourke points to (actual, serious) U.S. historical statistics showing that, in the period 1973-94, annual per capita consumption of cigarettes fell from 4,148 to 2,493. In the same period, the incidence of lung and bronchial cancer rose from 42.5 to 57.1 cases per 100,000 population.

In the past I have flagged UN statistics showing that life expectancy was nicely proportional to tobacco consumption, internationally — so that, for example, Japan and South Korea were respectively first and second in both life expectancy and tobacco consumption. The lowest tobacco consumption was in Third World countries, where we also found some of the shortest life expectancies.

I think we could also find historical statistics showing there is a reliable, worldwide relationship between rising tobacco consumption, and rising life expectancy, nation by nation, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

There is one more hypothesis with which I would like to leave my reader. It is that the kind of quack “science” that was used to ban smoking has now mutated into the kind that is used to flog global warming. It should have been resisted then; it should certainly be resisted now.

From, “Smoking out the facts” The Ottawa Citizen

Learn more about the facts about smoking.