Cure the disease, not the habit.
Posted by Moonage on 10 Aug 2005 | Tagged as: Political Correctness
The world was shocked this week to find out Dana Reeve has lung cancer. The response in the media has been nothing short of absolute shock. The concept that a non-smoker would get lung cancer has apparently undermined the underlying self-protective blinder that society in general has taken that if you never smoke, you won’t have to worry about cancer. I have bitched about this endlessly for years. It’s nothing but political correctness run amok. The same bury-your-head-in-the-sand attitude people had about the Middle East in the late 90’s while bombs were going off everywhere and people kept bragging about "The Peace Dividend".
Meanwhile, every known govenment entity in the US was suing tobacco companies for billions of dollars having absolutely no intentions whatsoever to spend it on what they sued the tobacco companies for. When that money ran out, they started suing again.
And through it all, lung cancer rates stopped declining:
Wrong conclusion. The ACS knows who pays their salary. It ain’t the general public, it’s targeting tobacco. They’re not going to drop the politically correct ball and come out with the statement that anyone can get lung cancer, they’re going to keep going after those lawsuits.
The right conclusion would have been that although there may be a general up-trend in youth smoking, that wouldn’t affect TODAY’S morbidity. It would affect morbidity IN THE FUTURE.
The right conclusion would have been that as you eliminate the preponderance of one influence on lung cancer, the other preponderances that you have not addressed affect the percentage. As fewer people smoke, something else is therefore affecting the lung cancer rate. What is that something else?
They don’t want to know.
They don’t want to ask.
They just want to keep harping on tobacco.
They have their heads buried in the sand.
People like Dana Reeve are the ones suffering because of that.
How’s this for an approach ACS? It’s pretty simple I think. Spend those billions of dollars curing lung cancer and don’t worry yourself over people’s personal choices.
If they had done that, Dana Reeve might not be suffering now.
My mother might be alive as well.
Let’s cure cancer. Okay American Cancer Society? Don’t fret the fact that if cancer is cured ACS would have no reason to exist. You all can do other things.
Like getting people to quit eating sugar so they won’t die of diabetes.
1 Comment »
on 10 Aug 2005 at 4:01 pm 1.Bryan Kerwick
said …
States and the Federal Government are the primary beneficiaries of the tobacco industry.
Revenues generated from sales are a primary source of revenue for these governments. It may be hard to beleive but the government actually makes more from the sale of tobacco products than the cigarette companies and farmers combined.
The problem is that there is still a lot of money left for stockholders which lawyers and the various government groups feel they are entitled to.
The best solution to the problem is to stop selling tobacco in the US for a year, exhaust all the cash to stockholders via dividend, consolidate under chapter 11 and tell the politicians to pound sand while they sell their products overseas tax free and lawsuit free.
When the government realizes it just killed the goose that laid the golden egg and they, in turn, have all gone bankrupt, maybe then there can be some sanity as to how to deal with taxes and lawsuits. Until then, nothing will change and people will still be dying from lung cancer.