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My five-year-old daughter has asthma I smoked very heavily during my pregnancy. Could this have caused her condition? There is no longer any doubt that the children of mothers who smoke during pregnancy do have substantial disadvantages. In particular, they have a generally lower level of resistance which makes them more likely to get infectious diseases, and they are usually slower to develop both physically and mentally. However, there is no evidence that the presence of asthma in young children can be attributed to the mother smoking when pregnant. The catch-phrase dying for a cigarette’ is brutally apt. fatal smoking-related diseases constitute a genuine epidemic—and one that is solely in the hands of the potential victims to combat. Read the rest of this entry »

How efficient are filters in removing harmful substances from cigarette smoke? Putting a filter on the cigarette certainly reduces the tar and nicotine levels your body absorbs, In addition, there is evidence that people who smoke filter-tipped cigarettes are at less risk of getting lung cancer. So there certainly is some advantage. However, the benefit is certainly not so great that it is safe to smoke filter cigarettes. Probably the best that can be said for them is that if you cannot give up smoking altogether, they are a little less dangerous than non-filter brands. Why do doctors tell you that if you must smoke, smoke only the first half of the cigarette? Read the rest of this entry »

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Professor A. Bradford Hill and Dr (now Sir) Richard Doll published the first of a series of papers leading to the in- escapable conclusion that cigarette smoking was the major factor in the rising incidence of lung cancer. They began with a retrospective study; that is, they investigated a large number of patients with cancer of the lung and compared them with a carefully matched control group who did not have this form of cancer. After comparing a number of factors that might have a bearing on the cause of this disease, the only great Read the rest of this entry »