Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
According to Fisher, this was nothing short of statistically illiterate
fear mongering.
Surely the danger posed to the smoking masses was “not the mild and soothing weed,” he wrote, “but the organized creation of states of frantic alarm.”
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Smoking Permanently Damages Your DNA, Study Finds
(nbcnews.com)
Most of the damage fades over time, they
found -- but not all of it.
Their study of 16,000 people found that
while most of the disease-causing genetic footprints left by smoking
fade after five years if people quit, some appear to stay there forever.
The marks are made in a process called methylation,
which is an alteration of DNA that can inactivate a gene or change how
it functions -- often causing cancer and other diseases.
The team
examined blood samples given by 16,000 people taking part in various
studies going back to 1971.
In all the studies, people have given blood
samples and filled out questionnaires about smoking, diet, lifestyle and
their health histories.
They found smokers had a pattern of methylation
changes affecting more than 7,000 genes, or one-third of known human
genes.
Many of the genes had known links to heart disease and cancers
known to be caused by smoking.
Among quitters, most of these changes
reverted to the patterns seen in people who never smoked after about
five years, the team reported in the American Heart Association journal
Circulation:
Cardiovascular Genetics. But smoking-related changes in 19
genes, including the TIAM2 gene linked to lymphoma, lasted 30 years, the
team found.
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