It's yet another example illustrating the motivation behind the Big Pharma's war on tobacco. Pharma has invested billions into creating and propping "grass roots" antismoking groups, on inciting antismoking hysteria via its junk "science", on promoting Nazi style denormalization and hate of smokers, on buying politicians and bureaucrats to push through the antismoker laws and regulations,... All that while quietly doing real research on numerous medicinal effects of tobacco smoke in order to replicate them with synthetic, patentable substitutes.
Because it is absolutely unprofitable to big pharma to treat lung cancer. Riiiiight.
It's sad to see how easily people are duped by the antismoking fear mongers. The link I provided points to the highlights of an earlier thread "
Smoking is good for you" in this forum, discussing that topic at great length. As you will find out if you care to check at the links, in animal experiments and few randomized trials,
tobacco smoke is protective against cancers, including lung cancer. The antismoking "science" is still entirely resting on statistical associations on
non-randomized samples, six decades since the "scientific" antismoking started in the west.
Such associations merely indicate that tobacco smoke and lung cancer are in the
same web of causes and effects, but cannot uncover the nature the links. The therapeutic or protective substances are statistically associated with diseases they treat or protect against, just as the causes of diseases are. One needs
hard science, such as
randomized trials and
animal experiments to disentangle such opaque webs of causes and effects implied by the statistical observations on non-randomized samples.
Note also that your point is weak even if one were to grant you for the sake of discussion, that the inhalation of tobacco smoke causes lung cancer. Namely, as the post at the link above indicates, it is a lot more profitable for the sickness industry to have a life-long customer with chronic inflammatory or autoimmune diseases linger on for decades on expensive drugs and treatments, than have someone die within months of lung cancer diagnosis. After all, we all will eventually arrive to some kind of terminal condition, cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's,... and receive their final treatments. So that part is pretty much a sure buck in their pockets. It is the time they can stretch you before that, alive but sick, that makes a big difference. In comparison, dying prematurely of a fast killing disease like lung cancer (which is often detected very late), is the loss for the sickness industry.
As
that example given earlier illustrates, tobacco smoking is statistically associated (on non-randomized samples) with higher rate of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and doctors routinely urge (even force) RA patients to quit smoking, since smoking is a strong "risk factor" for RA. Yet, in the animal experiment cited,
tobacco smoke (and to a lesser degree pure nicotine which was also tested on one group) showed
potent anti-inflammatory effects which delayed onset of RA and reduced subsequent damages to the cartilage once the disease began. What that means is that the observed
statistical associations on non-randomized samples are
result of self-medication -- the people with RA (at any stage) are instinctively treating themselves with tobacco smoke, which among others upregulates internal corticosteroids, suppressing inflammation and providing perceptible relief. Of course, the pharma would rather scare you away from the inexpensive and effective ancient medicinal plant, and make you pay for their patented, synthetic corticosteroids (with long lists of damaging side effects, hence more downstream treatments of those damages, too). The pharma profits come here not only from making smokers with RA quit, who are a minority of population, but scaring everyone else away from ever trying it, monopolizing thus the entire chronic inflammatory and autoimmune market for its own drugs.
Hence, the large long term investments into antismoking by the pharmaceutical industry, from producing and peddling antismoking junk science to inciting Nazi style denormalization and hate of smokers, is enormously profitable business strategy for the pharma (just as their similar investments in suppressing other natural or traditional medicines are, through buying politicians, FDA, CDC, NIH,... and other government attack dogs to muscle away the competition).
