Sunday, June 11, 2023

Trust your doctors (who you think are following the science)

Before you try any nutritional compound or therapeutic agent, check with your doctor.  He'll tell you what's best, and it makes it easier to follow your doctor's orders. ☺️😅🤣  Don't get me wrong.  I love smoke, the smell of smoke.  It's given me terrific memories of charming moments with friends and family.  Smoking while fishing a stream or lake in the High Sierras was how we passed the time and enjoyed the camaraderie.  I knew smoking was bad for the lungs, but I enjoyed the occasional cigarette hanging out with friends, fishing, watching the dads of friends work on the engines of their cars and trucks with a smoke firm at the corner of their mouth or smoldering while perched on the wheel well.  Loved the smell of smoke at a gas station and nobody ever blew themselves up or caught on fire.  Camping with friends, a smoke was always a pleasant bonding activity among young men.  It was a tradition, and traditions are a joy to take part in.  Was not a fan of smoking inside restaurants, and maybe that was only because the environmental Karens made us aware of it in their efforts to divide smokers from non-smokers with a foot-tall plastic partition . . . as if that could contain the smoke in its proper place.  Smoke from hookah pipes at middle eastern restaurants gave the place wonderful atmosphere.  Places like Black Angus and Bobby McGees made the prospect of meeting a young woman infused the adventure with more romance.  Before he quit smoking, I will never forget working with my dad in the kitchen in the early hours of Thanksgiving. His lit Tarreyton perched on the edge of my mom's pink tiled countertop sent a ribbon of smoke upward to the ceiling that waft across the rooms that produced such a charming and memorable effect while father and son prepared the Thanksgiving meal as the Christmas season got under way with carols by Perry Como playing on the bar that marked the division between kitchen and dining room.  Lovely.   

Thank you to Boris Epstein.


1946 R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company advertisement
Image: History.com

 

During the COVID pandemic we were all told that unless we were science-denying conspiracy theorists we should trust doctors and scientists. OK, let us consider this. Can you trust somebody? Yes. But if you wish to place your trust intelligently,you want to only trust those whose prior history is that of both wisdom and integrity. So, does the medical community in the US have such history."

The image above is pretty much all you need to know. The advertisement above came out in 1946. In it, a man playing a doctor, who may have been an actor or even an actual medical professional is helping R. J. Rejnolds, a major tobacco company, sell its product. At the time, the data on potential hams of tobacco consumption was not as solid as it is today but it was already common knowledge that tobacco smoking negatively affects the human respiratory function and that was reason enough to suspect that the behaviour was unhealthy and not one any doctor should advise, let alone advertise. Yet an advertisement doing exactly that came out, accompanied by no discernible protest or legal action by the medical community.

So what does that tell you? Unless you assume that "that was then and this is now", that somehow the medical community now is completely different than it was some 70 years ago this should give you pause if you were inclined to just blindly trust today's medical professionals. Also, ask yourself what would happen if you were alive then and tried to speak of the medical professional's involvement in such an advertisement campaign as being unscientific and unethical? Would you have been called a quack and a science denier? Should you be afraid of being called that now when you just follow the data and common sense?

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