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Friday, January 17, 2014

Smoking: Still Bad

Smoking. Bad. We should be well acquainted with that little tidbit of knowledge by now, and if we're not, what the hell is wrong with you unless you just stepped out of a time machine from the 1950's, and in case you did... er, first, this thing you're looking at is like that UNIVAC thing you've heard about, but it's a whole lot faster and smaller and you can actually interact with other people by using that typewriter-like device in front of you; second, we have a thing called Wikipedia that you can use, on this device, that makes those dozens of encyclopedias in your house obsolete (for example, here's the entry for UNIVAC); and third, bad news about that habit of yours.

Anyway, for those of you who haven't used a time machine to get here, what you're already familiar with is that smoking causes lung cancer. You know that part. You probably also know about the link to heart attacks, birth defects, and if you watched one of those disturbing anti-smoking commercials, strokes. Mouth cancer too if you're one of those people that use chewing tobacco and if you are, really?

Well, acting Surgeon General Boris Lushniak has come out with a new report that will officially be released sometime after I wake up in the morning but of course it's been given over to the major media outlets first, and from what they're getting from it, we can seemingly add type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, colorectal cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer, macular degeneration, and erectile dysfunction to the list, as well as adding cleft palates to the list of birth defects. I don't even think I got everything they're mentioning. (There's also a mentioning of worsening asthma, which, doy.)

Now let's be clear, of course, that once the report actually hits later today, we'll want to give the thing a good thumb-over so as to get the specifics; once it does drop, I'd imagine it will go to the top of the list of reports here. (It isn't the one marking the 50th anniversary of the original report.) There are also some decent amounts of uncertainty yet regarding some of the links- though given the history of linking smoking to various diseases to this point, it's pretty damn likely to be guilty of anything it's accused of. But, uh, yeah. That's a honker of a list they got.

Just in case you have a cigarette in your mouth right now, let's reiterate part of that for the men in the audience: it makes your pee-pee not work. If you buy fewer cigarettes, you'll have to buy less Viagra.

Put the cigarette out so the cigarette doesn't put your pee-pee out.

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