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From: john@ur-tut.UUCP (John Gurian)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Smoking attitudes
Message-ID: <113@ur-tut.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Sep-85 21:17:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: ur-tut.113
Posted: Wed Sep 11 21:17:47 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Sep-85 05:59:10 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Univ. of Rochester Computing Center
Lines: 21

I would be interested in knowing what peoples' attitudes towards smoking
are; e.g. how many of you smoke, and if you do, if you have any desire to
quit or not.  Smoking is one of the major public health problems in the U.S.
and I haven't seen it discussed much on the net.

Of similar interest to me would be what people think of the "media coverup" of
smoking-related illnesses.  Basically, it works like this: most newpapers and
magazines get huge advertising revenues from the smoking industry. So, if they
decide they want to do an article on cancer, little mention of smoking is made,
since the tobacco companies basically censor the information by threatening to
withdraw their advertising.  The only magazines immune to this are Reader's
Digest & Seventeen, which I believe are the only two that prohibit cigarette
advertising (radio & TV also are free from this problem).  In fact, a number
of months ago Newsweek did an article on "Living with Cancer" - no mention was
made of lung cancer or the role of smoking (I believe they focused on
leukemia).  Pretty remarkable when you consider that lung cancer is right up at
the top in terms of cancer deaths (I don't want to say #1 since I don't have
the stats handy).

------  John Gurian
------  Univ. Rochester School of Medicine