2014 – Page 18 – Oral Cancer News

50 Years After Landmark Warning, 8 Million Fewer Smoking Deaths

Source: npr.orgPublished: January 7, 2014By: Richard Knox Last Saturday marked an important milestone in public health – the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health. Few if any documents have had the impact of this one — both on the amount of disease and death prevented, and on the very scope of public health. An analysis in the JAMA, the American Medical Association journal, estimates that 8 million Americans avoided premature death as a result of tobacco control efforts launched by the 1964 report. Those efforts range from cigarette warning labels to escalating taxes on cigarettes to proliferating restrictions on where people can smoke. They were augmented by a series of high-profile surgeon general reports detailing the dangers to smokers, unborn children and bystanders. But the impact of the 1964 report is even broader than that, according to Harvard historian Allan Brandt. "If we look at the history of public health – from the safety of cars and roads, other dangerous products, the environment, clean air, the workplace – all of these issues really have their origins in a moment 50 years ago around the first surgeon general's report," Brandt tells Shots. He's the author of a 2007 history, The Cigarette Century. But all that impact unfolded over decades, and for many years it didn't appear the report would launch such a revolution. In the 1970s, when Joanne Iuliucci of Staten Island, N.Y., started smoking at age 12, she says she had no idea that [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-15T17:17:56-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

The global battle over e-cigarettes

Source: SALONPublished: December 26, 2013By: Lynette Eyb, GLOBALPOST FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2013 file photo made with multiple flash exposures, a model pulls on an electronic cigarette backstage before the Chado Ralph Rucci fashion show in New York. New York City is considering legislation that would include electronic cigarettes in the city's ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and other indoor public spaces. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) (Credit: AP) BORDEAUX, France — As more smokers take to electronic cigarettes, the debate about the impact “vaping” — as using the products is called — could have in the fight against tobacco smoking is becoming more acute. On one side, the head of one of Europe’s leading electronic cigarette industry groups has slammed the World Health Organization (WHO) for its lack of support for the booming e-cigarette market. Katherine Devlin, president of the Electronic Cigarette Industry Trade Association, whose members represent some 60 percent of the British market, said the WHO’s reluctance to endorse e-cigarettes is putting millions of lives at risk. “WHO has led a campaign against smoking which has led to the denormalization not only of smoking, but also of smokers, many of whom now feel like social pariahs,” she said in an interview. Vaping, she said, is a cleaner way of ingesting nicotine. “Our hope is that by normalizing vaping, we can help to further underline the message that smokers need to stop setting fire to tobacco sticks and inhaling [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-15T17:00:20-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

The Trouble With ‘Scientific’ Research Today: A Lot That’s Published Is Junk

Source: ForbesPublished: January 8, 2014By: Henry I. Miller and Stanley Young Many non-scientists are confused and dismayed by the constantly changing advice that comes from medical and other researchers on various issues. One week, coffee causes cancer; the next, it prevents it. Where should we set the LDL threshold for taking statins to prevent cardiovascular disease? Does the radiation from cell phones cause brain tumors? Some of that confusion is due to the quality of the evidence, which is dependent on a number of factors, while some is due to the nature of science itself: We form hypotheses and then perform experiments to test them; as the data accumulate and various hypotheses are rejected, we become more confident about what we think we know. But it may also be due to current state of science. Scientists themselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the unreliability – that is, the lack of reproducibility — of many experimental or observational results. Investigators who perform research in the laboratory have a high degree of control over the conditions and variables of their experiments, an integral part of the scientific method. If there is significant doubt about the results, they can repeat the experiment. In general, the more iterations, the more confidence about the accuracy of the results. Finally, if the results are sufficiently novel and interesting, the researchers submit a description of the experiments to a reputable journal, where, after review by editors and expert referees, it is published. Thus, researchers do the work and, in theory at least, they are [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-13T18:07:18-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Are e-cigarettes dangerous?

Source: CNN Published: January 7, 2014By: Harold P. Wimmer http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EqvlxEQaQnE Editor's note: Harold P. Wimmer is the president and CEO of the American Lung Association. (CNN) -- For the makers of electronic cigarettes, today we are living in the Wild West -- a lawless frontier where they can say or do whatever they want, no matter what the consequences. They are free to make unsubstantiated therapeutic claims and include myriad chemicals and additives in e-cigarettes. Big Tobacco desperately needs new nicotine addicts and is up to its old tricks to make sure it gets them. E-cigarettes are being aggressively marketed to children with flavors like Bazooka Bubble Gum, Cap'n Crunch and Cotton Candy. Joe Camel was killed in the 1990s, but cartoon characters are back promoting e-cigarettes. Many e-cigarettes look like Marlboro or Camel cigarettes. Like their old-Hollywood counterparts, glamorous and attractive celebrities are appearing on TV promoting specific e-cigarette brands. Free samples are even being handed out on street corners. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the promotion of e-cigarettes is reaching our children with alarming success. In just one year, e-cigarette use doubled among high school and middle school students, and 1 in 10 high school students have used an e-cigarette. Altogether, 1.78 million middle and high school students nationwide use e-cigarettes. The three largest cigarette companies are all selling e-cigarettes. Because tobacco use kills more than 400,000 people each year and thousands more successfully quit, the industry needs to attract and [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-08T17:59:22-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer

Source: The New York TimesPublished: January 4, 2014By: George Johnson EVERY New Year when the government publishes its Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, it is followed by a familiar lament. We are losing the war against cancer. Half a century ago, the story goes, a person was far more likely to die from heart disease. Now cancer is on the verge of overtaking it as the No. 1 cause of death. Troubling as this sounds, the comparison is unfair. Cancer is, by far, the harder problem — a condition deeply ingrained in the nature of evolution and multicellular life. Given that obstacle, cancer researchers are fighting and even winning smaller battles: reducing the death toll from childhood cancers and preventing — and sometimes curing — cancers that strike people in their prime. But when it comes to diseases of the elderly, there can be no decisive victory. This is, in the end, a zero-sum game. The rhetoric about the war on cancer implies that with enough money and determination, science might reduce cancer mortality as dramatically as it has with other leading killers — one more notch in medicine’s belt. But what, then, would we die from? Heart disease and cancer are primarily diseases of aging. Fewer people succumbing to one means more people living long enough to die from the other. The newest cancer report, which came out in mid-December, put the best possible face on things. If one accounts for the advancing age of [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-07T17:34:51-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Researchers and drug companies are ganging up for a new push against cancer

Source: www.economist.com Author: staff “There is no treatment.” This is the conclusion of an Egyptian papyrus, written around 3000BC, that is the oldest known description of the scourge that is now called “cancer”. And so, more or less, it remained until the 20th century, for merely excising a tumour by surgery rarely eliminates it. Only when doctors worked out how to back up the surgeon’s knife with drugs and radiation did cancer begin to succumb to treatment—albeit, to start with, in a pretty crude fashion. Now, however, that crudeness is rapidly giving way to sophistication, as a new wave of cancer treatments comes to market. In 2012 more than 500 potential cancer drugs were under investigation, according to a survey by IMS Health, an American research group—over five times as many as were being developed in the next biggest category, diabetes. Three trends are helping to fill this cancer-drug cornucopia. One is the increase in demand as people live longer, and thus become more likely to develop cancer. According to the World Health Organisation, there were 14m new cases of cancer around the world in 2012. In 2030 there will be nearly 22m. The second trend is the rising price of cancer drugs, particularly in America, the biggest market. More expensive drugs increase profitability. The third is a rapid expansion of scientific knowledge about cancer, the result of both the plummeting cost of genetic sequencing (see chart) and a better understanding of how to recruit the immune system to attack [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-01-05T13:21:25-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|