RAPID ASSESSMENT
About Chelyen Davis:
Chelyen Davis is health reporter for The Free Lance-Star
Is there another commercial product that when used as intended will kill you?
Dr. Peter Buckman spoke yesterday the the Spotsylvania hospital.
So I’m sitting in the cafeteria yesterday at Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center, listening to Dr. Peter Buckman talk about lung cancer. No thoracic surgeon can talk about lung cancer for long and not bring up cigarettes. Which is what happened.
About five minutes into his presentation, Buckman started talking about the dangers of smoking. He said:
* Ten percent of smokers develop lung cancer.
* Ninety percent of lung cancer cases occur in people who smoke.
* If you quit smoking, the risk of developing lung cancer goes down over time, but it never goes back to zero.
* The incidence of lung cancer among the nonsmoking spouses of people who smoke is 20 percent higher, compared to those who are married to nonsmokers.
Cigarettes cause lung cancer, and as Buckman said, “Lung cancer is a dangerous, dangerous disease.”
So I’m sitting there wondering: Is there another commercially available product that when used as intended will kill you?
I asked Buckman that question after his talk and he answered, “Guns.” But I disagreed with him. When guns or alcohol or fatty foods kill people, they’re being abused. They are not lethal if used in moderation, or as intended. That’s not the case with cigarettes. There is no safe level of use for cigarettes.
So I ask: Is there another product that you can buy at Wawa that when used as directed will kill you?
