A Chama Violeta (The Violet Flame)

One medical “fact” that the majority of people living in western countries today accept as “true”, is that smoking cigarettes leads to lung cancer, and that tobacco is a toxic substance.

But is it true? Can we trust our government when it comes to health advice? Have they ever lied to us in the past about health or diseases?

First, think about it logically. People have smoked tobacco for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

U.S. Government “experts” figured out only in 1964 that cigarettes caused cancer and were bad for health, as the Surgeon General put out a warning declaring that cigarettes were bad for one’s health.

Was there actually any evidence or credible science to back this up, or were other interests in play behind this warning?

Fortunately, if one decides to search out the evidence themselves, there is plenty of evidence and research to show the opposite, that tobacco does not cause cancer, and that as a natural plant, it actually has some therapeutic properties, which at one time seemed to be well-known.

I want to state up front that I do not smoke cigarettes, and never have (I never enjoyed them, even when I was in high school and most of my friends smoked them), and that I have no economic ties at all to the tobacco industry.

Neither am I recommending that anyone should either start smoking tobacco, or quit smoking tobacco.

That is an individual choice, and my sole interest is in publishing the truth, and giving further reasons why it is unwise to trust our current medical system and the government alphabet agencies that protect them, rather than protecting the health of the American public.

If there are indeed therapeutic properties to tobacco, such as relieving neurological disorders like Parkinson’s Disease, Big Pharma would have plenty of motivation to suppress that information in favor of their pharmaceutical patented drugs.

Also, cancer has always been the largest money-maker in the pharmaceutical industry, and there is plenty of evidence that cancer is a modern disease caused by pharmaceutical products, especially most recently as a known side-effect of the experimental COVID shots, so they need alternative products to blame for the ever-increasing cancer rates that bring in $billions to Big Pharma, while continuing to propagate the lie that there are no cures for cancer, when in fact there are many, but all of them are banned by the FDA. See:

Fortunately, others have already published quite a bit of information on the subject of tobacco and the U.S. Government’s war against it.

One book that I read in preparation for this article is “In Defense of Smokers” by Lauren A. Colby, and originally published in 1996.

You can get the full .pdf version on Archive.org, or view it online here.

Lauren Colby is an attorney, and I want to quote one section from Chapter 2: The Burden of Proof:

There is an Internet News Group devoted to smoking (alt.smokers). Recently, a participant called the Office of Smoking or Health, in an effort to find out how the government arrives at its estimate of 450,000 annual smoking related deaths.

After repeated calls to different individuals within the government, it turned out that nobody really knew how the figures are compiled. Some bureaucrat said he thought the calculations might come from a book, “Foundations of Modern Epidemiology”, by David Lilienfeld.

They don’t. I’ll discuss this and other interesting statistical manipulations, later.

Before leaving this subject, however, a recent (04/19/95) letter to the editor of the San Jose, Ca., Mercury News sheds some light on the methods used by the anti-smoking lobby to generate false reports of “smoking related” deaths.

The author of the letter, Mary Ellen Haley, reported that a loved one died of adenocarcinoma. Only 17 days elapsed from the deceased’s first visit to the doctor to the day of his death. The letter writer was provided with the information for the death certificate, which she took to the attending physician for completion.

On the death certificate there was a line for the doctor to insert the immediate cause of death, and then three lines for “due to”.

The doctor inserted “cigarette smoking” under “due to”.

The letter writer questioned the doctor: was he sure the tumor was caused by cigarette smoking?

The doctor said he wasn’t sure about that, but there were guidelines issued by the American Cancer Society, and that when a person dies of certain conditions and has smoked, the doctor is instructed to list the “due to” as “smoking”.

In this instance, Ms. Haley persuaded the doctor to omit the usual “due to cigarette smoking”, but obviously, this was a rare occurrence.

The willingness of the medical profession to blindly observe “guidelines”, issued by the Cancer Society generates a continuous stream of death certificates, validating the official line that cigarette smoking causes everything from heart disease to uterine cancer; yet, there is no shred of scientific evidence to validate any of the certificates; they are based on nothing more than official instructions to put down smoking as the cause of death!

Where else have we seen this kind of methodology employed in more recent times?

Here is an article from 2017 published by A. Bridges on Sott.net that highlights much of the evidence and research that shows tobacco does not cause cancer, and actually has therapeutic value.

A comprehensive review of the many health benefits of smoking Tobacco

by A. Bridges
Sott.net

Smoking is surely detrimental to one’s health, right? People are often bombarded with warnings about the negative effects of smoking and are persuaded to quit by health authorities. It has even got to the point now where people are being deprived of access to healthcare services if they smoke, and this is on the grounds that ‘smoking will delay the onset of healing and may aggravate one’s pre-existing condition’.

According to the World Health Organisation:

“the tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced, killing around 6 million people a year. More than 5 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while more than 600 000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.”

But like any other claim promulgated by the established health authorities, it is wise to question whether there is actually any truth to it. Bear in mind, it is these same authorities which recommend a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet (and we have seen how detrimental that has been to the general population’s health).

It is also those same people who would recommend treating chronic illness with synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, or the complete removal of entire organs (again, clearly not a successful approach). Anyone who pays attention can see that the authorities clearly don’t care about people’s health because they are more concerned with profit margins. So in this context rational inquiry demands that we look into whether tobacco is really ‘all that bad’.

An alternative perspective

I’m not going to analyse each and every published study on the smoking-lung cancer connection. There is so much information available on the topic that I would need to write a whole book to include every detail.

Fortunately, several books have already dealt with the subject extensively, so for those who would like to conduct some in-depth research into the evidence, I will refer you to Smoke Screens: The Truth About Tobacco by Richard White, In Defense of Smokers by Lauren A. Colby, and The Smoking Scare De-bunked by Dr William T. Whitby.

Instead, I will briefly touch upon some of the main issues surrounding the ‘smoking-causes-lung cancer’ theory, and then progress onto a more in-depth and objective examination of tobacco’s actual effects on the human body.

So let’s start by asking: does tobacco really cause cancer, or is it simply associated with it? Anti-smoking campaigners would have you believe that smoking causes cancer, and that this belief is universally accepted among all scientific disciplines. Interestingly enough, it’s not. There have actually been several prominent figures in science who have openly condemned, questioned, and opposed this theory.

Here are a couple of quotes from Whitby’s The Smoking Scare Debunked¹:

“No ingredient of cigarette smoke has been shown to cause human lung cancer. No-one has been able to produce lung cancer in laboratory animals from smoking.” – Professor Schrauzer, President of the International Bio-inorganic Chemists

“It is fanciful extrapolation – not factual data. The unscientific way in which the study was made bothers us most. The committee agreed first that smoking causes lung cancer and then they set out to prove it statistically.” (U.S. Congressional Record.) – Professor M.B. Rosenblatt, New York Medical College

“The belief that smoking is the cause of lung cancer is no longer widely held by scientists. Smoking is no longer seen as a cause of heart disease, except by a few zealots.” – Professor Sheldon Sommers, New York Academy of Medicine and Science

“The natural experiment (referring to a rise in lung cancer when people were unable to smoke) shows conclusively that the hypothesis must be abandoned.“- Dr. B. Dijkstra, University of Pretoria

“As a scientist I find no persuasive evidence that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer.” – Dr. Ronald Okun, director of Clinical Pathology, LA

“After years of intensive research, no compound in cigarette smoking has been established as a health hazard.” – Professor Charles H. Hine, University of California

The two main studies at the foundation of the smoking-cancer myth are the ‘Doll and Hill’ study (1956, also called the British Doctors’ Study) and the ‘Whitehall’ study (1967, a study of mortality rates among male British civil servants).

To briefly summarize their findings: Doll and Hill found a slightly increased risk of lung cancer in smokers when compared to non-smokers. The results of this particular study were widely publicized and were one of the main drivers behind the whole ‘anti-smoking’ campaign that followed shortly afterward.

However, what Doll and Hill failed to publicly mention was that their results actually showed that smokers who inhaled the smoke were at a significantly decreased risk compared to smokers who didn’t inhale.²

Presumably, this detail was left out because it didn’t support the theory that they were trying to prove.

Next up, the results of the Whitehall study went like this: people who gave up smoking showed no improvement in life expectancy; there were also no changes in deaths caused by heart disease, lung cancer, or other causes.

The only exception was that certain types of cancer were more than twice as common in people who gave up smoking.

Nevertheless, these inconvenient facts were hidden beneath a load of technical jargon which makes the report difficult to read. It seems that, even back then, there was an agenda to demonize smoking so the interpretation of the data was twisted in such a way that smoking tobacco would take the blame.

Much other research has identified correlations between smoking and lung cancer. The problem is, researcher bias often comes into play. Basically, researchers who are aiming to confirm an original hypothesis are more likely to unconsciously misinterpret the data.

Since funding is involved in research, there may also be pressure ‘from above’ to present a specific conclusion to the public, even though the results proved to be different. With tobacco research, this is usually the case, it seems. The author’s conclusion of the study often bears little or no resemblance to the actual findings.

Instead of data being reported back to the public in its raw form, reports can be skewed and manipulated beforehand to imply causation. It must be understood that there is a stark difference between (1) identifying a correlation between two factors, and (2) identifying the cause of a thing. It’s quite simple to identify correlations and associations.

For example, there is a significant correlation between basketball players and being tall. Does this mean that playing basketball causes people to grow taller?

Clearly not. Mexican lemon imports are also inversely correlated with highway deaths in the US. Does this mean that importing lemons prevents deaths on the highway?

No, of course it doesn’t. It would be ludicrous to suggest otherwise.

This is why correlation can never imply causation. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to tobacco, this rule apparently does not apply. The truth is that no study has ever managed to conclusively prove that smoking is the direct cause of lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, nor any other disease it has been routinely associated with.

For several years now, biased scientists with personal agendas have approached this subject with vested interests in certain outcomes, namely that smoking causes cancer and other chronic diseases.

There is also an abundance of evidence suggesting that these same individuals have intentionally misinterpreted data in order to further their own personal goals and aspirations. These twisted interpretations of data have been publicized en masse by media and public health giants ever since.

So despite the increasing number of studies suggesting otherwise, the common belief that smoking causes cancer has become thoroughly ingrained in almost everyone’s mind.

It is therefore likely that the majority of the scientific community also operates under this faulty assumption, and so the implications are that the quality of scientific research into this area has been, and will be, undoubtedly skewed.

In spite of this, there is some fascinating research that has been published over the past 30 years on tobacco and smoking. Unsurprisingly, these data were not made widely available and most are completely unaware of the findings. And so I will briefly summarize some pertinent studies below.

First of all, one recent study showed that people with a diet high in GI (glycemic index) foods (such as breads, pastas and rice) were almost 50% more likely to develop lung cancer. Within these results, non-smokers were found to be twice as likely to develop the cancer when compared with smokers.

Alone, this finding could be explained away as anomalous, but as we move through the evidence you may begin to see how it fits into the bigger picture. It appears, from the research, that smoking tobacco may actually act as a protective measure against external disease-causing agents.

There was another study³ that measured the carcinogenic effects of radon after radioactive uranium ore dust was inhaled by dogs. Paradoxically, unlike the usual fatalities witnessed in other dogs during similar experiments, none of the dogs exposed to tobacco contracted cancer.

The author stated that “exposure to cigarette smoke was found to have a mitigating effect on radon daughter-induced tumors”.

Similarly an experiment⁴ on irradiated rats showed that those who smoked and were irradiated showed significantly less inflammation in the lungs than those who did not smoke.

In many ways, the smoking group resembled the non-irradiated controls. According to the author “this experimental study further supported the suppressive effect of smoking on radiation-induced pneumo-nitis.”

In human research, one analysis⁵ showed that the risk of developing lung cancer from asbestos exposure was “significantly increased in non-smokers in six of the studies [reviewed]”.

Another study⁶ suggested that the risk of developing lung cancer from asbestos exposure is approximately three times higher in non-smokers than it is in smokers.

After breast cancer radiotherapy treatment, smokers have also been observed⁷ to display a “significantly decreased inflammatory reaction i.e., reduced levels of mast cells and lymphocytes, compared to both non-smoking controls and patients”.

Are these results simply coincidental, or did smoking erect a protective barrier against radiation damage and asbestos?

Research suggests that smoking may also protect against other kinds of environmental pollution, such as exhaust fumes. A recent study⁸ on miners showed a strong link between diesel engine exhaust fume exposure and lung cancer.

The results demonstrated that miners who were heavily exposed have a three times higher risk of dying from lung cancer compared with miners with low exposure. Whereas for non-smokers, the risk was seven times higher.

Deconstructing the lung cancer myth

According to the World Health Organisation⁹, “Tobacco use is the single most important risk factor for cancer causing… around 70% of global lung cancer deaths.” An examination of the statistics paints a slightly different picture however, and it becomes clear that this statement is simply not true.

Above are statistics provided by the World Economic Forum with data collected showing the countries that smoke the most cigarettes per capita. If smoking is the cause of 70% of all lung cancer cases globally, then it would make sense that the lung cancer statistics match up with the results on this table. For example China, Russia, USA, Indonesia and Japan should theoretically have the highest rates of lung cancer because they have the highest rate of smoking. Except they don’t.

Interestingly, the above lung cancer statistics taken from the World Cancer Research Fund International only feature one of the countries said to have the highest smoking rates, and that’s the USA. If smoking was the predominant cause of lung cancer, this would show in the populations with the highest rates of smoking. Since it does not, it is safe to assume that smoking cannot be the main cause of lung cancer.

The Black Lung Lie

© Smoking Science

Black lungs are not caused by tobacco smoke Another common misconception surrounding smoking tobacco is that the smoke in and of itself is capable of turning lung tissue black. This feat is actually physically impossible, however. The lung tissue can only turn black when it is either cancerous or necrotic, or when significant amounts of elemental carbon is inhaled for prolonged periods of time.

Where can you find elemental carbon? In coal mines, not in cigarettes. And guess what? Surgeons are unable to tell the difference between smokers’ lungs and non-smokers lungs.

Here are some first-hand accounts from professionals in the medical field:¹⁰

“Smoking does not discolour the lung.” – Dr. Duane Carr, Professor of Surgery at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine

“I have examined thousands of lungs both grossly and microscopically. I cannot tell you from examining a lung whether or not its former host had smoked.” – Dr. Victor Buhler, Pathologist at St. Joseph Hospital in Kansas City

“...it is not possible grossly or microscopically, or in any other way known to me, to distinguish between the lung of a smoker or a nonsmoker. Blackening of lungs is from carbon particles, and smoking tobacco does not introduce carbon particles into the lung.” – Dr. Sheldon Sommers, Pathologist and Director of Laboratories at Lenox Hill Hospital, New York

Finally, here is a quote from Richard White’s Smoke Screens:¹¹

“This notion of smoking causing the lungs to turn black can be traced back to 1948. Ernst Wynder, then a first-year medical student in St Louis, was witness to an autopsy of a man who had died of lung cancer and he noted the lungs were blackened. The sight roused his curiousity and he looked into the background of the patient – discovering that there was no obvious exposure to air pollution, but that the deceased had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years, he linked the two. Wynder then spent his career ‘proving’ cigarettes caused cancer, although he was forced to admit the data he had compiled was inaccurate (Wynder later published books containing slides of black, cancerous lungs, leading people to assume it was smoking that caused it. He later admitted he was wrong, though.”

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