Tobacco smoking leads to cancer to a great extent

Tobacco smoking is not conducive to health in any way and leads most commonly to diseases affecting the heart and lungs, with smoking being a major risk factor for heart attacks, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema, and cancer (particularly lung cancer, cancers of the larynx and mouth, and pancreatic cancer). Almost all of us are aware of this and thanks to this mounting consciousness, the movement to ban smoking is also getting strengthened in lots of metropolises across the globe.

Now, as per the latest report of the National Cancer Institute, part of the United States Federal government's National Institutes of Health, "Tobacco use, particularly cigarette smoking, is the single most preventable cause of death in the United States." What are the reactions of experts of the pertinent field then? Well, Dr. Craig Donaldson, radiation oncologist with Dixie Regional Medical Center's Huntsman-Intermountain Cancer Center and Valley View Medical Center's Sandra L. Maxwell Cancer Treatment Center, has no qualms to agree with the same.

"Anyone who treats cancer will tell you, we hate cigarettes," he said. "Nationally, lung cancer is the No. 1 cause of cancer death. In fact, it accounts for more deaths than the next-three-common cancers combined - breast, prostate, and colorectal. The vast majority of lung cancer diagnoses - 90 percent in men and 70 percent in women - are associated with smoking."

Again, if the 2003 report "Tobacco Control Country Profiles" published jointly by the American Cancer Society, the World Health Organization and the International Union against Cancer, is taken into account, it will be found that about 1.3 billion people worldwide at present smoke cigarettes or other products. What is most striking, even though use of tobacco in industrialized countries is on the wane, it is rising at an alarming rate in the developing world.

"About 35 percent of men in developed countries smoke, compared with almost 50 percent of men in developing nations and almost two-thirds of Chinese men," the report said. "An estimated 4.9 million premature deaths from smoking occurred in the year 2000. ... Of everyone alive today, an estimated 500 million people will eventually be killed by tobacco."

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