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This has some legal implications. You can now prove fairly conclusively that your lung cancer came from smoking. I wonder if it will lead to a new wave of tobac

• TelmoMenezes 10y ago
  Smokers were already and for a long time aware of the risks. They choose to take them. What could they possibly claim? That a product known for causing lung cancer caused lung cancer?
  • Gatsky 10y ago
    That's a good point, I am not a lawyer so I can't really comment. But perhaps there is a material difference between saying you developed a disease that could have been caused by smoking (as lung cancer occurs in non-smokers), and saying you were definitely harmed by smoking. Other avenues could be: - Smoking is also associated with other cancers, such as esophageal cancer and bladder cancer. Generally the warnings don't mention this however. By examining the mutation patterns in an esophageal cancer, you could relate it more conclusively to smoking, and could therefore claim you were not warned about that specific risk. - Tissue samples from lung cancers diagnosed 20 or 30 years ago are sitting in archival storage. You could sequence the whole genome or exome of these tumours for about $1000 - $2000. Statute of limitations aside, sequencing these tumours could reveal the tobacco signature as a basis for a claim from a time when it was less clear or less public what the risks were. - Passive smokers could have a case if their cancer shows a tobacco signature.
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • umanwizard 10y ago
      Lung cancer is caused by smoking 85-90% of the time. Probably more if you add in secondhand smoke. I think it already meets any sort of "preponderance of evidence" sort of bar to just assume anyone with lung cancer got it from smoking.
      • ghurtado 10y ago
        Citation / reference needed.
        • umanwizard 10y ago
          I googled it and the same stat on a couple different reputable sites, like that of the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society.
      • wallyhs 10y ago
        Suppose that I live in an apartment with a wood stove, second-hand smoke from a room mate, and radon. If I get lung cancer, which one is to blame? How do you know?
    • gozur88 10y ago
      I don't see how you can prove particular mutations are tobacco related. DNA can be damaged by viruses, solar radiation, various industrial chemicals, and naturally occurring replication errors. How would you prove this particular mutation was the result of smoking? I don't see how this research changes anything from a legal perspective. We already knew smoking causes genetic mutations, but we also know people who've never been exposed to tobacco can develop lung cancer.
      • Gatsky 10y ago
        The aim is to prove that the pattern of mutations in the tumour (which typically contains several hundred mutations in coding regions, more in the whole genome) are caused by smoking.
  • andy_ppp 10y ago
    I think that in all other areas it's been on the manufacturer of products to make them safer over time (cars, children's toys, cosmetics etc.) so shouldn't the tobacco companies be trying to make their product safer?
    • TelmoMenezes 10y ago
      Not all other areas. Some products are inherently unsafe, and that is precisely what the costumers want. Alcoholic beverages are unsafe, even lethal if you drink too much. They could be made safer by removing the alcohol, but that is not what most people want. The same applies to fast food and sugary drinks: could be made much safer, but people want a certain flavor at a certain price (and most know it's not healthy). Inhaling the smoke of burning tobacco leaves can cause cancer. I am fairly certain nobody has as strong of an incentive to create cancer-free tobacco as tobacco companies do. That does not mean it is possible, right?
      • addicted 10y ago
        Alcoholic beverages are not unsafe if consumed in the recommended amounts (which are fairly reasonable. 2 drinks on average, with a 3 drink max). What's the safe, reasonable, recommended smoking amount?
        • new_hackers 10y ago
          I would recommend puff, puff, pass. Otherwise you risk the chance of a bogart.
        • TelmoMenezes 10y ago
          Zero (cigarettes are highly addictive). My point is that reality limits how much safer you could make a product. Would it be nice for cigarette or alcoholic beverages to be safer? Yes. Is it possible? Apparently not. Either tobacco becomes a controlled substance (I am deeply opposed to this given the catastrophic social consequences of prohibition in general), or adults behave like adults, understand the risks, decide for themselves and accept the consequences. Maybe it's because I'm European, but anything else sounds like insanity to me. By the way, I am not being judgemental in any way. I am an ex-smoker and I drink socially. If people want to smoke (without polluting the environment of others who don't) it's their right, and I completely understand. I used to love it too.
  • ghurtado 10y ago
    They could easily claim that a product which would otherwise would not have these risks was made into a risky product by the use of certain carcinogens present in the pesticides. The choice of pesticide is made by the tobacco company, so it is their actions that introduce the carcinogen into the product. Seems pretty standard to me, and I would have to guess that this is the kind of lawsuit that you would probably support if the product in question was, say, red meat instead of tobacco.
• nthcolumn 10y ago
  Hitting yourself repeatedly over the head with a hammer can give you a headache. Not sure DeWalt are worried from a litigious point of view. I doubt there is a smoker alive today who can reasonably claim to have been unaware of the risks when they started. Anal point - why the apostrophe? Should it be "Smoking becauses hundreds..."?
  • twwl 10y ago
    Is there anyone marketing cigaretts able to claim they're unaware? Aren't those also adults?
    • umanwizard 10y ago
      I smoke (trying to quit) and I don't think cigarette manufacturers are doing anything immoral. I enjoy smoking! Why else would I have ever tried it when I knew all the risks? Nobody is getting tricked, here. People are selling a product that other people want.
      • bbarn 10y ago
        Have you read "the easy way to stop smoking"? He makes a great point about the claim that smokers don't actually enjoy it. It's addiction, thinking you enjoy it is a mechanism of avoiding the guilt of the addiction. Or something like that, his argument was much more convincing.
        • groovy2shoes 10y ago
          That's akin to saying "you don't actually enjoy eating food, you're just hungry". Addiction and enjoyment are not mutually exclusive.
  • CoryG89 10y ago
    There is literally a 69 year old woman in the article who claims just that: > "Had I known as a teenager that smoking caused mutations which would stay with me for life then I would never had started" It agree with you that it's a little silly, especially for young people, but it wasn't that long ago they started forcing cancer warnings on tobacco.
• CoryG89 10y ago
  I'm not sure that this could prove that. I believe that the mutation rate for non-smokers that develop lung cancer should be elevated as well. Perhaps there is a statistical difference, but it might not be easy to prove with certainty.
  • Gatsky 10y ago
    The tobacco signature goes beyond elevated rate, it has a sequence specific pattern (see http://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/cosmic/signatures http://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/cosmic/signatures).
    • CoryG89 10y ago
      Very interesting, does look promising indeed. However, currently it still seems unclear that they have enough data to say with certainty that these "signatures" are unique or complete. From your source: > With more cancer genome sequences and the additional statistical power this will bring, new signatures may be found, the profiles of current signatures may be further refined, signatures may split into component signatures and signatures may be found in cancer types in which they are currently not detected.
      • patall 10y ago
        These signatures will never be unique or complete. Remind you that this is biology where there is not the TRUTH to be found. At some point you can always subdivide one phenomenon in to two cases. These signatures are generated from non-negative matrix factorization which generates signature vectors more or less stable depending on the amount of input datasets and the number of signatures you want to obtain. And at some point you are limited by the amount of money you have for these dataset (still more than $1000 per patient) and how many patients exist in the end (there may be correlations we will never get to know because the search space is much bigger than the 7 billion people we are can provide in correlations.
        • Gatsky 10y ago
• nonbel 10y ago
  >"I think even Fisher would be convinced [1]." I doubt it, he would probably say no progress has been made at all: "Many would still fell, as I did about five years ago, that a good prima facie case had been made for further investigation. None think that the matter is already settled. The further investigation seems, however, to have degenerated into the making of more confident exclamations, with the studied avoidance of the discussion of those alternative explanations of the facts which still await exclusion. [...] the B.B.C. gave me the opportunity of putting forward examples of the two classes of alternative theories which any statistical association, observed without the predictions of a definite experiment, allows—namely, (1) that the supposed effect is really the cause, or in this case that incipient cancer, or a pre-cancerous condition with chronic inflammation, is a factor in inducing the smoking of cigarettes, or (2) that cigarette smoking and lung cancer, though not mutually causative, are both influenced by a common cause, in this case the individual genotype." https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher269.pdf https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher269.pdf The current paper: "Although we cannot exclude roles for covariate behaviors of smokers or differences in the biology of cancers arising in smokers compared with nonsmokers, smoking itself is most plausibly the cause of these differences." http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0299 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0299
• dekhn 10y ago
  Proof of smoking causing cancer was established a long time ago entirely without DNA evidence. I don't think convincing Fisher is/was important: there are several cases where he used his big brain to rationalize things that we clearly know are false.