from Hacker News

When cigarette companies used doctors to push smoking (2018)

by benpiper on 1/20/22, 1:11 AM with 191 comments

  • by daenz on 1/20/22, 2:43 AM

    Look at the timeline:

      1930  - first cigarette company uses physicians in their ads
  1950s - evidence starts mounting that smoking causes lung cancer
  1964  - US Surgeon General report on the link between smoking and cancer
  1998  - cigarette companies still maintained that the link is controversial
    So it takes 70 years, or nearly an entire generation, before all of the machinery at play (businesses, government, healthcare, scientists) can effectively come to the conclusion that they messed up badly and sold people poison. Grim.

  • by photochemsyn on 1/20/22, 3:15 AM

    Future possible headlines:

    When Pharmaceutical Companies Used Doctors to Push Opiates

    When Pharmaceutical Companies Used Psychiatrists to Push Amphetamines

  • by geodel on 1/20/22, 2:48 AM

    Yeah, but that is past. Now we can absolutely, truly believe on doctors, as it is all based on science.

  • by tmule on 1/20/22, 3:35 AM

    The Sackler family pushed opioids onto middle America in a rather spectacular fashion. In any functioning society - including with a death penalty - they’d be contending with the harshest possible penalty. Just not in America.

  • by ratsmack on 1/20/22, 3:37 AM

    It seems that lately, questioning the "doctors" in public places can make you a pariah (and I won't go any further with that).

    On another note, I was prescribed a medicine 20 years ago called Propulsid. When I went to fill the prescription, the pharmacist told me that he would not recommend I take it. I contacted the doctor and he was pissed that the pharmacist had given me that recommendation. In the end I didn't take it, which is a good thing because it was removed from the market several years later for causing heart issues.

    >WARNING

    >Serious cardiac arrhythmias including ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, torsades de pointes, and QT prolongation have been reported in patients taking cisapride.

    https://www.rxlist.com/propulsid-drug.htm

  • by oofabz on 1/20/22, 6:53 AM

    My grandmother was prescribed cigarettes for anxiety in the 1950s. She quit in the '80s after developing emphysema, but it was too late. After years on oxygen her lungs were unable to sustain her and she suffocated.

  • by 8f2ab37a-ed6c on 1/20/22, 3:02 AM

    What is the current state of research into the safety of e-cigs? The things have been around for over a decade now, but I haven't seen studies to show how much of a carcinogen they are for regular users. Has the product not been on the market lot enough for studies to be able to prove much of anything in either direction?

  • by xelfer on 1/20/22, 5:26 AM

    > This content is not available in your area.

    Really making good use of that global network we got goin' here, history.com.

    https://i.imgur.com/3bPAFQA.png

  • by paxys on 1/20/22, 3:40 AM

    I have long suspected that all the doctors and studies that confirm that vaping is a perfectly safe alternative are to be taken with a similar grain of salt.

  • by shadowgovt on 1/20/22, 2:05 AM

    I'm reminded of the Ethyl corporation funding the studies that said lead wasn't very harmful.

    ... Of course, that's the thing about science. The people doing research are separate from the ones providing the money. And people will put money behind the research that they believe is correct. This does, of course, incentivize some unethical folks to fudge numbers, but in general, the right way to approach this is to separate the funding from the science. See what the science says. Then, if you see an outlier paper and you need to understand why it's so different from the consensus... It might be helpful to see who is funding it to understand.

    Going the other way (discounting the science based on who is funding it) is forming theories without data.

  • by annadane on 1/20/22, 5:50 AM

    I understand this is only tangentially related, but you can understand with the background of some of the medical profession, that some people are anti-vax (with respect to covid-19). To be clear, I'm very pro-vax - but yeah

  • by AlexCoventry on 1/20/22, 4:28 AM

    The statistician R. A. Fisher contributed a great deal to the confusion, as well.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/182596a0.pdf

  • by keyle on 1/20/22, 1:58 AM

    Site not accessible from outside the US? lovely.

  • by soheil on 1/20/22, 4:18 AM

    Easy to look back and make fun of those commercials [0]. It's more sad than anything else if someone does that since they'd be applying their current knowledge of harms of tobacco to people who didn't have said knowledge. This is a cognitive bias called the Curse of knowledge [1]. I see so much of this happening not just on Youtube comments, but even here on HN, it's almost disturbing.

    The fair thing to wonder about is what things are we doing today that will seem ridiculous and obviously harmful to people in 100 years from now. Staring at a bright flat screen hours a day just to interact with a random stranger who vehemently disagrees with you about petty subjects?

    [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

  • by Acen on 1/20/22, 2:06 AM

  • by e67f70028a46fba on 1/20/22, 1:59 AM

    Thank goodness no companies are using doctors to push their products today.

  • by mastazi on 1/20/22, 5:34 AM

    Archive link please? Content is geoblocked (connecting from Australia)

    Edit: here it is https://web.archive.org/web/20220120011739/https://www.histo...

  • by human on 1/20/22, 3:23 AM

    If it was that bad in the 40s, imagine now with a mountain of student debt. Money is more tempting than ever.

  • by nzp7chfjks on 1/20/22, 6:42 PM

    Drinking fluoride is still good for your teeth right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_campaigns_of_...

  • by solarkraft on 1/20/22, 3:09 AM

    It's a bit funny that some commenters relate this to vaccines. I also see a similarity, but maybe in a slightly different way.

    The tobacco industry paid doctors to become outliers and promoted them to imply expert consensus and push their product.

    People not very fond of vaccines also promote outliers attempting to imply some form of consensus or at least scientific validity. Quite a few of them also have products or a whole world view to sell (which often includes buying specific products).

  • by rswskg on 1/20/22, 3:26 PM

    Japan Tobacco employed scientists to conduct research about the benefits of smoking as recently as 2009. My students when I worked there were said scientists.

  • by xyst on 1/20/22, 2:41 AM

    fun fact: cigarette usage does appear to at least decrease the chance of you getting ulcerative colitis

    still a shitty habit to pick up though

  • by MangoCoffee on 1/20/22, 2:35 AM

    >In the 1930s and 40s

    smoking was cool back then. it was a social thing to do. you can see that in old Hollywood movies.

  • by adultSwim on 1/20/22, 4:03 AM

    The timing on this story is coincident with the recent outspoken professor.

  • by stakkur on 1/20/22, 5:50 AM

    “When Doctors Recommended Smoking As A Science-Based Health Practice”

    FTFY.

  • by seventytwo on 1/20/22, 1:56 AM

    Intentional, malicious disinformation campaigns should be viewed as fraud against the American public.

  • by zeroesandones on 1/20/22, 8:06 AM

    they used all kind of tactics, political wars, gender wars, cultural wars; name them all. Thanks to the mastermind Edward Bernays.

  • by elzbardico on 1/20/22, 1:02 PM

    In a pure quantitative basis, considering only the deaths and not even the social and economic cost (which indirectly leads to more deaths, or at least impacts quality of life) there's no much reason not to include tobacco into the list of great genocides. Objectivelly, all those executives, salesman, advertisers are guilty of crimes against humanity.

  • by readingnonsense on 1/20/22, 3:15 AM

    Bringing these things up during the early days of the pandemic would have gotten you blacklisted/shadowbanned on sites such as this one, as "please don't spread unfounded rumors - dang"

  • by VonGuard on 1/20/22, 2:11 AM

    "When asked 'What cigarette do you smoke, doctor?' More doctors said 'Camel' than any other brand."

    Abbott and Costello were sponsored by Camel. C-AM-EL-s

    C for Comedy

    A for Abbott

    M for Maxwell

    E for Ennis

    and L for Lou Costello, put them together and they spell, CAMEL!

    https://otrr.org/hotrod/hotrod7.html for episodes.

  • by webmobdev on 1/20/22, 4:40 AM

    And now Tobacco companies have latched on to, and are promoting Marijuana - something that is even more addictive, and both mentally and physically more harmful (in the long run).

    > Marijuana also affects brain development. When people begin using marijuana as teenagers, the drug may impair thinking, memory, and learning functions and affect how the brain builds connections between the areas necessary for these functions. Researchers are still studying how long marijuana's effects last and whether some changes may be permanent. Long-term marijuana use has been linked to mental illness in some people, such as: temporary hallucinations, temporary paranoia, worsening symptoms in patients with schizophrenia ...

    Source: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana