Considering the facts..we're doomed anyway.
http://www.medhelp.org/forums/STD/messages/C79-3.html
-- Modified on 10/22/2004 2:06:29 PM
This is exactly what I've been saying all along especially to those who don't think they've ever had an STD. Most STDs are treatable or not serious from a medical point of view. Frankly, I think there is too much hysteria about HIV and not enough concern about HSV and chlamydia.
Doc, I agree 100 %, HIV is a concern ,but is not easy to catch in a healthy person,and the herpes is just plain nasty, but please explain your concerns about chlamydia..is it not just a simple bacterial infection that is easily treated by antibiotics?
-- Modified on 10/23/2004 3:52:06 PM
While Chlamydia can cause a discharge, it is often asymptomatic and can result in sterility in women if not treated. It is easily passed as an STD because of the infrequent symptoms and can be occult, manifest as a discharge, or even pharyngitis after oral.
Here's something to think about. Every time HIV is discussed, everyone gets hysterical because of the belief that once exposed, regardless of how rare, death is certain. However, many of the people on these boards who are "scared to death" of HIV, smoke cigarettes without a second thought. Smoking indisputably causes heart disease and cancer which are the two most common causes of death of adults in the USA. If they're really concerned about health risks, those people should stop smoking!
Doc, while I don’t want to encourage smoking I don’t think health detriment or hysteria associated with HIV can be equated with the risk from smoking. To suffer the consequences (cancer, heart disease, ect) one has to usually smoked thousands of cigarettes over many years, whereas to contract HIV only needs ONE unprotected exposure to an HIV+ individual. Moreover, the health detriment risk from smoking can be reduced to near normal values upon cessation of the smoking for 5 years or longer. The same cannot now be said once you contracted HIV. We all are going to die and therefore what is important is the reduction in quality life expectancy. For long-term smokers this can be 8 to 10 years since cancer’s and heart disease and other smoking related ailments usually are not manifested until one is in their 50’s or 60’s. In contrast AIDs can and often develops at a much younger age leading to a much greater loss of quality life expectancy.
Good point but you need to put everything in perspective. HIV is extremely rare especially if protection is used and sex is avoided when open wounds are present. For most people the risk is nearly zero.
Smoking causes irreversible damage to the cardiovascular system and lungs. This does not take thousands of cigarettes. Everyone over the age of 20 has some degree of atherosclerosis. Smoking accelerates this process. True the effects may not manifest until 50's or 60's but by that time the damage is done and permanent.
If you quit smoking, after many years the risk of lung cancer will slowly revert to that of non-smokers but not the damage already done to the lungs (COPD) and cardiovascular system. And the risk of non-lung cancers such as head & neck, bladder, etc, does not change. If you look at acturarial statistics, you can actually calculate how many days your life is shortened by smoking when you are young. It is a continuous process, not something that just occurs after a threshold is crossed.
Doc I was referring to unprotected sex and in this case the hysteria is justifiable compared to smoking. The point is that ONE, 100 or even 1000 cigarettes is not going to have MEASURABLE effect on your health or your life expectancy. The age-specific mortality curves I am aware of are for smoking populations who have smoked much more than 1000 cigarettes. On the other hand, having unprotected sex once, let alone 1000 times, can result in contracting HIV and the risk has been calculated.
The existence or non-existence of a biological threshold is a classical debated argument for many noxious agents. Usually this involves extrapolation from high doses where there is measurable effect to low doses. This extrapolation usually cannot distinguish between a threshold and non-threshold model. As you know Doc, nearly all of our organs and biological systems have tremendous reserve and repair capacity, which must be exceeded to result in a significant health detriment and death. So the existence or non-existence of a threshold will depend on your endpoint. Using shorten life expectancy as an endpoint it is impossible I believe to show that there is no threshold effect for smoking.
Sorry, but you are wrong. If you smoke 1 cigarette a day for one year (365 cigarettes), your life span is reduced by about 2 days. If you smoke 3 per day (approx 1000 per year) then your life span is reduced by 8 days. Half a pack per day is worth about one month per year.
As for unprotected sex, if your partner is negative for HIV then your risk is zero. If your partner is positive for HIV, of course your risk is higher but the incidence of HIV is extremly low in the general population.
Unprotected sex is Russian roulette while smoking is guaranteed suicide.
No one seems to be participating in this discussion other than you and me so I'm signing off.
“Sorry, but you are wrong. If you smoke 1 cigarette a day for one year (365 cigarettes), your life span is reduced by about 2 days. If you smoke 3 per day (approx 1000 per year) then your life span is reduced by 8 days. Half a pack per day is worth about one month per year.”
Unfortunately, Doc you did not include any reasonable confidence limits in these estimate, which would have encompass the value of zero. These estimate are based on large extrapolation (apparent using a linear or a linear–quadratic model, which may or may not be correct) largely from smokers who have smoked more than 50,000 cigarettes.
“As for unprotected sex, if your partner is negative for HIV then your risk is zero. If your partner is positive for HIV, of course your risk is higher but the incidence of HIV is extremely low in the general population. “
In this hobby we don’t know if our partner is negative for HIV and I suspect the incidence of HIV in our community is higher than in the general population. In any case you cannot compare “individual risk” with “population risk” since the risk is average over the population. A proper comparison would be the difference in life expectancy in population that smoked 1000 cigarettes and had protected sex with a non-smoking population that had 1000 unprotected sex encounters.
”Unprotected sex is Russian roulette while smoking is guaranteed suicide.”
Again you are confusing individual risk with a risk average over a population. In any population you will have subpopulation of sensitive and resistant individuals. Assuming you are correct not every one who smokes 1000 cigarettes will experience life shorting of 8 days. Some will experience no life shorting while other will experience much more than 8 days.