And what of opium chewing?

doi:10.1136/bmj.b1739

Published 29 April 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1739
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1739

Letters

Tea and cancer

And what of opium chewing?

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

I am surprised that Islami and colleagues did not also collectinformation on the local habit of chewing the tarry residuesfrom opium smoking, which Professor Thomas Hewer establishedin the 1970s as the cause of raised rates of oesophageal cancerin the region.¹ Opium tar was chewed mainly by those too poorto afford opium itself.

But then this finding got Tom Hewer into considerable hot waterwith the Shah: perhaps the current regime would be equally antipatheticto such a result?

Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1739

Ralph Lucas, legislator¹

¹ House of Lords, London SW1A 0PW

LucasR@parliament.uk

Competing interests: None declared.

Islami F, Pourshams A, Nasrollahzadeh D, Kamangar F, Fahimi S, Shakeri R, et al. Tea drinking habits and oesophageal cancer in a high risk area in northern Iran: population based case-control study. BMJ 2009;338:b929. (26 March.)[Abstract/Free Full Text]

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Tea drinking habits and oesophageal cancer in a high risk area in northern Iran: population based case-control study: Farhad Islami, Akram Pourshams, Dariush Nasrollahzadeh, Farin Kamangar, Saman Fahimi, Ramin Shakeri, Behnoush Abedi-Ardekani, Shahin Merat, Homayoon Vahedi, Shahryar Semnani, Christian C Abnet, Paul Brennan, Henrik Møller, Farrokh Saidi, Sanford M Dawsey, Reza Malekzadeh, and Paolo Boffetta
BMJ 2009 338: b929. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]