Re: Smoke-Inhalation? How about Smoker-Inhalation Machines?
I enjoyed Tony Floyd's witty response. Medical and scientific
journals need more writing like his, so that we can stop taking ourselves
so seriously. I would like to go even further and suggest turning all
human beings into garden mulch, with beneficial effects so obvious that
they need not be recited. But I have to get serious and ask Tony Floyd, as
a future doctor, to try to understand people a little more
sympathetically. I smoked heavily for 32 years, and paid for it with
double pneumonia, which, in its turn, helped me both to quit smoking
(about 15 years ago) and to understand the struggles of the smoker. In my
own case, and I am sure in the cases of many others, knowing the harm I
was doing did not help me to free myself from an organic addiction, no
matter how hard I tried. Smoke addiction is a disease, and physicians
should look at the afflicted as patients. The Japanese inhalation
machines are not the ideal solution, but they seem to help.
Competing interests:
No competing interests
05 September 2002
Frank J Leavitt
Chairman, Centre for Asian and International Bioethics,
Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, ISRAEL
Rapid Response:
Re: Smoke-Inhalation? How about Smoker-Inhalation Machines?
I enjoyed Tony Floyd's witty response. Medical and scientific
journals need more writing like his, so that we can stop taking ourselves
so seriously. I would like to go even further and suggest turning all
human beings into garden mulch, with beneficial effects so obvious that
they need not be recited. But I have to get serious and ask Tony Floyd, as
a future doctor, to try to understand people a little more
sympathetically. I smoked heavily for 32 years, and paid for it with
double pneumonia, which, in its turn, helped me both to quit smoking
(about 15 years ago) and to understand the struggles of the smoker. In my
own case, and I am sure in the cases of many others, knowing the harm I
was doing did not help me to free myself from an organic addiction, no
matter how hard I tried. Smoke addiction is a disease, and physicians
should look at the afflicted as patients. The Japanese inhalation
machines are not the ideal solution, but they seem to help.
Competing interests: No competing interests