New Views About Asthma Causes

See the Lie-Spewing, Criminal, Anti-Smoker Filth Lie In Our Faces!

Gloat the media, "Smokers are already relegated to the outdoors, as virtually every public building is off limits." And, aren't the media just so smug and pleased and proud of themselves, because they rammed it down our throats by systematically spreading anti-smoker lies, covering up their corruption, and censoring the truth! "Now, in Monroe County, some officials want to forbid smokers from lighting up in vehicles with children. 'If they're smoking in their car with a child, they're placing their child in jeopardy', says Bob Schmidt, director of the Monroe County Health Department. Second hand smoke, he warns, is dangerous with vehicle windows closed or open.'We're talking about increased respiratory illnesses, we're talking about asthmatic attacks, we're talking about possible sudden infant death syndrome,' said Schmidt."(Monroe County proposes smoking ban extension. Jeremy Brilliant. WTHR TV 13, Oct. 3, 2007.) Oooh, look, everybody, an authority figure says so! Therefore, we must fall on our bellies and unquestioningly worship, like good little retards, because authorities never lie. BS! If that crap was true, then why have the death rates from asthma risen ever since the anti-smoking movement began? The death rates from asthma were far lower back when nobody on earth would be so gullible as to give that crap a second's credence! But see what do the media do, every single time: As a supposed "reply," they find an ignoramus who doesn't know the facts to whine that it's a "government encroachment," not a vile and stinking defamation against innocent people! They find a clueless patsy to snivel about nannyism and slippery slopes and property rights, when the real issue is LIES! LIES! LIES! This is how the anti-smoker filth purposely and systematically deceive the public by falsely framing the issue as "freedom versus public health," in order to shove Hitler Big Lies down the public's throat! The media scum do this to us every single time, and never, ever, ever challenge those lying phony "authorities" with the facts! The reality is that smokers should have turned to violence long ago! Violence against those phony, nazi "public health" pretenders and their media sluts as well, to teach them that we will submit to their vicious lies no more!

The EPA's Sorry Status Report on Children and Asthma

"America's Children and the Environment. Measures of Contaminants, Body Burdens, and Illnesses," Second Edition, US EPA, Feb. 2003. EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman boasts that "This report marks the progress we have made as a nation to reduce environmental risks faced by childen," including "Reducing emissions of diesel pollutants from trucks and buses, which will help prevent hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks in children each year" and "Implementing the Smoke-Free Home Pledge campaign, designed to protect millions of children from the risks of tobacco smoke at home." But you have to go all the way down to pdf page 73 to learn that "Between 1980 and 1995, the percentage of children with asthma doubled, from 3.6 percent in 1980 to 7.5 percent in 1995." [And death rates from asthma during this period nearly tripled. The death rates are a more solid indicator than diagnoses of asthma because, unlike doctor visits, death is not optional.] The graph on pdf page 65 boasts of declines in cotinine levels during this same period. Needless to say, their accomplices in the media will not hold them accountable for their failures, and these leeches will be coming to us with their hands out, demanding more tax dollars (and more regulations) to do more of the same that doesn't work. (PS, good old ICF Consulting, whose history includes the illegal pass-through contracts for the "EPA's" report on secondhand smoke and overbilling the government for various other work, helped prepare this document.)

Since the anti-smoking movement began, the death rates from asthma in the United States have more than doubled in every age group above five years old. This is despite all the people who quit smoking, the smoking bans in public places, and people intimidated out of smoking in their own homes. And, anyone who looks at the death rates from asthma by age can see that they rose across all segments of the population, in the manner of an epidemic of infectious disease.

The State of Childhood Asthma, United States, 1980–2005. LJ Akinbami, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics. Adv Data 2006 Dec 12;(381):1-24. Revised as of Dec. 29, 2006. The report notes that "Despite the plateau in asthma prevalence, ambulatory care use has continued to grow since 2000... Increased ambulatory care use for asthma has continued during an era when overall rate of ambulatory care use for children did not increase." Comment re: Fig. 6, Number of deaths due to asthma per 1,000,000 children 0-17 years of age, United States, 1980-2004, these death rates rose from around 1.7 per million in 1980 to around 3.6 per million in 1996, then dropped to around 2.5 per million. However, this age grouping understates of the magnitude of the increase in the population, because the death rates from asthma are lowest among infants and children under five, while the increase occurred among all age groups above that age, including the elderly. And, they were even lower in 1978 than 1980 as well.

Asthma Death Rates Are Lower in States With Higher Rates of Smoking

The states of Utah and California, which have the lowest rates of smoking at 13.0 and 17.1 percent of adults respectively, are also among the states with the highest death rates from asthma. (Asthma Deaths, 2000; and: Smoking Among Adolescents, 2001, and Smoking Among Adults, 2001. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003 State Health Profiles, Atlanta, GA: US Deparment of Health and Human Services, 2003. The CDC's complete 2003 State Health Profiles, 187 pages and 4,964KB, could once be downloaded from their slow and balky website. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/datawh/stprofiles.htm link died.)

And, although the anti-smoking propagandists keep the public in the dark, the belief that things like smoking and pollution cause asthma has even lost credibility among experts. Not even the author of the EPA ETS report chapters on asthma, Dr. Fernando Martinez of the University of Arizona, believes in the garbage that he wrote any more. Quote: "Like most people, I assumed tobacco smoke and pollution were the problem -- this was the politically correct way to think. But these factors turned out not to play a major role. In high-pollution areas, in low-pollution areas, among all ethnic groups, there was asthma. Clearly, something else was involved." (Does Civilization Cause Asthma? By Ellen Ruppel Shell. The Atlantic Monthly, 2000 May;285(5):90-100, page 94.)

(This is not to say that the new politically correct belief, the "hygiene hypothesis" that there is more asthma because people are not exposed to enough pathogens as children (!), is any better than the old beliefs. Inner-city blacks, who have the highest rates of asthma, do not suffer from any deprivation of exposure to germs. And the increase in death rates occurred among the elderly at the same time it occurred among the young.) Martinez was the author of the 1992 EPA ETS report Chapter 7, Passive Smoking and Respiratory Disorders Other Than Lung Cancer, and Chapter 8 (with co-author Steven P. Bayard), Assessment of Increased Risk for Respiratory Illnesses.

There were cracks in the wall at the 1999 conference of the American Lung Association / American Thoracic Society as well.

"Most asthma, especially in children, appears to involve allergic inflammation of the airways mucosa. But clinicians have long suspected that viral infection of the respiratory tract might be important not only as a cause of asthma exacerbations, but perhaps also as a cause or contributor to the pathogenesis of asthma itself." "Until recently, bacterial pathogens were not suspected as important contributors to asthma, except for a handful of epidemiological investigators who noted a strong association between serological evidence of infection with Chlamydia pneumoniae and asthma." (Homer A. Boushey, MD, "The role of infections in asthma," ALA-ATS Conference 1999. Link died, http://www.medscape.com/medscape/cno/1999/ALA_ATS/Story.cfm?story_id=555.)

"Passive cigarette smoke often has been thought to increase the risk of asthma, but studies to date have not demonstrated this association convincingly." D Stempel, MD. ALA-ATS Conference 1999. Link died, http://www.medscape.com/medscape/cno/1999/ALA_ATS/Story.cfm?story_id=543.)

"Reducing allergen exposure, although intuitively obvious as a management approach, has had a less than stellar track record when applied to asthma control in clinical practice..... Even though allergen levels can be significantly reduced through use of such methods [as high efficiency air filtering, vacuuming, and pet washing], clinical disease changes very little in response." EW Gelfand, "Environmental Control and Immune Modulation in Asthma Treatment." ALA-ATS Conference 1999. Link died, http://www.medscape.com/medscape/cno/1999/ALA_ATS/Story.cfm?story_id=557.)

Research has implicated Chlamydia pneumoniae as a cause of asthma.

Some enlightened doctors have begun to treat asthma as a potentially curable infectious disease (Asthma Story.com, by Jim Quinlan. "The trail one person took to completely cure his asthma.")

However, there is another strong contender which has been overlooked:

From 3 to 15% of the adult population may have an untreated C. trachomatis infection. Most infections had no symptoms - at least, not the kind of symptoms they were looking for. C. trachomatis in infants is a cause of pneumonia, followed by respiratory symptoms such as wheezing and reduced lung function for many years after.

Untreated gonococcal and chlamydial infection in a probability sample of adults. CF Turner, SM Rogers, HG Miller, WC Miller, JN Gribble, JR Chromy, PA Leone, PC Cooley, TC Quinn, JM Zenilman. JAMA 2002 Feb 13;287(6):726-733. (News) Many cases of Gonorrhea, Chlamydia are asymptomatic and go undiagnosed. Medscape - Reuters Health Information 2002 Feb. 12.

Chlamydial pneumoniae of infancy: further clinical observations. VH San Joaquin, JR Herrin, JM Hautala. Clin Pediatr (Phila) 1980 Feb;19(2):109-112. They note that "wheezing may be a very prominent feature of the disease," but fail to consider that it may be a cause of asthmatic wheezing.

Pulmonary assessment of children after chlamydial pneumonia of infancy. SG Weiss, RW Newcomb, MO Beem. J Pediatr 1986 May;108(5 Pt 1):659-664. "Our results show that chlamydial pneumonia of infancy is associated with PFT abnormalities and respiratory symptoms 7 to 8 years after recovery from the acute illness."

Chlamydia trachomatis infection in children with wheezing simulating asthma. M Bavastrelli, M Midulla, D Rossi, M Salzano. Lancet 1992 May 9;339:1174. Letter. "Our data indicate that wheezing may be another clinical expression of C trachomatis infection and that this organism should be sought as a routine in children who wheeze but have no demonstrable allergy and do not respond to the usual anti-asthmatic medications." No abstract.

Serology of Chlamydia in relation to asthma and bronchial hyperresponsiveness. E Bjornsson, E Hjelm, C Janson, E Fridell, G Boman. Scand J Infect Dis 1996;28(1):63-69. In this study, the highest OR was found for "current or recent C. trachomatis" and "asthma this year," 13.9 (95% CIs 3.0-64.8; p<0.001).

Table III. The propensity for having diagnosed asthma, wheezing or bronchial hyperresponsiveness (BHR) in subjects with serological evidence of chlamydial infection after adjustments for sex, age, smoking and atopy by means of logistic regression. Adjusted odds ratios (95% confidence intervals).

                 C. pneumoniae                         C. trachomatis

                 Current or recent   Previous          Current or recent  Previous

Ever asthma       0.7 (0.2-3.9)      0.8 (0.4-1.9)      7.7 (1.8-32.2)**   3.6 (1.4-9.3)**

Asthma this year  1.1 (0.2-4.8)      0.5 (0.2-1.2)     13.9 (3.0-64.8)***  4.6 (1.7-12.8)**

Wheezing          6.7 (1.3-35.7)*    1.0 (0.5-2.1)      5.3 (1.0-27.7)*    4.2 (1.5-11.8)**

BHR               2.5 (0.7-9.0)      0.7 (0.3-1.5)      3.5 (0.9-13.5)     3.0 (1.2-7.6)*

* p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001

Here's What They're Spending Our Tax Dollars For!

The NIEHS Nurtures Baby Vermin Instead of Young Scientists!

Here's the kind of crap that the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences puts on its "Kids' Pages," in order to nurture, encourage, and reward children for being the kind of malicious ignoramuses who serve their totalitarian agenda: "Mama didn't know that when I had to go to the hospital, it was because our house was filled with tobacco smoke and I couldn't breathe. It's scary to have asthma. She prayed by my bed all night and just loved me with all her heart" and "Mama didn't know that the chemicals from the smoke in her cigarettes could make our whole family sick. But now she does! Mama quit smoking, and I promised not to ever start." All laced with the anti-smokers' usual favorite insults about smoking "stinking," which is fundamentally a symptom of mental defect in the accuser. This putrid garbage isn't science - it's emotion-manipulating BIBLE CAMP BIBBLE-BABBLE! This agency is entirely dedicated to QUACKERY, specifically the deliberate use of defective studies that ignore the role of infection, in order to promote hysteria over the environmental bogeyman-of-the-day. And the despicable creatures who run this agency are unaccountable to REAL science, due to the political power of the rotten-to-the-core Lasker Lobby that has controlled Congress and the health establishment for six decades! (Mama Didn't Know. The Mama Didn't Know story was created by the KMAC Kids 2000-2001 [Kids Making A Connection] "the Mama Didn't Know book was made possible by funds received from the Tobacco Tax Health Protection Act of 1988, Proposition 99, under Grant Number 99-85267 with the California Department of Health Services, Tobacco Control Section. California Smokers Helpline -800-NO-BUTTS. KMAC activities were originally supported by an NIEHS grant in K-12 environmental health science education, 'Toxrap' Network." "This page was prepared by the NIEHS Office of Management, (919) 541-0395, PO Box 12233, RTP, NC 27709, for the Office of Communications, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)." 06/08/2005 06:35:50.)

Ellen Swallows Richards, the vaunted founder of the smoke-abatement movement, whose 19th century pseudo-science continues to enslave the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and its sycophant, the Health Effects Institute, was the aunt of Junius A. Richards, a director of Tobacco and Allied Stocks which took over Philip Morris in the 1950s.

"Tobacco Allergy"

Hypersensitivity to tobacco antigen. CG Becker, T Dubin, HP Wiedeman. PNAS 1976 May;73(5):1712-1716. 12/31 volunteers had skin reactions to a glycoprotein extracted from cured tobacco leaves, which was antigenically cross-reactive to substances found in eggplants,green peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes.

Tobacco smoke "sensitivity" - is there an immunologic basis? SB Lehrer, F Barbandi, JP Taylor, JE Salvaggio. J Allergy Clin Immunol 1984 Feb;73(2):240-245. A significant number of individuals have reactions to antigens extracted from the whole leaves of tobacco, but these are not found in the smoke. These reactions did not correlate with claimed sensitivity to tobacco smoke. The study was supported by both the Council for Tobacco Research and the National Institutes of Health.

Hyperventilation causes asthma and heart symptoms

Hyperventilation syndrome. A brief review. JC Missri, S Alexander. JAMA 1978 Nov 3;240(19):2093-2096. They note that dianosis is often missed, because many patients don't demonstrate classic symptoms. "The ECG changes caused by hyperventilation seem related to alteration of autonomic nervous system tone, both sympathetic and parasympathetic rather than to hemodynamic changes. Less likely, local changes in electrolyte concentration, particularly potassium, may play a role. In the Figure, great downward depression of the ST segment and flattening and inversion of the T waves can be noted. This response is fairly typical, but ST segment depression or T wave changes alone have also been described both in the resting and exercise ECG."

Hyperventilation syndrome: a diagnosis begging for recognition. GJ Magarian, DA Middaugh, DH Linz. West J Med 1983 May;138(5):733-736. "Hypocapnea and respiratory alkalosis develop rapidly upon onset of hyperventilation and can easily be maintained indefinitely, by nearly imperceptible hyperventilation, such as by taking an occasional deep breath while maintaining a normal respiratory rate. Without knowing this, physicians may directly observe the subtle, chronic form of hyperventilation without recognizing it or, upon considering the diagnosis, inappropriately reject it because the anticipated hyperventilatory respiratory pattern is not present." "Respiratory alkalosis increases the avidity of oxygen binding to hemoglobin such that oxygen becomes less readily released to tissues (the Bohr effect). Hypophosphatemia develops rapidly and persists for the duration of respiratory alkalosis, probably related to intracellular shifts of phosphorus. With persistent hyperventilation, hypophosphatemia would impair generation of 2,3-diphosphoglycerate (2,3-DPG), further reducing oxygen availability for tissue utilization.... Finally, several investigators have shown coronary vasoconstriction induced by hyperventilation in some patients with Prinzmetal's angina and others with fixed coronary occlusive disease." Table 2, hyperventilation can cause general symptoms including weakness, fatigue, and blurred vision; anxiety, depression, phobias, feeling far away, sensations of unreality; numbness and tingling in limbs, lightheadedness, dizziness, fainting, and headaches; a feeling of being unable to take a satisfying deep breath; and musculoskeletal chest wall pain (chest wall syndrome).

Hyperventilation is another frequent cause of asthma symptoms: Prevalence of dysfunctional breathing in patients treated for asthma. M Thomas, RK McKinley, E Freeman, C Foy. BMJ 2001 May 5;322(7294):1098. Among 219 adult patients aged 17-65 with diagnosed asthma who were receiving treatment, "About a third of women and a fifth of men had scores suggestive of dysfunctional breathing... Abnormal breathing patterns have been shown to cause breathlessness, chest tightness, chest pain, light-headedness, paraesthesiae, and anxiety. This symptom complex has been described in different clinical situations and has been referred to as the hyperventilation syndrome, behavioural breathlessness, and dysfunctional breathing. It often occurs in association with hyperventilation."

cast 12-30-07