Lung cancer isn’t the only thing to worry about with smoking…there’s emphysema, of course, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. All nasty, nasty ways to rot your lungs away to nothing. Still there is the benefit of a tiny reduction in risk of getting Parkinson’s disease, should you happen to survive the lung rot.

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It is. But, there’s always someone you know who has a granny who lived to 190 and smoked 60 a day since she was ten…

..face like a catcher’s mitt since she was 30 of course.

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That’s the gal I was thinking of…

They’re rare those kinds of people though. But, just think if she has a smoking-protective gene, we could engineer ourselves to stay safe from all the nasties given off by cigarettes.

Seriously, though, maybe she does have some favourable genetics that might point to why some people are more susceptible than others to particular lung diseases etc.

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But nasties come not only from cigarettes but also other forms of pollution, so perhaps her longevity might be associated with some generic protective effect against such compounds…who knows? Like you say, good idea to get her consent sooner, rather than later, for all kinds of reasons…

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[...] The CDC Genomics & Health Weekly Update features Eye on DNA this week under Let’s Go Surfing! (Sorry about last week’s false alarm.) [...]

[...] Today is No Smoking Day over in the UK. *waves across the ocean to Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei* [...]

I recently quit smoking and wanted to pass along a site I used to help me. It has a few basic videos showing how to quit smoking. I’m not sure if you’re interested in how to videos, but I found these useful.