Polonium: Does a Body Good

Lately we've been hearing a lot about former KGB agent Alexander V. Litvinenko and his undoubtedly excruciating, yet seemingly scripted death. But today, rather than more ridiculous details about grounded planes and possible means of contamination, I stumbled upon an op-ed piece in the New York Times (ok, my boss forwarded it to me for soon to be obvious reasons) that basically insinuated the apocalypse is upon us--an apocalypse brought on by...

Terrorists? No...

Flooding as a result of global warming? No...

The return of Jesus Christ? Well, not yet anyways...

Instead, this professor of history at Stanford University seems to think all of us will eventually die in Litvinenko-like fashion (or begin to glow in the dark) as a result of cigarettes. *The article is linked with the title above.



Does anyone else think it odd that a professor of history has served as a witness in litigation against the tobacco industry? Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to think that those suing the tobacco industry would have something along the lines of, oh I don't know, science in order to prove their case.

Regardless, Mr. Proctor successfully added another harmful poison to the laundry list of death-causing agents in cigarettes. Question: Why?

"Wow, Mr. Proctor! I knew that arsenic stuff, and I reckon I heard a bit about cyanide...oh, and that stuff that keeps me addicted? Um...nicotine? Yeah. But this polonium stuff. That's the last straw."

Right.

If you read anything in this blog, read this. People that smoke aren't stupid. ...ok maybe, that was the wrong way to put it. Smokers are NOT ignorant to the dangers of smoking. It's not possible to pick up a cigarette without knowing that it's a carcinogen. Lengthening the list of harmful side affects is great, go for it, but please realize that if one death-causing toxin isn't enough to prevent me, three or four probably isn't either. If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna go all out.

I especially enjoyed Mr. Proctor's bit about my cigarettes helping to make a continuous chain from the earth to the sun and back with enough left over to make a couple similar chains from earth to mars. Although I've never been a fan of these impractical examples of quantity, Proctor's example gave me comfort. It's good to know that I come nowhere NEAR the 5.7 trillion cigarettes consumed each year.