ASH Daily News for 09 May 2008

Tooting man killed by cigarette fire

An inquest has heard that a Tooting (South London) man found in a bed which had caught fire was killed by a smouldering cigarette.

Stephen Wachira, 46, of Ipswich Road, dropped the cigarette on to clothing surrounding the bed, causing the house fire that claimed his life on February 18.

A postmortem examintaion revealed signs of smoke inhalation suggesting Mr Wachira had died in his sleep as the room around him ignited.

When fire services arrived they found the first floor bedroom was locked from the inside and several cigarette butts, empty beer cans and vodka bottles were strewn across the floor.

A statement from Mr Wachira's GP, Dr Azhar Ala, read to Westminster Coroner's Court, described Mr Wachira as an extremely 'unwell gentleman' suffering from Crohn's disease, anaemia and a severe alcoholic addiction.

But despite this, a toxicology report suggested he had not been drinking before the fire. Mr Wachira lived on his own and no one else was harmed in the fire.

Deputy Coroner, Dr Shirley Radcliffe said, "I don't believe Mr Wachira suffered a painful death. He would have passed away peacefully in his sleep."

Tooting firefighters were called to the two-storey terraced house at 6.50pm. A neighbour said: "I didn't see what happened, but when I returned home at 7.30pm, I saw lots of smoke and fire engines and police."

While the death was eventually considered unsuspicious, a homicide team initially investigated the incident when unexplained grazing and bruising was found on the body.

Source: Epsom Guardian, 07 May 2008  
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5r9g69

Trial tests lung cancer screening

Smokers with a severe lung condition are to be tested to see if there is a way of detecting who is at greatest risk of cancer.

The trial of 1,300 people, funded by Cancer Research UK, will take place at six English hospitals.

Samples of phlegm will be tested twice a year, with further checks if abnormal cells are found. If lung cancer is detected earlier, more treatments can be offered, and survival rates improved.

It may be the first step towards an effective screening test for lung cancer in those at high-risk of the disease

Currently, 38,000 people a year are diagnosed with lung cancer in the UK, and 33,000 people die from the condition annually. Overall, just 7% of patients are still alive five years after diagnosis.

But if some types of lung cancer are detected at an early, operable stage, up to 80% of patients are alive five years later.

This study will look at screening long-term smokers with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), a degenerative lung condition, largely caused by smoking, that includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and increases the chance of developing lung cancer.

Professor Stephen Spiro of University College London Hospitals (UCLH), who is leading the study, said: "Many of the tests that have been used to screen for lung cancer have not been able to pick up very early signs of the disease so we're using two new tests which we think could be better at picking up lung cancer earlier."

Kate Law, director of clinical trials at Cancer Research UK, said: "We urgently need to find new ways of detecting lung cancer earlier, so that patients have a better chance of successful treatment."

"This is a very important trial and it may be the first step towards an effective screening test for lung cancer in those at high-risk of the disease."

The trial will take place at University College Hospital, London, Royal Brompton Hospital, London, Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, St James's Hospital, Leeds, Glenfield Hospital, Leicester and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London.

Source: BBC News, 09 May 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/6ja2q9

Children's peers are best people to warn of smoking dangers

Researchers have found that the most important health warning that parents can give their children – don't smoke – is best delivered by their friends.

Training children who are popular at school to educate their peers about the dangers of smoking could cut the number who take up the habit by more than a fifth, a study showed. If the same technique were used nationwide, the number of children aged 14 and 15 who take up smoking could be cut by 43,000 a year.

It is unclear whether young people smoke because their friends do or whether those who choose to smoke associate with others who are similarly inclined. What is clear, according to the researchers from the universities of Bristol and Cardiff, is that peer influence can be protective, if it can be effectively harnessed.

To do this they launched a two year study in 59 schools in the West Country involving 11,000 children aged 12 to 13. In half of the schools, the children were asked to nominate the most influential pupils in their year group and these were trained as "peer supporters". The remaining schools acted as a control group.

In two days of training outside school, teachers advised on the risks of smoking and the economic benefits of stopping, and taught negotiating skills. This was followed by four sessions in school. The peer supporters included existing smokers who were told they could be trained if they gave up cigarettes.

For the next 10 weeks, the peer supporters were asked to talk to their friends about the benefits of not smoking, in the hope it would persuade them to stop. It worked. Children in the schools which ran the programme were 25 per cent less likely to take up regular smoking immediately after it ended than those in the control schools.

The programme was popular with students and staff, with a more than 90 per cent response rate and no schools dropping out during the trial, suggesting it could successfully be extended.

The authors point out that stopping young people from smoking successfully stops them developing nearly all of the diseases associated with it. Once smoking is started, however, evidence shows that it is harder for poorer people to give up.

"Increasing resources for prevention in adolescence rather than focusing on cessation could help to avoid widening health inequalities," they say.

Source: The Independent, 09 May 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/57sner

Arrests as 6.4m cigarettes seized

UK Border Agency officers have seized 6.4m contraband cigarettes at a transport yard in Teesside. 

Agency officers and police swooped as the illegal tobacco was being unloaded from a trailer into a transit van.

Three men were arrested at the scene and police said more arrests were expected as the inquiry continued.

The estimated lost revenue from taxes on the cigarettes would have totalled more than £1m.

The three arrested men were bailed pending further inquiries.
 

Source: BBC news, 07 May 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/6ffd5z

USA: Tobacco giant pays for cancer research

The largest cigarette maker in the US has paid for scientific research at four Massachusetts universities since 2000, a practice that critics of the tobacco industry liken to the Mafia underwriting crime fighting.

Philip Morris USA, which makes Marlboro and other top selling cigarette lines, gave grants to scientists at Boston University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Massachusetts, according to David Sylvia, a company spokesman.

The research supported by the company touched on conditions such as heart disease and cancer that are linked to smoking. The grants given by the Philip Morris External Research Program were not used to develop new tobacco products or refine existing brands, but they may have helped the company rehabilitate its image.

When accepting Philip Morris money, the researchers had to promise to disclose the source of their funding in scientific publications, Mr Sylvia said, and the company, in turn, promised not to meddle in the research.

Industry foes said research paid for by tobacco companies is irredeemably compromised.

Gregory Connolly, a professor at Harvard's school of public health said, "Taking money from the tobacco industry to conduct scientific research is like the district attorney taking money from the Mafia to conduct investigations of crime."

University scientists came under withering attack for taking money from Big Tobacco in the 1990s, when their work was seen as boosting industry claims that cigarettes were not harmful. The tenor of industry funded research changed after the companies admitted in a settlement in 1998 that their products were lethal.

Worldwide, about 470 research projects were underwritten by the company, Mr Sylvia said, resulting in more than 1000 publications in journals that subject papers to peer scrutiny, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 05 May 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5okoxv