Talk:Asthma

Big Tobacco still up to its "health effects are controversial" tricks

Some of the comments above are difficult to understand other than as an attempt to extend tobacco sellers' decades-old "tobacco might be healthy" controversy-tricks to Wikipedia's asthma page, and to minimize or obfusticate the causative role of tobacco smoke as a cause of asthma.

Big Tobacco's attempt to create the appearance of health "controversy" wherever it can seems to me to have extended to editing Wikipedia's "Tobacco" and "Smoking" pages, and to deleting mention of Big Tobacco's circumvention of its advertising agreements by product placement in movies from the Product Placement article.

Just as product placement in media such as movies is devastatingly effective advertising because it appears not to be advertising, misinformation planted in Wikipedia is devastatingly effective because those expecting to rely on it expect straight information, and do not expect it to be skewed for the profits of the tobacco sellers.

To the extent that the tobacco sellers succeed in extending the appearance of "controversy" to Wikipedia and depriving a new generation of the information needed to make a fully-informed decision about becoming a tobacco buyer, the tobacco sellers' direct and indirect profits will be huge and worldwide. It's censoring and throwing half-baked, off-topic studies to generate the appearance of "controversy" amount to subtle vandalism, and to the extent these tricky context tamperings are effective, are designed to suggest to impressionable preteens considering smoking -- tobacco seller's favorite marketing group -- that the health effects of tobacco use are, after all, in doubt.

Tampering with Wikipedia to dilute the fact that tobacco costs are far higher than the price per pack should be viewed as a call to Wikipedians familiar with the science on the issue to ensure that

(1) the science and facts needed to evaluate tobacco's risks and costs in context, and the insidious marketing strategies of tobacco sellers, are not allowed to be quietly deleted from the relevant pages,

(2) that tobacco sellers' smoke screen of off-topic implications that tobacco use might be healthy is addressed by full factual context, and

(3) that health professionals realize that there is a continuing need for vigilance in guarding the pages where potentially profitable young customers for Big Tobacco will come looking for presumably-accurate information -- that making sure that information is reliable -- not jimmied to increase sales -- is an ongoing public health issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.165.11.209 (talk • contribs) 17:49, 22 March 2008

sometimes fatal

Anthony Shadid died sudenly at age 43 of an acute asthma attack according to New york times so perhaps this can be used to cite asthma is sometimes fatal? EdwardLane (talk) 17:55, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I would not want to use the New York Times as a source for asthma deaths. There is sufficient WP:MEDRS-compatible literature. JFW | T@lk 18:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

That's fair enough, but I never stumbled across those, and basically was a bit surprised to find no mention of anyone actually dying of asthma in the article. If you have some sources in the med journals and can reference those then it should probably get into the article EdwardLane (talk) 11:14, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

doi:10.1111/j.1398-9995.2004.00526.x is a bit dated, but covers this on an international level. JFW | T@lk 22:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)