What yours?

Do you know about Eve van Grafhorst? She was born in NSW in 1982 and needed a blood transfusion. From that, she was affected by HIV, which eventually became AIDs. She didn’t ask for that. Eve’s parents fought for her, against other parents in the area who knew nothing about HIV, and believed it was airborne. Eventually the van Grafhorsts moved to Hastings on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand, and were welcomed there.

In 1992 Eve received the Variety Gold Heart Award. She was 10. A year later, in 1993, she died, at the age of 11. Princess Diana sent a letter to Eve’s mother, acknowledging Eve for her “courage and strength”.

These days many people know about HIVand AIDs, and understand that any person can get this. Have a look at AIDS Link International and read what can cause HIV and AIDS. Get yourself informed.

My research went on further. I know many smokers, and I know many who have given up. I also know many non-smokers. The packets for cigarettes say that “Smoking causes heart disease”, or “Smoking causes lung cancer”, among the other required statements. They are not correct. They should be re-printed to say that “Smoking can cause heart disease”, or “Smoking can cause lung cancer”. Why? Because smoking is only a small part of heart diseases, lung cancer and many other diseases.

I looked up some websites which listed what is known globally as dangerous diseases. Smoking doesn’t even show on many of those lists.

• 2010: Nursing Schools (USA) statistics for the ‘developing countries’ included malaria, influenza and asthma in the top 20.
• 2012: Forbes listed global death tolls: they included respiratory infections: death toll 3,060,166; HIV/AIDS: death toll 1,533,760; diarrhoeal diseases: death toll 1,497,674. They counted up to 10 diseases.
• 2016: The Meningitis Centre in Australia listed 9 diseases which could kill within 24 hours: meningococcal disease, streptococcus and stroke, among others.
• 2016: WHO listed 10 death statistics globally, which includes ischaemic heart disease (9.5 million), stroke (5.9 million) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (3.2 million).  Lung cancer was further down the list, with bronchus and trachea. 
• 2017: News.com.au gave us a travellers list which included African diseases such as plague (which hit Europe in the Medieval history during the 13^th and 14^th centuries, killing one third of the population), tuberculosis (which kills one million people annually) and typhoid fever (killing around 220,000 every year). 
• 2017: SBS gave a list of what they felt was killing Australians. The top one was ischaemic heart disease (12.04% of all registered deaths). 
• 2017: The Conversation listed diseases which are still working to kill people, including tuberculosis, HIV/AIDs and influenza. Smallpox, they told us, was ‘eradicated’ in 1980, with the last recorded death in 1977, yet they say “Smallpox may be gone as a disease, but the variola virus controversially remains, kept secure in laboratories in Russia and the US. Concern has emerged about the prospect of smallpox as a weapon of bioterrorism. The impact of such an event could be devastating, given people are no longer routinely immunised against smallpox.” 
• 2018: Cheatsheet listed deaths from something within 24 hours. If you don’t know about these, then read this! It was written in June 2018, so it’s the latest list. Theirs included necrotizing fasciitis, meningococcal disease and epilepsy. 

So these different lists include different diseases over the last decade, yet none of them included smoking. In Australia, lung cancer is said to have killed 6,000 people, according to WEHI. Lung cancer “occurs because of genetic changes in lung cells. These occur more frequently in people exposed to DNA-damaging agents such as tobacco smoke.” Yet it is not the only cause of lung cancer. 

The “naturally occurring radioactive gas radon and its progeny”, according to ARPANSA, can change the DNA of a person who breathes this. It happens predominantly across the Great Dividing Range, and in Perth. And yet chemotherapy can change the DNA too – medicals are potentially diseasing those who have had chemotherapy. “The full extent of their cellular mechanisms, which is essential to balance efficacy and toxicity, is often unclear.” Do they know that? Do you? Look at the WEHI comment above.

My dad smoked a pipe for years. He finally gave it up when he got a bad winter cough sometime in the 1990s. He died from his fourth stroke in 2000, not from smoking. I found a website which said that smoking a pipe was “the art of manliness”. What is the difference between pipes, cigars and cigarettes, and why has the current government continued to increase the excise tax they take on smokes? According to the Department of Health, “Australia is the only country in the world to index tobacco excise to wage inflation (AWOTE) to ensure that tobacco products do not become relatively more affordable over time.” The only country in the world? Really??

My mum was diabetic. She had never smoked – she had only breathed dad’s pipe smoke until the 1990s. She had the gradual progression of peripheral artery disease which medicals told her could take her feet away – that is, she would have them cut off. She died in hospital in 2007 and never had her legs or her feet taken off.

How many people know anything that I have written about – which diseases are global, where does ‘smoking’ come into lung cancer, and why are the cigarettes and tobacco packets printed with incorrect comments? Do you care? What sort of disease might take you on? Who would care about that? Do you drink? Do you ever get drunk? Do you speed? Have you paid fines? Are you a Baby Boomer or a Millenial? Please tell me, because I am so fed up with how we live nowadays, how we treat other people.

Eve van Grafhorst got HIV from a blood transfusion in Australia when she was a baby but was mistreated. She was taken by her parents to New Zealand for a much better life. Is that very different to how people treat smokers? Are smokers now being treated the way Eve van Grafhorst was treated back in the 1980s?

Please tell me!