Revelations about Hookah and Cancer

45 years after J. Rakower and B. Fatal's historic Study of Narghile Smoking in Relation to Cancer of the Lung (Br J Cancer 1962 (Mar);16:1-6.)), a pioneering team of researchers in Pakistan sheds new light on the relation of hookah smoking to cancer:

>> Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels in hookah smokers, cigarette smokers and non-smokers. J Pak Med Assoc 2007;57(12):595-9.

Here are its first conclusions : “It was concluded that the brands of cigarettes (which were ranked on the basis of price) and the rate of smoking both play an important role in raising the CEA levels. Further the common belief that hookah also called narghile or shisha is a relatively safe mode of smoking is not completely correct; a significant proportion of hookah smokers [*] have high levels of CEA although mean levels of hookah smokers [*] were low compared to cigarette smokers”

[*] Note: The hookah smokers in this experiment were mixed hookah / bidis / cigarettes users.

Note 1: CEA is a biomarker of several types of cancer.

Note 2: CEA levels in exclusive/ever hookah smokers were even more lower:

[material added May 28, 2008]

World and Ever Historic Premiere: Study (May 2008, Online Free) on HOOKAH (Shisha) and CANCER Markers: You’re Dead!

CHINESE SPANISH FRENCH ARABIC RUSSIAN ENGLISH

Note 3: The above team's leader is also the great independent scientist who first studied Carbon Monoxide levels in relation to hookah smoking. He was the first on Earth to establish, 15 years ago, that the bigger the hookah the lesser the emissions of carbon monoxide are and that the levels of this gas can vary tremendously (according to tobacco-based mixtures, types of charcoal, etc.): from that of a cigarette (and less) to high figures.

READ AND READ AGAIN: Carbon monoxide fractions in cigarette and hookah. J Pak Med Assoc 1993 (Sep);43(9):179-82.

This new study on hookah and cancer is timely because a devastating world confusion was created by a famous article (presented as a “world review”) prepared by the authors of the Erroneous WHO 1st Expert Report on "Waterpipe"™ and the Erroneous Cochrane Review :

Wasim Maziak, Kenneth Ward, Rima Afifi Soweid and Thomas Eissenberg: “Tobacco smoking using a waterpipe: a re-emerging strain in a global epidemic”, published in 2004 in the supposedly peer-reviewed Tobacco Control journal (13: pages 327 to 333).

Three years later, the above article is still fuelling confusion everywhere in the world. See a recent critique of this situation: Shisha confusion. BDJ 2007 (22 Dec); 203 (12):669-70
in which its author recalls all parroting researchers (who also participate, consciously or unconsciously, in inflating the “impact factor” of this kind of study)(*) that one of the serious errors in the joint US-Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies’ study was “to credit Rakower and Fatal with exactly the opposite of what they stated in their famous historical study about narghile and lung cancer”.

As a matter of fact, Rakower and Fatal were researchers who, in 1962, drew opposite conclusions on the relation of hookah smoking and lung cancer…

All publications by the above team are very similar in their nature. Check by yourself. We invite you to read their literature and, above all, make your own opinion. Don't rely on us only.

Read also THIS

(*) Note about a GREAT MYSTIFICATION. It is supposed that the number of times a study is cited actually reflects its scientific value… This is in fact the greatest myth about hookah smoking. As an example, two famous anecdotic and erroneous (although published in the “prestigious journal: The Lancet) one-page papers, written by Peter Kandela (“Narghile Smoking Keeps "Waterpipe"™ Researchers in Wonderland”; “Signs of Trouble for Hubble-Bubble”) have been cited by parroting researchers in 40 to 50 studies on this issue over the past years. Most often, these two papers have been cited as the SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that the hookah is of Indian origin or that parents in the Arab world smoke the narghile with their children. If any reader of this site is a native of that region, knows it or lives in it, let him/her tell comment on these statements, also officially published in the WHO Expert Report on "Waterpipe"™

And they call this “science”, "peer-reviewed" science !

OUR COMMITMENT: One of the main topic of this site –as its title reads- is cancer. We early stated that we were committed to work on this issue and others. So, you will know the whole truth about it. More on this site soon, so, stay tuned folks !

>> 3 selected (there are many more) related sources in relation to repeated common errors (or lies) about lung cancer published in the so-called peer-reviewed scientific literature:

1) Study on US “Waterpipe”™ Users by US-Syrian Center: from Serious Errors to ““Waterpipe”” Fixation, Fallacies, Fallacism and Religious Obsession, etc.

2) Shisha confusion. British Dental Journal 2007 (22 Dec); 203 (12):669-70.

3) E-Letter to the Editor: Serious Errors in this Study. Tobacco Control 2004 (2 Dec). A critical analysis of the following study: Maziak W, Ward KD, Afifi Soweid RA, Eissenberg T. Tobacco smoking using a waterpipe: a re-emerging strain in a global epidemic. Tobacco Control 2004; 13: 327-333.

ALSO RELEVANT: “But shisha smoke retained all the carcinogens of cigarette smoke while adding more carbon monoxide and a separate set of carcinogens from the use of burning coals to keep the nicotine flowing, coupled with the risk of infection with tuberculosis or hepatitis from shared mouthpieces, Gezairy said”(1)

(1) Regional Director for the World Health Organization (March 15, 2007)

[added material Jan 4, 2008] QUOTEWORTHY (forced to acknowledge): Hookahs "may not give you lung cancer but may compromise your health in other ways," she said.

“She”= “S. Katharine HAMMOND, chairwoman of the division of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley”. “She” is above all a member of WHO TobReg, the "Study Group for Tobacco product REGulation" of the WHO (World Health Organization). This group stands the Erroneous WHO 1st Expert Report on "Waterpipe"™ , further laundered and recycled by the joint US-Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies in Erroneous and Unethical Cochrane Review . Notably, the latter was “peer-reviewed” by Mirjana DJORDJEVIC, also a member of WHO TobReg and Alan SHIHADEH, the co-author of the first WHO erroneous expert… The loop is looped.

WHO TobReg has also recently published: Serious Errors in World Health Organization New Report on “Scientific Basis of Tobacco Product Regulation”

[Added Jan 19, 2008 The “Nicotine and Tobacco Research” Journal Endorses a Scientific Error as Big and Carcinogenic as a Yemeni Narghile Bowl ! ]

DON'T MISS: WHO TobReg (Study Group for Tobacco product REGulation): More Democratic than the UN Insecurity Council...


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[MATERIAL ADDED 19 SEPT 2008]

SUBJECT: VIOLATION OF EDITORIAL ETHICS BY JPMA (JOURNAL OF PAKISTAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION)

The authors of the first etiologic study on hookah and cancer were not allowed by the above journal to respond to a Letter to the Editor by Wasim Maziak. Fortunately, they had the opportunity to do this with the other journal in which they published their second study (Harm Reduction Journal, a truly independent journal, which does not accept any external pressure):

The authors stated: "We were informed only by chance of the existence of a previous comment by Maziak on our first study. Consequently, we sent a detailed response to JPMA on the 7th of April 2008. In spite of our good faith, and for some unclear, reason, the journal did not accept to publish our short and right-to-the-point letter whereas it published Maziak’s comment with no delay. This is certainly a violation of editorial ethics [5]."

[5] COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics, is “a code of conduct for editors of biomedical journals”, “a suggested code of conduct for editors to guide them towards being fair to authors, researchers, and readers”

SOURCE: REBUTTAL: INTRODUCTORY KEY-POINTS to Our Reply to Purported “Methodological Problems…” (16 June 2008)

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