• Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 month ago

    Not to defend RFK, but this argument is dumb.

    People from everywhere it doesn’t natively grow developed cancer long before they had access to tobacco. That doesn’t prove tobacco use doesn’t cause cancer, it just means it isn’t the only potential cause.

    • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      That’s because cancer is a category of diseases, not a single one. Specific types of cancer that are caused by smoking are caused by smoking (there is afaik 12 of those, and some are associated with prolonged inhalation of any smoke, and some are only tabaco-related, but it doesn’t matter)

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Are there any cancers that were found to be “caused by smoking” before 2003?

        Of those, are there any that have subsequently also been found to be “caused by” vaping (such as the tobacco-related ones)?

        If so, then it means vaping is indeed a cause (as opposed to the singular cause) of those cancers even though they were around before vaping was invented (in 2003).

        That’s why this meme is bad.

        • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          If you focus on nicotine specifically, nicotine causes specific type of cancer. Change in the delivery mechanism would cause fluctuations in dosage, but it doesn’t matter in this case (we ignore other types of cancer not to bog down the analogy).
          If one would argue that Tylenol causes autism, two things should be shown, the delivery mechanism of Tylenol before it was invented/isolated, to explain pre-Tylenol cases of autism, and/or specific uptick in autism when it was started to be used as medication.
          It’s possible that the meme is good you just didn’t get it.

      • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        The point is, the claim is that Tylenol is “linked to” autism.

        This post is rebutting the claim that Tylenol “causes” autism.

        Thats a classic straw man argument.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          No, the post is claiming that because Tylenol was discovered after autism, it can’t be a cause of it. That’s flawed logic: it’s true that autism must also have some other cause, but it’s very possible in principle for things to have multiple causes, so the timeline argument proves nothing.

          That’s not to say that Dipshit McBrainworm’s claim has any sort of merit whatsoever, mind you. It’s just that this argument is defective.