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From: avi@hogpd.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Smoking is not "evolution in action"!!!
Message-ID: <78@hogpd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Jun-83 08:51:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: hogpd.78
Posted: Thu Jun 23 08:51:06 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jun-83 14:22:44 EDT
References: cbscd5.220
Lines: 26

!sh

I am afraid that most smokers start smoking too late for evolution to
take a signifificant toll. They usually have enough children before they
die, so that evolution is not getting a chance to "weed" out their
contribution to the genetic pool. Many of the effects of smoking are
only felt 20 to 30 years after you start.

The only way I - as a devout non-smoker - can help to minimize the spread
of genes that predispose one to crave nicotine and tar is to refuse to
help in the creation a child whose mother is a smoker. (I probably would
not want to live with her, anyway.) On a more serious level, I remember
reading some studies of the effects on children whose mothers smoked
(?heavily?) during their pregnancy. I think these kids were smaller than
average. Does anyone remember any more specific statistics? Are these kids
at higher risk than the rest of us? (Well, actually, my mom did smoke!
Maybe that explains why I was born a month prematurely.) The placenta
allows many obnoxious chemicals to filter through into the fetal blood-
stream. If smoking has a measurable negative effect on the probability
that these kids will not have the 2.3 (or whatever) additional children
that they would usually have, then maybe evolution is in action!!!!!

Is it discrimination to require that (pregnant) women should not smoke --
while allowing the "father" to continue? Similar remarks apply to alcohol.

Avi Gross	hogpd!avi	9-576-3063