I'm a statistics kind of person, so I wouldn't feel right guessing without data, but these questions remind me of an argument I made in an a college class I took years ago.  Basically, my argument was that I equated smoking to suicide.  Think about it:

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines suicide as: the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally especially by a person of years of discretion and of sound mind.

Smoking (in enough quantities) can kill you, albeit very slowly.  The majority of people partake in smoking willfully and voluntarily. Since suicide isn't distinguish by how fast one takes their life, logically, smoking qualifies. 

Not being judgmental here, just being logical as a point of debate.  Food for thought.

I'm not sure how well substantiated these stats are, though.

http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf

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And Friend of MuchAdo!

I once walked out of a job interview because the personel manager asked me "Just how contagious is your diabetes and what would we have to do to prevent any infection?" I won't mention that it was the Coca-Cola bottling company in Hickory, NC. That would be crass, and I'm not like that. 

BTW; I'm Type 1.5 Diabetic. I have to shoot up insulin because my body doesn't make enough, but then I have to take Metformin because my body won't convert insulin. Ain't life just a big frickin' joke?

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And Friend of MuchAdo!

 5. The FDO kills more people in as violent a way as possible and with whatever weapon he can find including HIS BARE HANDS!

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If mis-handled, abused or used improperly. And you will also have to figure in a persons hereditary or predisposition to a disease or condition. Hell, even stupidity has a role in what is deadlier, ie "Hey watch this!". As for deadlier? I guess a bullet to the brain pan would be deadlier than putting a twinkie in your mouth. But again, its all in how its used or abused. Lets say someone shoots you or you accidentally shoot yourself, either way the results can be deadly. 

While dead maybe dead, there is a difference in how you die. It can be quickly, like a heart attack (my Father at age 80) or maybe years of suffering through cancer. My Oma (My Moms Mom) died after a horrible prolonged bout with cancer and my Mother who has had one form of cancer or another since her late 30's. My Oma smoked heavily and my Mother still continues to smoke EVEN after losing a lung to cancer. Then you have my Father, a life long smoker and with no history of cancer.

I've known people who have had to change their eating habit dues to type II Diabetes and have also known people with type II Diabetes that have refused to change anything about their eating habits. In both cases we have people with type II Diabetes. But their individual decisions determines how deadly or debilitating the condition may become. 

A car can hit you (or being in a car accident) and kill you instantly or put you through minutes or hours of agony before you die. The kicker in this situation is you could be wearing a seat belt and driving safe and someone hits you and kills you. But I can tell you first hand seat belts do make a difference.

There are so many scenarios that can be played out to which may be deadlier. Sorry for rambling on. I will leave you with these stats from 1999, dont know how accurate or if they are even real. I've just had them in my email for a long time.

Some Startling Statistics...approx. 10yr. avg.

 Number of physicians in the U.S.
               700,000
 Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year
               120,000
 Accidental deaths per physician
               0.171
 Number of gun owners in the U.S.
              80,000,000
Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups)
                     1,500
 Accidental deaths per gun owner
                 0.0000188
Therefore, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

Taken from the Benton County NewsTribune on the seventeenth of November, 1999

KISS'd by Sigler. Pusher twice over. UNdead Advisor to the King Of UNdead for Sigler.

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While the email comparision above was just an example to make a point on my senarios statement and not to be taken seriously. I did find an article that talked about the above with some actual stats...

The Truth:  
This email is obviously the humorous creation of a gun enthusiast.

We don't know when it was written but not all of  the statistics appear accurate. 

According to the U.S. Department of Health Services there were about 780,000 licensed physicians in the United States in 2008, so that figure seems good.

Finding statistics that everybody agrees with regarding deaths caused by doctors is a little more difficult.  Dr. J. Mercola released a book in 2000 titled Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 250,000 Deaths Every Year.  His breakdown, however, largely focuses on errors in hospitals and includes 12,000 deaths by unnecessary surgery, 7,000 due to medication errors in hospitals, 20,000 due to other errors in hospitals, 80,000 from infections in hospitals, and 106,000 from the negative effects of medications.

Regarding gun owners, figures from 2002-2001 from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said there are 294 million gun owners in the U.S., a much higher figure that that quoted in the email.

KISS'd by Sigler. Pusher twice over. UNdead Advisor to the King Of UNdead for Sigler.

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Just like the guy asking you how you get infected...

as a sign language interpreter I get really bright folks too.

Oh, you're a sign lanugage interpreter. you do that braille thing.

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...cars, guns, and sugar are things that, in and of themselves, are not potentially deadly until humans interact with them in an irresponsible way. Smoking is an action, so it could be reasoned that it is the only choice given that could be said to be deadly.

At the end of the day though, the most life-threatening things on the planet are humans.

**UNdead/GirlCo - We'll eat your brains and look good doing it.**

that suicide is an intentional act with a specific desired result. People who smoke may (should) know that it is potentially hazardous, but they do not engage in the activity with the specific desire to end their lives as a direct result of that action. 

**UNdead/GirlCo - We'll eat your brains and look good doing it.**

exactly what the interviewer thought he / she was doing asking you about it at all. It is my understanding that interviewers are not allowed to ask you about any medical condition. You can volunteer information if you choose, but even doing that does not open the door for the interviewer to start asking questions.

This is coming from my mom who was the head of HR for the Oklahoma City Zoo for 22 years. 

**UNdead/GirlCo - We'll eat your brains and look good doing it.**

I would agree that there could be an argument for the distinction that there is a specific desired result but I don't believe it's absolutely necessary for it to be so blatant a desire.

Specifically, the smoker who may (should) know that it is hazardous, engages in the activity with a certain amount to denial that the dangers are inherent.  Because the habit doesn't kill straight away, the risk to the smoker seems like a far off event and while the consequences are out of sight, so to speak, they are out of mind.  While it could be said that the smoker doesn't want to die, they are also engaging in an activity that they know prevents them from living a potentially longer life -- willfully.

Don't get me wrong, I don't actually think this is the case for smokers.  It was a argument I posed in a logic class and makes for great debate.  Under this premise, getting a sunburn could be suicide as one good sunburn could lead to melanoma and potentially death.  And that's just crazy talk!

Also as we all know, if we lived by logic alone, we'd all have pointy ears and be doing mind melds.

Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if we relied on logic a bit more and emotions a bit less. Were that the case though, very little in my life would make sense :) 

**UNdead/GirlCo - We'll eat your brains and look good doing it.**

 Simply change smoking to cigarettes and they all become things. So NEENER!

Have to agree with you on the humans though. Guns don't kill people. People kill people

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 You're absolutely correct that you can't catch diabetes. It's not contagious like the flu or a cold.

Yet I'm 85-90% certain that you can create conditions within oneself that lends itself to Type II diabetes later in life. I only took rudimentary medical courses in college and by no means specialized in diabetes.Yet the impression I was left with was that the diet a person ingested could easily contribute to whether they wound up with Type II as an adult. I could be wrong. I haven't done thorough research.

I'd bet that genetic predisposition factors into both Type I and Type II diabetes. It tends to factor into almost all diseases.

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 This has been my experience:

Most small employers don't even know about it. Large companies tend to follow the "you opened the door" policy. The only ones who seem to go "by the book" are government employers. There's also quite a few loopholes around it. For instance, they can ask you what medications you are taking. I was disqualified from a federal job on that basis. Went through the whole discrimination process and it was legitimate, even though their decision was based on a medical condition.

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 If the smoker in question gains pleasure from smoking, it makes him happy.

How do you measure the positive mental outlook the action of smoking gives him versus the potential negative physical consequences of the smoke itself? Neither one of them is particularly quantifiable.

It's certainly been demonstrated that people with a positive mental outlook are happier. So if the person in question is going to be miserable as a non-smoker, we must account for the mental portion of the equation as well. Just goes to show that laboratory conditions don't exist in real life

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The 15 leading causes of death in 2006 were:
1.     Diseases of heart (heart disease)
2.     Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
3.     Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
4.     Chronic lower respiratory diseases
5.     Accidents (unintentional injuries)
6.     Diabetes mellitus (diabetes)
7.     Alzheimer’s disease
8.     Influenza and pneumonia
9.     Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (kidney disease)
10.     Septicemia
11.     Intentional self-harm (suicide)
12.     Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
13.     Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease (hypertension)
14.     Parkinson’s disease
15.     Assault (homicide)

You can get the full report (and lots of others) here.

I have to admit to being a bit disappointed that they lumped all accidents into the same category.

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I LOVE the semantics game. :)

I hear they're making a version for the xbox 360 

**UNdead/GirlCo - We'll eat your brains and look good doing it.**

Because the next person that tells me that I need to quit is going to die. 

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And Friend of MuchAdo!

the very next day.  I have been lucky to have quit for 2 years. but it sucks some days. keep truckin' brother.

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