Johnny Carson died from it

John loved to play tennis.  Our painfully shy neighbor at the end of Centennial Circle cavorted on court, not exactly a pro, but certainly enjoying his game.  Once, someone called him “Johnny” and he bristled: “My name is John,” he said icily.

And then, John appeared less and less, his tennis game suffering as he easily became ‘out of breath’.  “Breathless” he called it, as though it were a beautiful thing. Deer Valley, Utah was not a forgiving place for emphysema victims.  At nearly eight thousand feet you need almost fifty percent more air to get the same amount of oxygen that you’d find at sea level.  John left his Deer Valley, Utah vacation home, and died in West Hollywood, near the Burbank that he’d popularized for so many, as “Johnny” on “The Tonight Show.”  Here’s the news story:

Something as fundamental as breathing ultimately became so difficult for the talk show host Johnny Carson that it killed him. 

Emphysema, which claimed Carson on Sunday (January 23, 2005) at age 79, is like that, doctors who treat and study the disease said Monday. 

"It's a horrible death. It's like suffocating," said Dr. Diane Stover, president of the Chest Foundation and the chief of pulmonology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York. 

"Some people say the worst thing about it is that it doesn't kill you fast enough," said Dr. Bonnie Boles, an Atlanta pulmonologist.

Doctors agree that one of the saddest aspects of emphysema, which afflicts an estimated 3 million Americans, is that it is largely preventable. Millions more are estimated to have undiagnosed cases. 

With chronic bronchitis, emphysema forms a disease group called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is estimated to afflict as many as 24 million Americans. COPD accounted for 119,000 deaths in 2000 and is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. 

Smoking causes almost 90 percent of cases of emphysema, while other environmental irritants are blamed for most other cases. Carson was a longtime smoker who lit up on the set in the early days of his talk show. [1]

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the current name, defined as bronchitis or emphysema or a combination of the two.  COPD now ranks as the third leading killer of Americans, more prevalent in 2010 than strokes or automotive accidents.  Of the top five killers, COPD is the only one still growing.   There are no effective treatments, and the American research agenda is strikingly low compared with all other ‘top ten’ killer diseases.

The Health Sentinel article went on to say: “Many people have a hard time feeling sympathy for emphysema patients because they see it as an avoidable illness.”  

The American Medical Association (AMA) has asserted for fifty years that 85-90% of victims are smokers.  So, the attitude is: “Just quit smoking!”

See, for example, the Breathe California website which breathlessly proclaims:

“The easiest way to prevent emphysema is to quit smoking “

“80-90% of people with COPD have been long-term smokers. At least 10-15% of long term smokers develop COPD. Some studies have shown that 50% of smokers over 45 will develop COPD. Another cause of COPD is exposure to indoor and outdoor pollutants, especially toxic or chemical pollutants found in some jobs. A recent study suggests that 19.2% of those affected by COPD can attribute it in part to work related exposure.” [2]

Our research to date indicates that the AMA stance is inadequate, even inaccurate for many situations.  It is so unquestioned, however, that it has stifled research into both cause and treatment for fifty years for an out-of-control, massively expensive, debilitating disease.

In those fifty years, five million Americans have died from COPD, and an additional five million have died where COPD was the secondary disease that triggered the primary death from heart attack or stroke.  Ten million deaths in fifty years, examined from a ‘big data’ correlation analysis viewpoint, could potentially yield significant new information as to cause and possible mitigation.

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[1] Emphysema, ‘a horrible death’; Health Sentinel, January 25, 2005, National Health Federation.

[2] http://www.lungsrus.org/Resources/Encyclopaedia/copd.htm  The precision of the 19.2% statistic is ludicrous.