Do Hobbits get Lung Cancer?

[obloquy]

Originally Posted by skip spence

I actually think the concept that all risks should be minimized at the cost of personal liberty is one of the most frightening ideas to come out of modern civilisation.

I think a far more frightening concept is that which champions personal liberty at the expense of cooperation and compromise. The idea that the individual's will should be subject to no external limitations can lead only to the ultimate destruction of civilization, as it is anathema to that very definition. Unless you mean to be selective about the application of this sanctification of personal choice, you are not merely ridding yourself of criticism (which I surmise is the motive in the first place), you are granting impunity to the sociopaths and perverts who also walk among us with equal rights.

Now as I said, heavy smoking in poorly ventilated indoor areas is one thing - the detrimental health-effects of tobacco smoke is well documented, whether is is inhaled first or second hand, and unwilling people shouldn't be forced to breath in excessive amounts of it, no. But it has gone way beyond that now, hasn't it? A few stray molecules of incensed tobacco isn't a reasonable danger to anyone's health, children or no.

How, exactly, is this two different things? Why do you get to be the one to draw the line? Why do you decide what is an "excessive" amount, and what another should accept as perfectly harmless? For someone who has made the choice not to smoke, any amount can reasonably be called "excessive," and here we might make an appeal to your god, Personal Liberty. Maybe I believe that a little unwanted touching should be dismissed as harmless, so it is within my personal rights to pinch asses as long as I am not crossing some arbitrary line of excess that I have imagined. Attractive ladies should recognize that no actual harm was done, and they should certainly recognize that if they seek recourse through the mechanisms established by government, it is my personal liberty that they are attacking. I agree, it is certainly "frightening" that someone would be willing to sacrifice my rights on the altar of "comfort" and "propriety!"

You are simply favoring one person's personal liberty (yours) over that of another--over that of many others, in fact. Unless you believe that these laws preventing smoking were passed unilaterally.

[skip spence]

While this is a very interesting discussion I fear that I'll be cut short by our dear modess as the Tolkien tie-in is hard to maintain. But, very briefly, I've never claimed personal liberty should be absolute when it also concerns others. Just where to draw the line is, however, not so easy. It is not a black and white issue. As with drug laws, driving laws, gun laws etc etc we need to strike a balance between separate interests.

Why do you get to be the one to draw the line?

Unfortunately I don't. But I reserve the right to express my opinion that the line, in this instance and many similar ones, has been drawn, well, too tight. And no, I'm not a smoker.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

I dunno, I rather feel that the original question of whether or not Hobbits get lung cancer is about the same as the question of whether or not the inhabitants of Middle-earth of all species ever feel the need to go to the bathroom (so to speak). Of course they do, but we never see it, because it's not really relevant to the story. One could take up the position of a friend's old Sunday school teacher, though: when she was a little kid, my friend drew a picture in Sunday school of Mary changing Baby Jesus' diapers (no anatomical correctness to quibble about, she was just a kid and had the drawing skills thereof ) and was taken to task by the teacher, who found it not innocent but offensive. Apparently it was the teacher's belief that Jesus didn't do such base human things as piddle in his nappies, a trait which she also felt carried on into adulthood. I might have thought my friend was kidding if I hadn't heard this same line of thought from other people in my own church when I was a kid.

Some Hobbits probably did get lung cancer; it's the world marred by Melkor, after all, and disease is not unknown among the mortals. Hobbit toughness may be greater than our own, and they may have been less prone to cancers of all kinds, but in the end, the evil Melkor wrought in the world by infusing his power into it would affect them. Like humans of our own past centuries, the Hobbits may have thought it was "consumption" (which was really tuberculosis, if I recall correctly, but acted as a catch-all phrase for diseases of the lungs that slowly killed the victim). I shall have to take a look in the letters to see if Tolkien had any opinion about this. He might've.

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

could take up the position of a friend's old Sunday school teacher, though: when she was a little kid, my friend drew a picture in Sunday school of Mary changing Baby Jesus' diapers (no anatomical correctness to quibble about, she was just a kid and had the drawing skills thereof ) and was taken to task by the teacher, who found it not innocent but offensive.

There's a similar story referred to in Michael Ende's The Neverending Story , I believe.

That's something interesting to have a though on. It is like Fordo and Co. did not have much to do to when they were at home so they were said to be using tobacco now when they were up to some work they were totally involved. Hobbit's toughness would be greater than that of ours but that would not mean that even excessive smoking would do them no harm. Excessive of anything is harmful.

[musicofainur]

Talking in all seriousness, the additional substances they put in cigarettes are considered to be a factor that is believed to cause cancer. I would think that smoking pipe would cause less detrimental effects (which I concluded from my knowledge that pipe smokers do not put additional tar or nicotine into the leaves they are smoking).

On another note, The Lord of the Rings was published in the 1950's, while the belief that smoking cigarettes was harmful only became known in the 1960's.
The direct linkage of smoking and cancer has not been proven. They [scientists] had concluded such notion from trend they see on the graphs and the prevalence of lung cancer in smoking patients. It was not scientifically proven. If I were a writer who lived in the 1950's, I would not want a non-scientifically proven theory to be put into my novel.

[Oh, Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays to you all ]

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

So the smoke itself was not what causes cancer? I know that there are many other harmful chemicals that are put into cigarettes, but my initial concern was because of the smoke (being the silly 13 year old I was). If the smoke does not have ridiculous amounts of harm, then the damage to a hobbit's body would not be significant?