Changing COPD opinion

Well, a quick draft is done!  Call or email me if you're interested!  I call it "Here's Johnny" in reference to the 2005 death of Johnny Carson from emphysema, one of the deadly forms of COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

Examining multiple years of state maps from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, it is clear to me that something is going on with COPD that is quite at odds with the 'storyline' from the American Medical Association about the cause of this remarkably 'silent killer'.

It is NOT smoking for 90% of the cases, as the AMA has asserted for 50 years.  Twenty-two of America's 50 states are "out of order" in terms of a correlation analysis.  The Number 1, 2, and 3 states for COPD death-rate are respectively 33, 34, and 39th in smoking prevalence.   The top ten in smoking prevalence are, on average in the 20's, some as low as 38th, in COPD death-rate, age adjusted.

What is the cause then?  Well, it could be a variety of things (and most likely is).  My favoritie hypothesis is that inert sub-micron particulate matter -- fly ash from coal-fired power plants for example -- in a toxic moecular atmosphere that is ground-hugging on too many occasions -- is much more deadly than smoking, for lower respiratory diseases apart from lung cancer.  Lung cancer is inarguably traceable to cigarette smoking, although for many years the tobacco industry was able to insist otherwise without so much as a snicker in public.

What conditions promote these COPD conditions?  Well, valleys surrounded by mountains (e.g. Vail, CO) are more difficult envirnoments than smoggy Denver, for example.  Los Angeles, with the highest valley to peak elevation change on the leeward side of prevailing winds, is notable.  Fly ash comes in huge quantities from coal-fired power plants, which Los Angeles adroitly moved outside its air basin.  Denver has a high valley to peak ratio if you look west, but not to the east, and the prevailing winds blow the noxious air out rather than trap it.  Salt Lake is more like Los Angeles in that regard.

This is a radical hypothesis.  It to date is unproven, mostly untested.  But it fits the data on the CDC charts far better than the CDC explanation, at least to my eye.

As is true for any differing opinion, the hard part is not developing it, it is 'selling it.'  Marketing ideas to an opinionated audience is non-trivial, a situation faced by many entrepreneurs daily.

Great fun