This is what cigarettes do to you, warns anti-smoking campaigner hours before her death

It would have been natural for Maureen Hamilton to have chosen a glamorous picture as the one by which she could be remembered.

Taken 22 years ago, the cool blonde smiles easily for the camera, confident in her beauty and her jet-set lifestyle.

Fast-forward two decades and the picture on the left reveals a very brave but broken woman, all the glitz and glamour pitilessly stripped away by the emphysema caused by her addiction to cigarettes.

It is this second haunting image that 58-year-old Mrs Hamilton was determined the world should remember as she campaigned to shock others into giving up tobacco before it is too late.

Speaking from her sick-bed hours before her death last week, the mother of two said: "When I was growing up, smoking was glamorous. Film stars would pose for the cameras with a cigarette in their hand.

"I remember buying a single cigarette from the shop for threepence, then smoking it at a cafe, hoping the boys would notice.

"I moved on to a pack of five, then ten, and when I started working it was 20, and I would smoke a pack a day. I didn't realise it at the time but I was a pretty, young woman.

"It's only later, when you look in a mirror at what is left and see a photo as you used to be, that you realise how things have changed.

"I don't want anyone to suffer like I am. It is unimaginable and the pain is so horrendous I have to take morphine every day."

Mrs Hamilton, a restaurant manager from Cambridge, lived a jet-set lifestyle as a young woman and was whisked to parties around the Mediterranean and Middle East.


The first warning shot over her health came in 1977, when she was 28.

She developed pneumonia on her way back from Israel and doctors advised her to go to a hospital that specialised in lung diseases.

She refused, saying she was scared.

Twenty years and countless cigarettes later, Mrs Hamilton collapsed and lost consciousness shortly after flying home from the Dominican Republic in 1997.

She was diagnosed with emphysema, an irreversible degenerative condition which makes breathing difficult as the lungs fill with fluid.

Doctors told her it had been developing for the best part of two decades.

She was to spend the rest of her life "shuffling from one room to another dragging an oxygen bottle with me".

Her last few years were a living hell in which she was kept alive on a ventilator while helpers spoon-fed her and cleared blockages from her airways with forceps.

She was moved to the Arthur Rank Hospice in Cambridge early last week.

Speaking earlier this year, she said: "I know giving up smoking is a struggle. But smokers don't see people in hospital hooked up to machines dying slow, painful, undignified deaths and they should.

"I hope my story can stop even one person smoking."

She arranged for posters of her to be used to highlight the damage smoking can cause and wanted children to visit her so that she could warn them of the dangers.

Amanda Sandford, of the anti-smoking group ASH, said yesterday: "I spoke to Maureen a couple of months ago. She was desperate to pass on her experience to try to prevent young people smoking.

"I hope her message lives on in some way. It would be a fitting tribute."

Mrs Hamilton's daughter Zoe, 41, said: "Mum was a tough cookie.

"She was a campaigner to the end and hoped her death would at least stop others from smoking."

Ed Note: Follow link below to see the photos referred to in the text.

Source: Evening Standard, 19 December 2007
Link:  http://tinyurl.com/242y8s

Experts predict lung cancer risk 

Scientists in Liverpool have pioneered a model which can predict the risk of any person developing lung cancer within a five-year period.
About two-thirds of lung cancer cases in the UK could be pre-empted through a new screening programme by experts at the University of Liverpool.

The Liverpool Lung Project (LLP) is in collaboration with the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation based in the city.

The model was developed through a study of 1,736 cases.

Scientists collected information on participants' socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, medical history, family history of cancer, tobacco consumption and lifetime occupation.

John Field, professor of cancer studies at the University of Liverpool and director of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer research programme, said: "The LLP risk model provides us with a more sophisticated way of identifying individuals within a five-year time frame.

"Current methods are limited to a patient's smoking history.

"The model can distinguish between high and low risk individuals regardless of age and smoking history, assessing those most likely to benefit from a future lung cancer screening programme."

The model identified the risk of a smoker developing lung cancer in a five-year-period can be similar to that of a non-smoker who has other aggravating lifestyle factors such as a prior diagnosis of pneumonia; family history in a relative under 60-year-old; a prior diagnosis of any cancer and exposure to asbestos.

The university's model has also involved Cancer Research UK and the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine.

Previous lung cancer risk models have focused only on age and smoking status and fail to account for other groups who are also at risk.

Professor Stephen Duffy, Cancer Research UK's professor of cancer screening, said: "As methods for preventing lung cancer and screening for early signs of the disease are developed in the coming years, being able to identify those at high risk will be crucial."

Source: BBC News onlineype the source here
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/7150881.stm

Shame of Royal hospital’s front door smokers

The medical director of the Royal Liverpool Hospital described the amount of smokers who loiter at its entrance as “terrible” last night.

Peter Williams added patients have verbally abused him and his colleagues when trying to move smokers on.

His comments at a health and wellbeing scrutiny committee meeting followed criticism by its chairman, Cllr Ron Gould, who expressed his disbelief that a hospital should experience such problems.

Cllr Gould said: “It is 2007, nearly 2008 and coming up to Capital of Culture. We have got the major A&E department at the Royal with people smoking outside, whilst there is a smoking ban that people respect in football grounds and pubs, notorious for misbehaviour.

“Why can’t you stop people smoking outside the doors? It is unbelievable.”

Dr Williams, divisional director of medicine at the hospital replied: “I completely agree with you... a lot of the clientele are drug users or have alcohol problems, you feel you can’t be too hard on them - they are still your patients. But I think we are too soft on them... it is terrible.

“It really is one of the most unattractive features.”

Mr Williams added that the level of abuse he has received when trying to move on smokers is “astonishing”.

Director of Communications at the Royal, Mike Barker, added the hospital is looking into the issue and is in the process of fitting new double doors, to stop smoke entering the building.

Source: Liverpool Daily Post
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2g99zn