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CAIRO,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Egypt ― A picture may be worth a thousand words, but many Egyptians are speechless over an image that recently hit the streets in this bustling capital city. Last month, Egypt’s Ministry of Health unveiled their latest weapon in the war on smoking: a graphic warning label of a drooping cigarette, symbolizing the potential for tobacco-induced impotence, plastered on every pack sold throughout the country.
Next to the picture of the limp butt,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a statement in Arabic warns, “long-term smoking will affect marital relations.” It wasn’t the first such graphic message to illustrate the dangers of smoking, but for many Egyptian men, it was the first they had heard of a connection between impotence and tobacco. And among some of the heaviest smokers,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], confusion gave way to bravado.
“We know smoking is not good for the health, but I can’t believe this,” said Nadir Abdel Rahim, 40, from the Darb el-Ahmar neighborhood. “I’ve been smoking 22 years, and I work just fine. Very fine, actually.” In their critics’ eyes,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], producers of sugar-sweetened drinks are acting a lot like the tobacco industry of old: marketing heavily to children,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], claiming their products are healthy or at worst benign, and lobbying to prevent change.
The industry says there are critical differences: in moderate quantities soda isn’t harmful,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], nor is it addictive. The problem is that at roughly 50 gallons per person per year, our consumption of soda, not to mention other sugar-sweetened beverages, is far from moderate, and appears to be an important factor in the rise in childhood obesity.
This increase is at least partly responsible for a rise in what can no longer be called “adult onset” diabetes ― because more and more children are now developing it. * Increase support for and adherence to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC): The report calls this the single most important action in the effort to eliminate tobacco-related death and disease, saying all governments should be encouraged to join the more than 165 nations who already have ratified the treaty, and that those who have joined the Framework should faithfully implement it.
* Increase tobacco taxes: Raising tobacco taxes is considered perhaps the most effective intervention to reduce tobacco use. Tobacco plants could help wean the world from fossil fuels, according to scientists from the University of California, Berkeley. In a paper in the journal ACS Nano Letters, Matt Francis and his colleagues used tobacco plants, infected with a genetically engineered virus,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], to produce artificial photovoltaic and photochemical cells.
The technique is more environmentally friendly than traditional methods of making solar cells and could lead to cheap,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], temporary and biodegradable solar cells. “Over billions of years, evolution has established exactly the right distances to collect light from the sun and to do so with unparalleled efficiency,” said Francis. “We are just trying to mimic these finely tuned systems.”