The news that ‘troubled singer' Amy Winehouse is said to be suffering from early stage emphysema is a shock, given that she is only 24 years old.
Crack cocaine and cigarettes are reported to have caused permanent damage, ‘leaving her with 70 per cent lung capacity', clearly disastrous for someone who earns a living through singing.
As Amy's father has explained: ‘She's got emphysema. It's in its early stages, but had it gone on for another month, they painted a very vivid picture of her sitting there like an old person with a mask on her face struggling to breathe.'
‘A month' is not a very long time - not 20 or 30 years, not some unspecified point at the end of a singing career, or a lifetime. It suggests that Amy Winehouse is unlikely to have much of a singing career, nor even a life, should she continue to abuse her body with drugs and cigarettes.
With any luck, this frightening diagnosis might serve as a wake-up call, not only to her but to the hordes of smokers who are left unmoved by the smoking ban (though reports in the tabloids that Ms Winehouse was seen smoking a cigarette hours after leaving her doctor, do not bode particularly well).
Generally speaking, there is nothing so persuasive, in terms of changing your lifestyle, as someone you know - or a celebrity you feel you know - being ill because of similar habits. By contrast, expensive anti-smoking government campaigns are often seen as preachy, the annoying interventions of the ‘nanny state'.
Ok, it is probable that smoking crack cocaine has accelerated Amy Winehouse's lung disease. However, it is cigarettes that are the main cause of emphysema in the general population.
Many young smokers are numb to the scary messages printed on cigarette packets; quite prepared to stand outside a bar on a cold, wet January evening; and anaesthetised to the best efforts of their local health professionals to encourage them into local smoking cessation clinics.
They associate smoking with lung cancer - with potentially unpleasant but far-off symptoms, to be experienced in old age (‘Well, you've got to die of something,' they parrot. ‘You could get run over by a bus tomorrow') and may know nothing about emphysema, which ages lungs prematurely, causing irreversible damage.
Many won't have heard of it at all and even fewer are probably aware of the umbrella term for respiratory diseases, ‘COPD' which is one of the fastest-growing diseases in the UK. In fact, WHO statistics predict that COPD will be the fourth leading cause of death by 2030; it already affects up to one in 20 Britons, killing 30,000 people in the UK each year.
Health professionals are only too aware of its prevalence: community nurses regularly visit patients with severe COPD, for whom carrying out simple tasks and daily activities has become increasingly burdensome. Breathing difficulties, unpleasant in themselves, can also leave sufferers easily exhausted and with muscle-wasting and weight-loss, leading to complications such as heart failure. Patients often become depressed and isolated, unable to work, exercise or socialise.
I can personally remember a conversation with a nurse who commented that it is the ‘lucky' smokers who die quickly of lung cancer; the unlucky ones get emphysema, an often-torturous condition which blights their daily lives.
Though nobody would wish such a future on Amy Winehouse, one hopes that her prognosis might highlight the reality of respiratory conditions like emphysema and encourage her to listen to the advice of her doctors and loved ones. Meanwhile, it may serve to bring home the issues for her many fans, encouraging at least a few to give up smoking once and for all.