tijuana, mexico — it’s the image from the unfolding crisis in tijuana seen around the world: a migrant mom and her young children running away from a smoking tear gas canister with barbed wire and a forbidding metal wall in the background. both children are clad only in t-shirts, and one appears to be wearing a pull-up diaper. one child is barefoot, another wears flip-flops. the woman clutching their arms and dragging them out of harm's way is wearing black leggings and a t-shirt emblazoned with the smiling cartoon faces of the anna and elsa from the disney movie "frozen." that jarring portrait was captured on camera sunday by veteran reuters photographer kim kyung-hoon moments after a group of central american migrants approached the border crossing into san diego and were forced backwards by tear gas canisters hurled by u.s. border agents. "when the tear gas started, some people were screaming and everybody started running away,” kim told nbc news on monday. "i saw the woman and two children running away. one girl was barefoot from the beginning. the other was wearing beach sandals and lost them in the chaos." nbc news also tracked down the woman, maria mesa, a 39-year-old mother of five from honduras, inside a tent at the benito juarez shelter in tijuana. "i grabbed my children and ran," mesa said of her 5-year-old twin daughters saira and sheilly. mesa said her 3-year-old son james, who does not appear in the picture, was also with them and fainted after getting a lung-full of gas. "one of them could have died," she said. kim said mesa "was travelling with five children." "their father lives in louisiana and they are trying to reach him," he said. kim's photograph, which appeared on the nbc news website and on the front pages of numerous newspapers, provoked worldwide outrage and appeared to make a lie of president donald trump’s claim that the caravans were an invading force of "criminals" and "gang members." but trump defended tear-gassing the migrants, calling them "some very tough people." mexico should move the flag waving migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are not coming into the u.s.a. we will close the border permanently if need be. congress, fund the wall! — donald j. trump (@realdonaldtrump) november 26, 2018 kim, who is a 44-year-old south korean based in tokyo, is no stranger to tragedy. in the 16 years he’s worked for reuters, he has covered everything from plane crashes to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated japan. the latest assignment began for kim on nov. 14 when he arrived in mexico city and began following the migrant caravans escaping the terror in the home countries and heading north for the american border. on sunday, the group kim had been shadowing was at the el chaparral border crossing and the u.s. was in sight. reuters photographer kim kyung-hoon works in minamisoma, japan, on april 11, 2011. minamisoma is a city 11 miles away from the fukushima nuclear power station that was hit by an earthquake and tsunami. kim kyung-hoon / reuters file "they were stopped at one spot by the mexican police," the photographer said. "then they climbed down the river bank. the wire fence was on the other side of the river about 20 meters away." kim said he watched as the mother and the twins started fording the shallow river at the border. asked if that was why the girls were wearing next to nothing, the photographer said he believes that was all the clothing they had. for a few seconds, kim said, he was distracted by two men who had already made it across and were using their bare hands and a bucket to dig a hole under a fence so they could crawl under. then, suddenly, the air was filled with choking smoke. "one canister fell by the family and they started running away," he said, referring to the mother and twins. migrants ride on the back of a truck while making their way to tijuana from mexicali, mexico, on nov. 20. kim kyung-hoon / reuters kim said he could hear the little girls coughing and crying and he immediately aimed his camera in their direction and starting shooting the unfolding chaos. he said he stayed with them as they fled back to the migrant encampment. asked if he was rattled by what he witnessed and the heartbreaking sounds of children crying, kim said "my job is to document what is happening." "i try not to let my emotions get involved in my work," he said. correction (nov. 27, 2018, 7:50 a.m.): an earlier version of this article incorrectly described the children in the photograph. one child was wearing sandals; they were not both barefoot. gabe gutierrez reported from tijuana, and corky siemaszko from new york city.
a discussion of ‘smokers’ black lungs’ started in the comments today. it’s the widespread belief that smokers’ lungs turn black. rose pointed out that it all started with james i about four centuries ago. she also dug up some refutations: “dr. duane carr – professor of surgery at the university of tennessee college of medicine, said this: “smoking does not discolor the lung.” (link) dr. victor buhler, pathologist at st. joseph hospital in kansas city: “i have examined thousands of lungs both grossly and microscopically. i cannot tell you from examining a lung whether or not its former host had smoked.” (link) dr. sheldon sommers, pathologist and director of laboratories at lenox hill hospital, in new york: “…it is not possible grossly or microscopically, or in any other way known to me, to distinguish between the lung of a smoker or a nonsmoker. blackening of lungs is from carbon particles, and smoking tobacco does not introduce carbon particles into the lung.” (link) and brigitte even found a youtube video: there is even this (in german) in which a forensic medic states that these “tar” lungs do not exist. rich white’s smoke screens reports the same: this was confirmed by dr jan zeldenrust, a dutch pathologist for the government of holland from 1951 – 1984. in a television interview in the 1980’s he stated that, translated from dutch, “i could never see on a pair of lungs if they belonged to a smoker or non-smoker. i can see clearly the difference between sick and healthy lungs. the only black lungs i’ve seen are from peat-workers and coal miners, never from smokers”. smokers-lungs1nevertheless, the black lungs are all over cigarette packets these days. and black lung disease (or pneumoconiosis) is a real disease. coal miners get it. so where does the smokers’ black lung idea come from? part of the answer can be found in a photo-essay on medicinenet: this photo essay will focus on smoker’s lung. the term “smoker’s lung” refers to the structural and functional abnormalities (diseases) in the lung caused by cigarette smoking. first, the normal structure and function of the lung will be described and illustrated. then, the structural and functional abnormalities caused by smoking will be described and illustrated. a bit further on the effect of emphysema on lungs is described. emphysemaas a result, emphysema also disrupts the normal blood supply. figure 4 contrasts the nasty appearance of a smoker’s emphysematous lung with a normal lung. so it’s emphysema that causes the nasty appearance of a smoker’s emphysematous lung. it continues: as you can imagine, cigarette smoke contains many impurities that are inhaled in great numbers directly into the lung. for this reason, the alveolar spaces of the smoker contain numerous scavenger cells (macrophages) that are filled with engulfed (phagocytized) particles of impurities and debris, as illustrated in figure 5. under the microscope, with this high magnification, you can actually see the black and brown engulfed particles in the alveolar scavenger cells. indeed, smoker’s lung may have so much of this particulate material that the lung looks gray-black to the naked eye. so, most of the time, you don’t need a microscope to tell if someone is or was a heavy smoker. a naked eye examination of a smoker’s lung usually will reveal an enlarged gray-black lung with enlarged air spaces (the emphysema, as you saw in figure 4 and will see again in figure 8). i’m not sure why people are asked to ‘imagine’ what’s in tobacco smoke. but since the emphysematous lung has simply been renamed the ‘smoker’s lung’, maybe it’s necessary to explain why it’s turned grey-black. and it’s that imaginary stuff in tobacco smoke that is conjured up to explain it. the lie hinges on first asserting that smoking causes emphysema (it may do, or it may not), and secondly asserting that emphysema turns lungs grey-black (it probably does), and then finally dropping the connecting middle term of ’emphysema’,  and asserting that smoking turns lungs grey-black. or it’s just calling emphysematous lungs ‘smokers’ lungs’. a parallel false ascription might be found elsewhere. people who visit delhi may get food poisoning from ingesting bacteria. the food poisoning may cause vomiting and so on. but if the ‘bacteria’ link is missed out, and the malady is just called ‘delhi belly’ (as it often is), it may mislead people into believing that it’s visiting delhi (or indian restaurants) which is the root of the trouble – although in fact most visitors to delhi (and indian restaurants) don’t suffer such ill-effects, and there are lots of other places in the world other than delhi where you can contract ‘delhi belly’. it’s a thoroughly dishonest and disreputable mis-attribution of a disease. it pins the disease on a particular social group: smokers. and it makes it their disease, and nobody else’s – even though not everyone who gets emphysema is a smoker, and not all smokers get emphysema. but at least we may now see why pathologists aren’t finding grey-black smokers’ lungs: they didn’t have emphysema. but this doesn’t seem to be the only way the black lung lie is propagated. there are also the pigs’ lungs used in demonstrations. i even found an ad for one: the accompanying text helpfully explains: the inflatable swine lungs have been stained realistically and then specially preserved by the bioflex odorless, nontoxic process that retains the texture and elasticity of fresh lungs. the lungs dramatically and unforgettably demonstrate the effects of prolonged smoking. a palpable simulated internal tumor and a physical simulated external tumor encourage students to feel the texture of the lungs, and to remember that smoking is a known cause of lung cancer. so firstly they’re pig lungs. and secondly they’ve been preserved and stained realistically. and simulated internal and external tumours have been added. and all to demonstrate the effects of prolonged smoking!  it beggars belief. no doubt the students aren’t told any of this, and are led to believe that they’re looking at real human ‘smokers’ lungs’. there are even discussions of the effectiveness of such imagery. marketing researchers at the university of arkansas, villanova university and marquette university surveyed more than 500 u.s. and canadian smokers and found that the highly graphic images of the negative consequences of smoking have the greatest impact on smokers’ intentions to quit. the most graphic images, such as those showing severe mouth diseases, including disfigured, blackened and cancerous tissue, evoked fear about the consequences of smoking and thus influenced consumer intentions to quit. “these results suggest that there appears to be little downside on intentions to quit from using extremely graphic pictorial depictions of the negative health outcomes due to smoking,” said scot burton, co-author of the study and marketing professor in the sam m. walton college of business. in fact, there may be a downside from using such graphic images, if they have been fraudulently obtained (a consideration which doesn’t appear to have crossed the minds of the marketing researchers). and we’ve just established two methods by which they are fraudulently obtained. and the downside is that, when it is shown that they’re fraudulent, the people who publish them will be accused of fraud, of twisting logic and manufacturing evidence. and when that happens, people will cease to believe not just the fraudulent evidence they have produced, but everything else that they assert too. they will lose all their credibility. nobody will believe a word they say. that’s quite a big downside, i think. and it’s a downside that doesn’t even seem to have occurred to them. it doesn’t seem to have occurred to the mass media that help propagate these lies that people will cease to believe a word they say either. nor does it seem to have occurred to the medical profession which allows these lies to be propagated unchallenged that people will cease to believe them too. there’s an awful lot of downside waiting to go down.