So was smoking listed as the cause of death?

It has to be smoking right, it couldn't have been pollution from cars or factories, couldn't have been caused by nuclear weapons testing, and it couldn't have been from the endless amount of chemicals we are subjected to in everything we eat and drink.I'm sure the added chemicals in cigarettes or the tubes wasn't a factor either.

I am truly sorry for the early loss of your mother, but to sit here and tell us it's from smoking is just intellectually dishonest.

[link to ajplung.physiology.org]

"Cigarette smoke exposure to animals appears to be the best approximation to human COPD: a form of emphysema, small airway remodeling, and pulmonary hypertension can be produced (Table 1). Mucus hypersecretion is more problematic. One important downside to these models is that production of either emphysema or small airway remodeling takes months of smoke exposure (usually on the order of 6 mo) and thus is an expensive and time-consuming proposition. However, the most important limitation of smoke models, no matter what species is selected and no matter how long animals are smoked, is that the disease they produce is mild, probably equivalent to human GOLD (24, 115) stage 1 or 2 disease. In humans, the majority of morbidity and mortality occurs in patients with GOLD stage 3 or 4 disease (FEV1 <50% predicted), but the type of severe emphysema or severe small airway remodeling found in GOLD stage 3 or 4 patients simply cannot be reproduced in animals using smoke exposure. Last, in advanced GOLD stage patients, COPD frequently progresses even after the patient stops smoking, but this phenomenon has not been reproduced in animal models, where cessation of smoke exposure leaves the animals with stable, nonprogressive emphysema, and goblet cell metasplasia regresses