My name is James Dunn and I live in Blackburn in the UK. I cannot remember
the first time that I was diagnosed as having Beurgers Disease, but it must
have been in the early sixties. Then I had no idea what Beurgers Disease was
or how close the link was between the disease and smoking. All that I was
experiencing, at that time, was cramp to my left leg after walking a certain
distance. As a smoker I could not seem to accept that, smoking was the root
cause of my problem as why did not other smokers experience the same
symptoms.
I did try to give up smoking and was successful to certain extent. I tried a
fitness routine, which involved trying to improve my cardio vascular system
by jogging. Unfortunately the arteries supplying blood to the calf muscles
had been irreparably damaged and no matter how much exercise I took they
were not going to improve. At the time this seemed to prove that smoking was
not entirely the root cause of my problem, so started smoking again.
To cut a long story short, I ended up having both legs amputated below the
knee and suffered permanent damage to my hands. There was a time when I
thought that I would lose my hands until I met a doctor who, in no uncertain
terms, told me that the only thing that would prevent more damage was to
stop smoking and never smoke again. That was twenty years ago and despite
losing the tips of some fingers, I saved my hands.
I have tried to take the tobacco companies to court and even got legal aid
to do it. But under the advice of a leading barrister at the time, who
recommended that the case would not get of the ground, legal aid was
stopped. I still think that beurgers disease sufferers have the strongest
case of anybody who has damaged their health by using tobacco products. If I
had been an American citizen I would be in a much stronger position of
having my day in court. A few years ago I did try to get a class action
started by trying to contact known sufferers of the disease, but despite
writing many letters, did not get much response.