9 replies to this topic

[stocks]

At the end of the Seventies, the anti-smokers first seriously turned their attention to what they called "passive smoking". Over the next decade, it is fascinating to follow how, try as they might, they could not come up with the evidence they wanted to prove that "environmental tobacco smoke" was directly harming non-smokers' health. They became greatly excited by a series of studies which purported to show a link between smoking and cot deaths. But these somehow managed to ignore the fact that, in the very years when cot deaths were rising by 500 per cent, the incidence of smoking had halved.

A further series of studies in the Nineties, mainly in the US, claimed to have found that passive smoking was causing thousands of deaths a year. But however much the researchers tried to manipulate the evidence, none could come up with an increased risk of cancer that, by the strict rules of epidemiology, was "statistically significant".

In 1998 and 2003 came the results of by far the biggest studies of passive smoking ever carried out. One was conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation. The other, run by Prof James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat for the American Cancer Society, was a mammoth 40-year-long study of 35,000 non-smokers living with smokers. In each case, when the sponsors saw the results they were horrified. The evidence inescapably showed that passive smoking posed no significant risk. This confirmed Sir Richard Doll's own comment in 2001: "The effects of other people's smoking in my presence is so small it doesn't worry me".

In each case, the sponsors tried to suppress the results, which were only with difficulty made public (the fact that Enstrom and Kabat, both non-smokers, could only get their results published with help from the tobacco industry was inevitably used to discredit them, even though all their research had been financed by the anti-tobacco cancer charity).

In the early years of this decade, the anti-smokers had become so carried away by the rightness of their cause that they no longer worried about finding disciplined evidence for their statistical claims. One notorious but widely-quoted study commissioned by 33 councils campaigning for a "smoke-free London" came up with the wonderfully precise claim that 617 Britons die each year from passive smoking in the workplace. No longer was there any pretence at serious debate. This was a propaganda war, in which statistics could be manufactured at will. (The European Commission's 2006 figure for annual deaths from passive smoking in the UK was around 12,000, some 20 times higher than the figure quoted by the British Government itself.)

By the time the Commons pushed through the smoking ban in February 2006, a kind of collective hysteria had taken over. MPs fell over themselves in boasting how many lives they were about to save. One Department of Health official was quoted as equating its significance to the Act setting up the National Health Service in 1948.

As clouds of self-righteousness billow out over England this weekend, the anti-smokers may be entitled to give us their view that smoking is a thoroughly noxious and nasty habit, even that it can exacerbate respiratory conditions such as asthma or bronchitis arising from other causes. They can even claim that the ban will save lives by persuading smokers to give up. But the one thing they cannot claim is any reliable evidence for their belief that passive smoking is responsible for killing people. Sir Richard Doll was right. It is merely a sanctimonious act of faith.

http://www.telegraph...01/nbook101.xml

[stocks]

Michael Crichton on the Unproven Dangers of Secondhand Smoke

http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

[stocks]

SHS - second hand smoke

In 1992 EPA published its report, "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking," claiming SHS is a serious public health problem, that it kills approximately 3,000 nonsmoking Americans each year from lung cancer, and that it is a Group A carcinogen (like benzene, asbestos, and radon).


In 1998, in a devastating 92-page opinion, Federal Judge William Osteen vacated the EPA study, declaring it null and void. He found a culture of arrogance, deception, and cover-up at the agency

In 2003 a definitive paper on SHS and lung cancer mortality was published in the British Medical Journal. It is the largest and most detailed study ever reported. The authors studied more than 35,000 California never-smokers over a 39-year period and found no statistically significant association between exposure to SHS and lung cancer mortality.

Propaganda Trumps Science

The 1992 EPA report is an example of the use of epidemiology to promote belief in an epidemic instead of to investigate one. It has damaged the credibility of EPA and has tainted the fields of epidemiology and public health.

The abuse of scientific integrity and the generation of faulty "scientific" outcomes (through the use of pseudoscience) have led to the deception of the American public on a grand scale and to draconian government overregulation and the squandering of public money.


http://www.heartland...FTOKEN=86028232

[OEXCHAOS]

The study itself.

http://www.bmj.com/c...l/326/7398/1057

[stocks]

Exposure to second-hand smoke boosts the risk of dementia and other cognitive problems, even among people who have never smoked, the largest study of its kind said. Ill effects on non-smokers of constant exposure to tobacco smoke include an increased risk of lung cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and death, earlier research has shown. As for the impact on brain function, active smoking has been found to impair the mind but the evidence for passive smoking has until now been sketchy.


http://www.news.com....308-401,00.html

http://www.bmj.com/c...38/feb12_2/b462

They did NOT however control for IQ -- which was arguably the most important thing to control for in the circumstances. IQ correlates strongly with mental speed.

So what was in fact found was that low IQ people tend to flock together. It was shown that people who associate with dummies (i.e. smokers) a lot also tend to be dummies (as measured by the tests used in the study below). The study tells us nothing about passive smoking.

Prof John Ray

[maineman]

I've treated 3 widows this week for wheezing, shortness of breath, low oxygen levels and chest x-rays consistent with emphysema. All 3 had husbands who smoked and died from smoking related disease. Not one of these lovely women ever smoked "directly". Sorry for the anecdote and I know it is not a controlled sample. mm

[OEXCHAOS]

Anything else cause chest X-rays consistent with emphysema? Just curious. This is that time of year. Also, there's secondhand smoke and then there's secondhand smoke. It's one thing to be in a well ventilated bar with a few smokers. It's another to be in a car with 3 chain smokers. One is a whiff and the other, well, one might as well be smoking. I'm an ex smoker and I love that I taste the nuances of food and wine again and that I'm not nicotine's b!#ch anymore. I hate being around smokers. I'm under no illusion, however, that smelling them is ever going to harm me. The claims about second hand smoke are deceptive or intellectually dishonest. That, I object to.

[maineman]

Anything else cause chest X-rays consistent with emphysema? not really, its a permanent change. TObacco smoke is deadly. Those who don't smoke should be protected from it. No ifs ands or ....butts. mm

[OEXCHAOS]

Water is deadly. I posit that FAR more people die from water than second hand smoke.

We should protect everyone from it.


I suppose you can treat the resultant "silent epidemic" of dehydration with a special formulation of Dihydrogen monoxide.

Better be careful, though: http://www.dhmo.org/

[stocks]

Passive smoking – another of the Nanny State's big lies

Passive smoking doesn't give you lung cancer. So says a new report publicised by the American Cancer Institute which will come as no surprise whatsoever to anyone with a shred of integrity who has looked into the origins
of the great "environmental tobacco smoke" meme.

It's not just British health Nazis who like to promulgate this myth. Here's what America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has to say on the subject:

Secondhand smoke causes an estimated 3,400 lung cancer deaths among U.S. nonsmokers each year.

The actual number, Jacob Sullum argues at Reason, is "probably closer to zero."


So why does the medical establishment pretend otherwise? Sullum quotes a doctor who comments on the latest study's findings. The doctor observes primly:

"The strongest reason to avoid passive cigarette smoke is to change societal behavior: to not live in a society where smoking is a norm."



http://blogs.telegra...tates-big-lies/