Second Hand Smoke Scam

Fox News ^ | October 17, 2003 | Steven Milloy

[CSM]

I could only laugh last April when I first heard about a study claiming that a smoking ban in Helena, Mont., cut the city

[Sacajaweau]

People that smoke are jusat as likely to die as people that don't.

One uncle died from liver problems. One died from a stroke after a fall. One died from leukemia. One died from a bleeding ulcer. They all smoked and these are the old Camel smokers. But basically, they ALL died from old age because they were 78 and up!!

[been_lurking]

So, by extrapolation of your reasoning, if even one person smokes a cigarette somewhere in the world, you are in danger.

You have a lot of work cut out for you if you are going to ban all smoking world-wide.

You better log-off and get to work....

[Rodney King]

If so many people are saying that second hand smoke has no effect, then why don't they call (for example) the oncology department at OHSU and ask them, or call any oncology dept that specializes in lung cancer?

I am no saying that second hand smoke is not harmful. I hate the stuff. But in answer to your question, one cannot just call the oncology department at a hospital because that would not be a valid way to study the problem. The oncology department at the hospital only sees sick people. Their sample is biased. They don't see the millions and millions of people who have had no ill effects. To simply call the people who only see sick people would be the same as doing a poll on whether or not welfare is worthwhile and only polling welfare recipients.

[MosesKnows]

smoke is purified

Of course the second hand smoke is cleaner. Can you envision a better filter than a lung?

[Alberta's Child]

I've been through Helena a few times, and I can assure you that this study is a lot of crap.

The damage to one's health from smoking 100 packs of cigarettes a day in Helena pales in comparison to the damage to one's health from breathing the air in that city -- the place is wall-to-wall oil and gas refineries.

Eliminating smoking in public places in Helena is about as effective at improving public health as drinking a Diet Coke instead of regular Coke with two dozen slices of pizza.

[Bigh4u2]

Maybe this little known article might clear up the idea of second hand smoke.

This article was published in the Sunday Telegraph in the U.K.

The article has since been pulled and seemingly purged from their archives.



"UK Sunday Telegraph...

Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official


Headline: Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official
Byline: Victoria MacDonald, Health Correspondent
Dateline: March 8, 1998

The world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect. The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks.

The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report. Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week.





The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - inhaling other people's smoke - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups. Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that passive smoking caused lung cancer.





The research compared 650 lung cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and those who grew up with smokers. The results are consistent with there being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer.

The summary, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, also states: "There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood." A spokesman for Action on Smoking and Health said the findings "seem rather surprising given the evidence from other major reviews on the subject which have shown a clear association between passive smoking and a number of diseases."





Dr Chris Proctor, head of science for BAT Industries, the tobacco group, said the findings had to be taken seriously. "If this study cannot find any statistically valid risk you have to ask if there can be any risk at all. "It confirms what we and many other scientists have long believed, that while smoking in public may be annoying to some non-smokers, the science does not show that being around a smoker is a lung-cancer risk."

[Mears]

LMAO---Sounds like my family!!!!!

[Old Professer]

There is a very strong link between diabetes and death by heart failure with abundant etiological evidence; there is a strong statistical link between heart attacks and active smoking with weak etiological evidence; there is virtually no strong link between ETS and heart attacks or heart failure (despite the noise) and no etiological evidence at all.

Further, heart attacks are seasonal: extremes in temperature bring on bodily stress such as heat waves and poor body-temperature regulation in summer and cold weather and snow (which leads to over-exertion) in winter.

The best advice is to not smoke and stay away from those who do.

It is absurd to think that a six-month slowdown in the exposure to ETS would result in a statistically significant reduction in hospital admissions.

The ban only applied to public places and could have had no direct effect on residential exposure which is assumedly higher than that found publically; therefor, if the "study" was not adjusted for relatives and guests of smokers in their homes the results are meaningless unless we were to assume that the already-weakened victims more regularly frequented establishments where smoking was allowed prior to the ban.

[aruanan]

Dr. Stan Glantz (search) (more on him later) -- as if some statistical mumbo-jumbo would credibly explain why the 1998 dip in heart attack rates was just an anomaly but the 2002 dip was definitely due to the smoking ban.

Shouldn't this be Dr. Stan Glans? He really does sound like one.

[UseYourHead]

I am inclined to believe that the inhalation of microsocopic shards created by the combustion of tobacco is not a good idea and a constant inhalation of these particles is going to cause irrevocable damage.

However, I would also be inclined to give smokers a little leeway if they would STOP FLICKING THEIR BUTTS ON THE GROUND!!! When you are at a stoplight or stopsign later today, look out your driver's window and look at the curb - There is no excuse for that kind of behavior.

Clean it up, smokers!

[aculeus]

Neal Boortz fell for this Helena garbage ... big time.

[Old Professer]

There is little to be gained by accepting a posture of a "smoking-rights advocate"; I prefer to call myself a smoking-ban opponent.

This is an issue of government rights versus inenumerated rights.

[metesky]

Post a scan of the death certificate that explicitly states, Cause of Death: Second Hand Smoke.

[Mears]

Great article,but you say it has gone from the archives.

Are they trying to "protect" the people? Unbelievable!Do they have a Freedom of Information type law in the UK?Isn't this censorship?

It never ceases to amaze me that not one mainstream newspaper in the US has ever tried to prevent this ETS scam from getting so out of control.

[N. Theknow]

Even though I am not a resident of Montana, much less Helena, I did not suffer a heart attack during those six months. Nor did anyone else I know suffer a heart attack.

And the article says it was junk science!

< /sarcasm >

[Old Professer]

It is safe to say that you could not work as a groundskeeper in spring in Nashville, but that doesn't mean that the government can present false evidence to bolster its shaky basis for usurpation of private freedom; in your workplace a reasonable accomodation could easily been made had you requested one through a Congressionally-mandated Act - the ADA; did you ever approach your employer along these lines prior to the smoking ban being put in place at your workplace?

[aruanan]

I’m almost surprised that anyone is still trying to link secondhand smoke (search) with heart disease. The University of Chicago’s Dr. John Bailar -- no friend of the tobacco industry-- published in the March 25, 1999, New England Journal of Medicine his quite devastating analysis of the alleged link between secondhand smoke and heart disease.

University of Chicago BUMP!

[Mears]

"Clean it up,smokers"

Give me a break. There are slob smokers and there are slob non-smokers.Don't put all smokers into the slob category,please.

You only see the ones that toss their cigarettes,you don't see the ones that properly dispose of them and they are in the majority.

[Bigh4u2]

It's no so much a position of 'protecting the public' but more of one to 'protect thier postion' that SHS is bad and a health threat to everyone.

If you consider the amount of money that is involved here concerning taxation and lawsuits, the incentive to keep this information quiet is quite strong.

There recently was another article that I had read concerning this very same study, but, unfortunately, I didn't save it.

[Old Professer]

Why would you try to use logic on "a man of reason?"