[Publius6961]

A fellow Freeper asked for a reference to the location of the text of the late 90s U.N. WHO report on second hand smoke. In searching, I discovered this little gem, which might be of interest to other Freepers.
In a WHO press release, in 1998, the following was included, as an explanation as to why the complete report had not been released:

In February 1998, according to usual scientific practice, a paper reporting the main study results was sent to a reputable scientific journal for consideration and peer review. That is why the full report is not yet publicly available. Under the circumstances, however, the authors of the study have agreed to make an abstract of the report available to the media.

It has now been 7 years, and the complete report is still suppressed.
Might it be reasonable to assume that the report was in fact buried because it did not indicate that the very basis being used to pass unreasonable laws prohibiting smoking outdoors in public parks and beaches is a fraud based on no scientific basis whatsoever?

Arbitrary, crapricious and unconstitutional comes to mind.

[brooklin]

I thought that you might be interested in some parts of this story. I noted the part about children of smokers being less likely to get lung cancer.
by the way, I don't smoke, but don't care if people do.

[Mears]

"Fact: On March 8, 1998, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported "The world's leading health organization 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 have even a protective effect."

---

We have all been conned!

Where's the outrage?

[jtullins]

Even more evidence that second hand smoke is little more than another media scare.
I can't believe the scientific community is refusing to allow this study to be released. Makes me wonder if some U.N. bigwig just thought the report stepped a little out of party lines and they're trying to use this as an excuse.

In any case, we need to get people to realize that smoking is a personal decision and stop the rampant laws against things which aren't hurting anybody else.

[SolidRedState]

Thanks for the post. Facts will never stand in the way of the smoking ban proponents, however.

[Gabz]

Thank you for putting this out in front of folks!!!!!

While I have never met him personally, Dave Hitt is a fine man. He does not work for the tobacco industry and undertook this research on his own dime and time.

[lockjaw02]

Publius, just for your info, the report was eventually published. There's a copy of the abstract on the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) PubMed database.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) used to have it posted on their site, but I can't find it under the same document title as when I downloaded it years ago. However, you can point your fellow freeper to get a copy here. The conclusion was, "Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk. We did find weak evidence of a dose-response relationship between risk of lung cancer and exposure to spousal and workplace ETS. There was no detectable risk after cessation of exposure." However, it is important to note that their calculations for childhood exposures were, "ETS exposure during childhood was not associated with an increased risk of lung cancer (odds ratio [OR] for ever exposure = 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.64-0.96)," which means that their data indicated that children exposed to parental smoking had less of a risk of contracting lung cancer later in life than children not exposed. So when they say childhood exposure was not associated with increased risk, they weren't lying, but they were misleading because their results did indicate it was associated with decreased risk. Pretty incredible, eh?