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Report's all smoke and mirrors
New York Daily News ^ | July 5, 2006 | Sidney Zion

Posted on 07/06/2006 4:08:08 AM PDT by SheLion

If President Bush announced that secondhand smoke kills more Americans than the Iraqi insurgency, AIDS, drunken drivers and Katrina put together, would we nod in agreement — or look to Bellevue, if not to impeachment?

Comes now Richard Carmona, the surgeon general of the United States, telling us that secondhand smoke kills 49,000 Americans a year — and there's no outcry, no notion that maybe this is nuts. Instead, the mass media buys it without question, and so apparently do the people.

Does anybody out there know anything about Carmona, or even that he's the surgeon general? In 2003, he appeared before the Congress and came out for prohibition of tobacco. Which doesn't exactly make him a neutral scientific observer of the danger of secondhand smoke.

In fact, his 700-page report is full of junk science, delivered across 20 years by a band of willful anti-smoke zealots who understood that in order to get people to quit the habit, they had to promote the idea that smokers were destroying innocent bystanders, including their own children.

What the surgeon general never tells us is that the whole deal is entirely statistical — there are no autopsies, no direct evidence whatsoever. It is all computer generated: The computer is asked, if secondhand smoke kills, how many people will it kill?

For active smoking, there is plenty of direct evidence. More smokers die than nonsmokers. What the anti-smoke zealots have brilliantly done is to conflate the two: Smoking kills, therefore secondhand smoking kills.

The evidence is decidedly the other way. Every major study tells us this, including those done by the World Health Organization, the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. Department of Energy and a massive 35-year study financed for years by the American Cancer Society.

Against all this, the surgeon general, who never conducted his own study, says that "the debate is over," there is no longer any question about secondhand smoke. Dr. Robert Madden, former president of the New York Cancer Society, and a chest and vascular surgeon, told me it's "baloney," nothing but "junk science."

Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, is also a longtime opponent of smoking. But to her, the idea that a 30-second exposure to secondhand smoke can kill — as says the surgeon general — is "outrageous." "It violated the basic tenet of toxicology: 'Only the dose makes the poison.'"

But who cares for dosage, when the ends justify the means, and political correctness rules the world.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: anti; antismokers; augusta; bans; budget; butts; camel; caribou; chicago; cigar; cigarettes; cigarettetax; commerce; epa; fda; governor; individual; interstate; kool; lawmakers; lewiston; liberty; maine; mainesmokers; marlboro; msa; niconazis; osha; pallmall; pipe; portland; prosmoker; pufflist; quitsmoking; regulation; rico; rights; rinos; ryo; sales; senate; smokers; smoking; smokingbans; taxes; tobacco; winston
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Fox News has been reporting that we are having a population explosion.  We have over 3 hundred million people in the United States alone.

I ask you:  if smoking and second hand smoke is killing everyone, how can we be having a population explosion?  They talk out of both sides of their filthy mouths.

1 posted on 07/06/2006 4:08:14 AM PDT by SheLion
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To: Just another Joe; Madame Dufarge; Cantiloper; metesky; Judith Anne; lockjaw02; Mears; CSM; ...

2 posted on 07/06/2006 4:08:50 AM PDT by SheLion ("If you're legal, you can fly with the Eagle!" - Michael Anthony)
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To: SheLion

I heard on the radio this morning the absurd claim that one in four women will die of breast cancer every 12 minutes.


3 posted on 07/06/2006 4:13:44 AM PDT by Notwithstanding (I love my German shepherd - Benedict XVI reigns!)
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To: SheLion

Who was it that said 'I'll sit in my garage and smoke and you sit in your garage with your car engine running'. Does anyone question which one of us will survive?


4 posted on 07/06/2006 4:15:50 AM PDT by JoeSixPack1
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To: SheLion

49,000 people a year die from materials created shortly after the "big bang" - should we ban the universe then?


5 posted on 07/06/2006 4:16:28 AM PDT by xcamel (Press to Test, Release to Detonate)
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To: SheLion
I ask you: if smoking and second hand smoke is killing everyone, how can we be having a population explosion? They talk out of both sides of their filthy mouths.

The poplulation explosion is coming, more from a massive increase in illegal invaders, and their offspring coming as quickly and many as they can have, than Americans proliferating!... having an "anchor baby" is their first goal! After all, it won't cost THEM anything, but somebody pays to educate their kids, and gie them free health care!

(I was going to post a pic of hispanic/mexicans in emergency rooms, but amazingly, my Google search revealed NONE!)

6 posted on 07/06/2006 4:18:48 AM PDT by pageonetoo (You'll spot their posts soon enough!)
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To: SheLion
Well the guy is right about everything but this little gem:

More smokers die than nonsmokers.

Get ahold of yourself, Sidney! We all die, some sooner, some later.

7 posted on 07/06/2006 4:21:23 AM PDT by metesky ("Brethren, leave us go amongst them." Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton - Ward Bond- The Searchers)
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To: SheLion

Well, I ain't buyin' it. For the record, I'm not a smoker, don't particularly care for the smell of it (especially stale ashtrays, ugghhh), but I'm calling series BS on all this chickenlittle nonsense.


8 posted on 07/06/2006 4:30:46 AM PDT by Hegemony Cricket (Rugged individualists of the world, unite!)
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To: Notwithstanding

I heard on the radio this morning the absurd claim that one in four women will die of breast cancer every 12 minutes.

Does that mean that all 4 will die in 48 minutes?


9 posted on 07/06/2006 4:33:55 AM PDT by NewHampshireDuo
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To: SheLion
[Article] More smokers die than nonsmokers.

Oh, really?

Well, since smokers are about 20% of the population and nonsmokers 80%, then the logic of the statement is that at least 60% of the population -- all nonsmokers -- are exempt from ever dying, and will live forever.

What a twit.

10 posted on 07/06/2006 4:37:43 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: NewHampshireDuo

Exactly what I was wondering - what in the hell does that jumble of scare stats really mean?


11 posted on 07/06/2006 4:38:45 AM PDT by Notwithstanding (I love my German shepherd - Benedict XVI reigns!)
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To: Notwithstanding

What it really means, is every smoker will die of cancer if they don't die of something else first.


12 posted on 07/06/2006 4:40:51 AM PDT by SR 50 (Larry)
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To: lentulusgracchus
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!

In all seriousness, while I detest smoking, and my Mom is slowing dying from Infsema(sp), I do not believe the second hand smoke crap.
13 posted on 07/06/2006 4:53:58 AM PDT by GeorgefromGeorgia
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To: Notwithstanding

1 death every 12 minutes= 5 deaths an hour= 120 deaths a day= 43800 deaths from breast cancer a year.

This is NOT an absurd claim. At least 40,000 women a year die from breast cancer


14 posted on 07/06/2006 4:57:06 AM PDT by cydcharisse
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To: SheLion

I guess there isnt much of an outcry because the Surgeon Generals office is considered a joke anyway by most people.

Maybe we should go back to the times when beating your meat was the major issue in the Surgeon Generals office.

This is nothing new. We have all seen the highway signs saying so many million were killed by smoking. Just a statistic made up out of whole cloth. We knew that then , we know it now. This clown is just making up a new figure out of whole cloth.


15 posted on 07/06/2006 4:58:27 AM PDT by sgtbono2002 (The fourth estate is a fifth column.)
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To: Notwithstanding
I heard on the radio this morning the absurd claim that one in four women will die of breast cancer every 12 minutes.

I think 'they' think we are all a bunch of dumb sheeple out here.  Now, Tylenol isn't good for us, and drinking is killing us and what else was the media throwing out there.  I forget.  But this is so ridiculous it's beyond the pale.

One week, red meat is killing us.  The next week we aren't getting enough.  And I say ENOUGH ALREADY!

If things are so bad for us, pull the darn junk off of the shelves and shut the fork up!

16 posted on 07/06/2006 4:58:50 AM PDT by SheLion ("If you're legal, you can fly with the Eagle!" - Michael Anthony)
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To: JoeSixPack1
Who was it that said 'I'll sit in my garage and smoke and you sit in your garage with your car engine running'. Does anyone question which one of us will survive?

That's been thrown around a lot Joe.  And I would sit in an enclosed car with several people smoking anytime before I would sit in a running vehicle in an enclosed garage.  You can't bet on it who is going to be the survivor here.

17 posted on 07/06/2006 5:01:01 AM PDT by SheLion ("If you're legal, you can fly with the Eagle!" - Michael Anthony)
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To: xcamel

49,000 people a year die from materials created shortly after the "big bang" - should we ban the universe then?

Don't give the anti's more ideas.  They will be after 'that' next.  LOL


18 posted on 07/06/2006 5:02:12 AM PDT by SheLion ("If you're legal, you can fly with the Eagle!" - Michael Anthony)
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To: cydcharisse

Post #14.

Does that come from smokers nibbling?


19 posted on 07/06/2006 5:02:48 AM PDT by SR 50 (Larry)
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To: NewHampshireDuo
...one in four women will die of breast cancer every 12 minutes.

Does that mean that all 4 will die in 48 minutes?

No, it means the half-life for a woman is about 29 min so after about 3 hours you have a 95% confidence interval they they all have decayed to a safe state. I'm trying to calculate the LD50 now.

20 posted on 07/06/2006 5:02:55 AM PDT by dmcnash (eieio)
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