Science by decree.
Well, I for one am glad it is a minority smoking causing second hand smoke death as opposed to the exhause from all the automobiles we were told did it.
I will support a ban as soon as cars are banned and sick people in public are banned. I'm tired of breathing their filthy secondhand germs. No one has a right to put my life in danger by going in public breathing germs into my airspace. Sick people in public kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people every year.
It wasn't that long ago that "eggs" were dangerous for us to eat.....then a "new study" determined that was not the case at all, eggs are actually good for us.
If you shout a lie loud enough and long enough it will be taken as Truth TM.
Well, duh, of course the smoke contains carcinogens -- we already knew that. The reality is that almost no one has ever gotten a significant exposure through the second-hand pathway.
Ping-a-ling
This whole clean air thing is a crock. Our ancestors in England, Europe or where ever spent their darkness hours in smoky huts with only a hole in the roof as a chimney. A bit over a 100 years ago cities like London had "fog" that was mostly coal and wood smoke, plus all the dirt of having horses and oxen as the prime movers.
The point is, mankind has lived for thousands of years around more polluted air than today and survived to the point there are almost 4 billion of people. The air today in the USA is almost as pure as air in an Intel chip fab clean room.
SEE FOLLOWING:
Smoking Out Bad Science
http://www.junkscience.com/news/euwsjets.htm
“For the past 15 years the anti-smoking lobby has pushed the view that cigarette smoking is a public health hazard. This was a shrewd tactic. For having failed to persuade committed smokers to save themselves, finding proof that passive smoking harmed non-smoking wives, children or workmates meant smoking could be criminalized. Last week the science fell off the campaign wagon when the definitive study on passive smoking, sponsored by the World Health Organization, reported no cancer risk at all.”
“But don't bet that will change the crusaders' minds. smoking, like fox hunting, is something that certain factions want to ban simply because they don't like it. It has slipped from a health crusade to a moral one. Today, National No smoking Day in Britain will be marked by demagoguery from the Department of Health, which has already set its agenda to ban smoking. The U.K. Scientific Committee on Tobacco or Health (SCOTH) report on passive smoking, due out Thursday, is headed by a known anti-tobacco crusader, Professor Nicholas Wald of the Royal London School of Medicine.”
“However, it is now obvious that the health hazard of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) has been knowingly overstated. The only large-scale definitive study on ETS was designed in 1988 by a WHO subgroup called the International Agency on Research on Cancer (IARC). It compared 650 lung-cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people in seven European countries. The results were expressed as "risk ratios," where the normal risk for a non-smoker of contracting lung cancer is set at one. Exposure to tobacco smoke in the home raised the risk to 1.16 and to smoke in the workplace to 1.17. This supposedly represents a 16% or 17% increase. But the admitted margin of error is so wide--0.93 to 1.44--that the true risk ratio could be less than one, making second-hand smoke a health benefit. “
SEE ALSO:
EPA: Environmental Propaganda Agency
http://www.junkscience.com/news3/ibdostee.htm
"The Environmental Protection Agency jiggered the facts to push its notion that passive smoke causes cancer. The EPA's dishonesty was recently laid bare in court. But this was too late for thousands of businesses and towns that responded to the EPA's junk science by passing anti-smoking measures."
"In '93, the EPA released a report on secondhand smoke. It claimed that evidence showed that environmental tobacco smoke, or ETS, is a Group A carcinogen. Secondhand smoke causes cancer in humans, said the EPA."
"Highly respected scientists questioned the EPA's findings. But the big-government crowd and health storm troopers gleefully waved the report in lawmakers' faces. They demanded that something be done. "
"Soon, airlines, offices, restaurants and even bars declared smoking verboten. Smokers effectively became lepers. All based on bad science. "
"Tobacco companies sued. The result? U.S. District Judge William Osteen issued his 92-page ruling against the EPA on July 17. Some of its findings:"
* "EPA failed to comply with the procedural requirements set forth by Congress."
* "EPA failed to comply with the requirements" of the Radon Research Act, which it used to conduct its ETS research.
* The EPA's indoor-air quality commission "did not include individuals from industry or representatives from more than one state," as required by law.
* "Using its normal methodology and its selected studies, EPA did not demonstrate a statistically significant association between ETS and lung cancer. . . . Instead, EPA changed its methodology to find a statistically significant association."
* "EPA began drafting a policy guide recommending workplace smoking bans before drafting the ETS Risk Assessment."
* "Rather than reach a conclusion after collecting information, researching, and making findings, EPA categorized ETS as a 'known cause of cancer' in 1989."
* The EPA's "administrative record contains glaring deficiencies."
* "EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun."
* The EPA "adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the agency's public conclusion, and aggressively utilized the (Radon) Act's authority to disseminate findings to establish a de facto regulatory scheme intended to restrict plaintiffs' products and to influence public opinion."
* "EPA disregarded information and made findings on selective information. . . . (The EPA) failed to disclose important findings and reasoning, and left significant questions without answers."
”In short, the EPA lied."
For anyone (including myself, yes an admitted smoker) who compares these zealots as “nazis” I simply need remind all to one of Hitler’s many decrees (in his nanny-state efforts to protect his Aryan population ) by banning smoking in Nazi Germany.
PS. Before all of you non-smokers jump all over this, PLEASE, know that if any of you enjoy an occasional Big Mac (with fries) or Twinkies, or anything else which "do-gooders" deem "unhealthy," YOU, are next!!!
First will be "taxing" these unhealthy goodies; thereafter, the banning, thereof. Count on it.
this is actually well-written, and scientifically correct.
Nanny State PING
Michael Fumento, once again, gets it !!!!!!!!
This is not about smoking or health ..........it is about controlling what (supposedly) free people choose to do.
Then every congresscritter and Senator mailed out some flyer on AIDS protection (always use clean needles and here is how to wear a condom) without one word about AIDS prevention.
bump
There are a tremendous number of people injured and killed in falls every year. I await the study supporting the repeal of the law of gravity....It can't be far off.
"It’s easy to agree with the ultimate goal, but inventing scientific outcomes and shutting down scientific debate as a means is as intolerable as it was when Nazi Germany “proved” the validity of eugenics."
Once opinion becomes law, intolerance becomes a criminal act.
... showed a statistically significant reduced risk for children of smokers, though we can assume that was a fluke. A fluke? I don't think so. In fact this study should be studied more and in great detail.
Why? One phrase or one word: "J Factor" or "Hormesis" - take your pick. I first read about the "J Factor" in an Analog-Science Fiction-Science Fact Alternate View article by Harry Stine in June 1984.
His article discussed how low level radiation exposure in nuclear workers and airline pilots & stewardesses led to statistically longer life spans and lower cancer rates.
Now this is known as Hormesis and may (emphasize may here) apply to a whole range of toxins. Where it was once thought the only safe level of toxins was 0.00000...1 onto something approaching infinity now we know better.
Well at least some of us do. Others have too much invested in the "Zero Risk" view for toxins to truly consider the possibility that low level (think micro or smaller) doses might be beneficial.
Two articles address that address this are
1) Longevity is the most appropriate measure of health effects of radiation in Radiology Oct 2003
2) An Access to Energy article on Chemical Hormesis
which has the added benefit of a fascinating story within the article on Linus Pauling and some Vitamin C research he didn't care for.
If you are interested, there are also plenty of articles attacking the J Factor or Hormesis.
Tokra replies to RicocheT in post #27 that the life expectancy was 45 years in olde Europe/England.
Because of the way 45 years was presented, I assume it meant the average life span was 45 years. Certainly true, but distorted by the high (very high) infant and child mortality rate in pre-industrial Europe/England.
Other distortions compared to today: lack of any real antibiotics, medical care, proper public/private waste disposal, clean water, and safety engineering was not even a gleam in anyone's eye at the time.
Those who lived to a healthy 45 often lived on to 55, 65, and 75 depending on lifestyle and genetics. Me, I'll take today's medical advantages to make it to 55 then 65 then 75 and maybe 85 ... oooops, already passed 55. Darn.
The article also stated having smoke obnoxiously puffed into your face was ubiquitous in restaurants, cocktail lounges, and transportation lounges – the concentration was equal to merely 0.004 cigarettes an hour.
It's unclear if this was a constant source of second hand smoke or not. Still it was interesting to find out 0.004 cigarettes/hours amounts to one cigarette every 10 days and 10 hours. Surely something the average healthy body could deal with through its natural defenses.
I grew up in one of those homes, smoked off and on for 15 years and quit over 20 years ago.
Cheers!!
RileyD, nwJ