Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official

13 November 2002

[SheLion]

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 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 even have a protective effect. The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks.

The World Health Organization, 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.
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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.

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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."
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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."

[borisbob69]

Show me where you have a right to eat in a smoke free anyplace! If it weren't for the anti-smoking nazi's and their sympathetic liberal politicians/judges you would be at the mercy of private property owners (the owners of restaurants/bars/lounges) and their decision whether to allow smoking would determine whether you would choose to enter and dine/drink/whine.

As it is...we smokers are inconvenienced by small minded, do-gooders like you who think you are entitled to dictate how/when/where we pursue the happiness which is our basic/guaranteed right!

[Just another Joe]

Yes, big tobacco has become big wussy since the govt forced the MSA on them.

[SheLion]

My 46 year old sister-in-law who has emphysema from her fathers second hand smoke and who needs a lung transplant soon or she will die. It sort of makes me a bit annoyed with those who are too selfish for a minor inconvience when it comes to their children.

We don't HAVE any children in our house, thank you!  And we do NOT hang out where kids are. How's that!

[VRWC_minion]

You know, minion, if the only thing you can say is, "It's for the CHILDREN", you know what you sound like

Its one thing to ask the government to intervene, its quite another to speak up for those who cannot. Children are forced to endure their parents smoke because their parents are selfish. This is a fact. Stating it may not be what some want to hear. Sorry.

[Leisler]

"I know my kids and 2 new grand kids want me around as long as possible."

Ah? A pus dripping from the nose, puffy eyed, constantly spitting , gun toating, black belt professional Viet Nam vet, with no social skills who is convinced kids just want to be around him.

I don’t think so.

[MattAMiller]

One study, especially one that conflicts with all others, doesn't mean very much. It may not have been published because the methodology was screwed.

I don't see any reason to believe that this study is the truth and all others are fatally flawed. You should expect some studies to fail to find correlations that exist. They are designed to make such errors unlikely, but not impossible.

[SheLion]

Do you want to borrow a match to check the pilot lite.....

You crack me up. hehe!

[Leonard210]

Hi Leisler, I missed the point. I believe that, for the reason you cited, that I have a right to use bleace/chlorine in a restaurant regardless of who it disturbs. So you're agreeing with me?

[SheLion]

Guess that list of writers, artists, physicists, and rocket scientists who smoked that we keep posting finally made them crawl into the corner and suck their thumbs?

I have NO idea. But a few of them are starting to come out of their box. And I should go soon, or I am going to get nasty! LOL!

[metesky]

You not only have no "right" to eat in a smoke free restaurant, you have no "right" to eat in any restaurant at all.

The owner of the establishment has the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason. Read their license sometime.

And I think the owner of any restaurant would scoot you out as soon as you pulled out the bleach, whereas some owners welcome smokers and some don't, they all dislike whacky control freaks.

[Leonard210]

Ass soon as you show me where you have a right to a smoke-filled environment.

[SheLion]

"Philip Morris USA believes that the conclusions of public health officials concerning environmental tobacco smoke, also known as secondhand smoke, are sufficient to warrant measures that regulate smoking in public places."

No no! I have had run-ins with you before. Your not going to start anything else with me, ever again, Cindy.

Find someone else to flame.

[borisbob69]

In the smoking area of any establishment that exists solely to irritate you!

[metesky]

Look on the bright side: When she's dead, she'll never be able to tell everyone what an ass her brother-in-law is.

Free at last!

[Leonard210]

You not only have no "right" to eat in a smoke free restaurant, you have no "right" to eat in any restaurant at all.

If I, and others like me, pass a LAW to restrict your use of a LEGAL substance, then I have a RIGHT until you pass a LAW recinding my LEGAL RIGHT.

[SheLion]

Yes, big tobacco has become big wussy since the govt forced the MSA on them.

Your right! And the smoker's who pay taxes on cigarettes pay 100% for THAT! Not Big Government and NOT Big Tobacco. The SMOKERS!

Gawd, I hate Phillip Morris. They have turned into limp rags.

[cinFLA]

(Philip Morris)

"We also believe that where smoking is permitted, the government should require the posting of warning notices that communicate public health officials' conclusions that secondhand somke causes disease in non-smokers."

[Leonard210]

If you have no response, it's usually best to not respond. I have no problem with your RIGHT to smoke. I enjoy a cigar on occasion myself. You however, nor I, have any RIGHT to smoke where others have determined that they don't want us to smoke...BY LAW.

[Gabz]

Actually this was the largest study ever done and did not conflisct with the other studies.

All the others studies have said basically the same thing - the increased relative risks due to exposure to SHS are not statistically significant.

And this is part of the reason a Federal Court threw out most of the EPA's findings about SHS - because that report was SERIOUSLY flawed. All they did was take the studies existing at the time and lump them all together - when the relative risks didn't come out the way they wanted them - they changed the parameters until they did. In other words - they cooked the numbers to suit their agenda.

[Old Professer]

My 46 year old sister-in-law who has emphysema from her fathers second hand smoke and who needs a lung transplant soon or she will die. It sort of makes me a bit annoyed with those who are too selfish for a minor inconvience when it comes to their children.

Unsupportable conclusion.