Second-hand Smoke is Harmful to Science

Scripps Howard News Service/www.fumento.com ^ | 11 SEPT 03 | Michael Fumento

[historian1944]

Second-hand Smoke is Harmful to Science By Michael Fumento Scripps Howard News Service, Sept. 11, 2003 Copyright 2003 Scripps Howard News Service

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Looking for a surer method of being ripped apart than entering a lion's den covered with catnip? Conduct the most exhaustive, longest-running study on second-hand smoke and death. Find no connection. Then rather than being PC and hiding your data in a vast warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant, publish it in one of the world's most respected medical journals.

That's what research professor James Enstrom of UCLA and professor Geoffrey Kabat of the State University of New York, Stony Brook discovered last May. That's when they reported in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that their 39-year study of 35,561 Californians who had never smoked showed no "causal relationship between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and tobacco-related mortality," adding, however "a small effect" can't be ruled out.

At this writing there have been over 140 responses on www.bmj.com, and if made into a movie they would be called "The Howling." Many are mere slurs several grades below even sophomoric.

Some demanded the BMJ retract the study because, as one put it, the "tobacco industry will use it." (It didn't). Another made the rather draconian call to ban all use of statistics in science, lest they be put to such wicked purposes as this.

"It is astounding how much of the criticism springs from (personal attacks) rather than from scientific criticism of the study itself," observed one of the few supportive writers. Said another: "As a publisher of the leading Austrian medical online news service, I feel quite embarrassed following the debate on this article. Many postings look more like a witch hunt than a scientific debate."

Sadly, one of the most pathetic responses came from Dr. Michael Thun, vice president for epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society. The ACS started the study and formerly collaborated with the authors. Thun claimed that since there was so much exposure to smokers back in the 1950s and 1960s that essentially everybody was a second-hand smoker.

This logic puts the wife of a two-pack-a-day husband in the same category as somebody who once stumbled into a smoky bar. It negates all ETS studies based on spousal exposure including those serving Thun's purposes. But based on the subjects' own recollection decades later in the UCLA study, spousal smoking was indeed a good indicator of their total exposure to second-hand smoke.

One refrain running through the attacks is, "Why take seriously a study that contradicts what everyone already knows?" But "what everyone knows" is wrong. It's the UCLA study that's very much in the majority.

A 1999 Environmental Health Perspectives survey of 17 ETS-heart disease studies found only five that were statistically significantly positive. ("Statistical significance" refers to whether an increased or decreased risk falls outside the bounds of what could be expected by chance.) The lead author? Why, Michael Thun!

Likewise, a 2002 analysis of 48 studies regarding a possible ETS link to lung cancer found 10 that were significantly positive, one that was actually significantly negative, and 37 that like Enstrom and Kabat's were insignificant either way.

This glass of "pure spring" water contains traces of both cyanide and arsenic, but in levels far too low to cause harm. The reason active tobacco smoking could be such a terrible killer while ETS may cause no deaths lies in the dictum "the dose makes the poison." We are constantly bombarded by carcinogens, but in tiny amounts the body usually easily fends them off.

A New England Journal of Medicine study found that even back in 1975 - when having smoked 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. In scientific terminology, that's called a "tiny amount."

Unable to find significant faults in the UCLA study itself, critics repeatedly harped on what Enstrom and Kabat had clearly stated – that some of the funding was from the tobacco industry. As they explained, this became necessary when the University of California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, which was specifically set up to support this type of research, stopped their funding and no other sources were available.

The big bucks go to those who "discover" that ETS causes everything from pimples to piles. Both governmental and private organizations have directed tens of millions of dollars to groups promoting ETS as a killer, perhaps even a greater killer than active smoking! Meanwhile Big Tobacco has essentially extinguished its efforts on ETS, reserving new spending and political capital for other fights.

So give the BMJ and Enstrom and Kabat an "F" for political correctness. But give them an "A" for honesty and courage.

Disclaimer: Neither Michael Fumento nor the Hudson Institute receive money from tobacco interests.

Read Michael Fumento's other work on smoking.

Michael Fumento is the author of numerous books. His next book, BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World, will be published in October 2003 by Encounter Books.

[DManA]

I wonder if 10 snowmobiles in Yellowstone's 2.5 million acres constitutes a tiny dose or should the employees keep wearing their gas masks?

[Wolfie]

Smokers face an uphill battle on this. The government has 60 odd years of practice in lying about drugs to apply to tobacco. Good luck.

[CIB-173RDABN]

I blame the tobaco industry for this mess. They have/had a lot of money, and when the government first begin their attack, they should have counter attacked. But no, they meekly conceded when their product was banned from advertising on television, and they have been conceding every since.

I don't smoke, never had, never will. But I see this fight as more then the governments desire to save us from ourself.

From the first laws against smoking, we have gained mandatory seat belts, to helmets for children on bikes and men on motorcycles. None of which is the governments business, yet by giving in to these baby steps of taking away decisions that should be ours alone, the government is slowly taking over our lifes.

[historian1944]

People go completely insane when I walk into a building with my pipe unlit but in my mouth.

I'm also offended when a restaurant tells me that I need to put my pipe out when they allow cigarette smoking. I can understand cigar smoke, but pipe smoke is generally pleasant.

[Great Dane]

Sending this to my minister of health.... :-}

[RippleFire]

bump

[Publius6961]

BUMP

[wjcsux]

This is bad! It contradicts the wisdom of the all knowing Nammy State that wants to take care of us.

[Just another Joe]

Seeing all the stuff lately on smoking, I thought I would post this.

All the stuff on smoking? LOL

You must have missed 2 to 3 years ago.
There were twice daily battles of, almost, epic proportions.

[CSM]

I see you are trying to recruit CSW to our side. I wonder if that is a long lost relative of mine!

[Tucson]

In the whole, you are absolutely correct. In its infancy, however, the rationale (or, cover story) for helmets and seatbelts, etc. was not really to save lives but to save money. Whose money? The taxpayers. If every person suffering a head injury from a non-seatbelted accident or spill from a motorcycle died, there'd be no problem. However, many are inconsiderate of their fellow taxpayers and simply become sufficiently and permanently incapacitated and require, ultimately, government (taxpayer) supported healthcare. Therefore, if government has to pay the price tag, they reason, government gets to set the rules to minimize that price tag.

Interesting to this study, Walter Williams has been using this example for years. In addressing false science, he has periodically stated that in order to get a "statistically significant" association between second hand smoke and health risk, the "researchers" ultimately had to set the margin of error so high, it rendered the results meaningless. Except, they never reported the methodology used to get the numbers.

[cmak9]

Good to see proven what I've known all along: Militant anti-smokers are just control freaks - nothing more, nothing less.

[SheLion]

Thanks for the ping, Gabz. I have to read this in a few.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I have seen no mention of the latest second hand smoke threat, the drive by smoking. In many areas of the country this horrendous crime is on the upswing. A perfectly healthy smoke gnatzie (5'4" 275 lb) is standing on a street corner. Suddenly a car stops with the windows down and smokers inside waiting for the light to change. While this is happening the smoke gnatzie is exposed to huge amounts of second hand smoke. The light changes and the criminals drive away. Who can the smoke gnatzie sue for damages? In most cities these crimes are committed by smoke gangs, "The Menthols, The Non-Menthols, The Filters, The Non-Filters, The Regulars, and The Kings. Something must be done and soon. If not for us all, for the children.

[Just another Joe]

In most cities these crimes are committed by smoke gangs, "The Menthols, The Non-Menthols, The Filters, The Non-Filters, The Regulars, and The Kings.

Don't forget the most formidable gang, "The Stuffers". ;^)

[Conspiracy Guy]

I did't want to bring them and the Holy Rollers up?

I just wrote the smoke gnatzie poem for free use by property rights freepers.

Smoke Gnatzies

They buzz around your head until,
You think it will explode.
You’d like to catch them all and flush,
They’d swirl down the commode.
They agitate, they irritate,
They just won’t go away.
They want to tell you how to live,
To all of them I say.
Be gone you pest, just fly away,
My freedom you won’t take.
If not for all the buzzing,
I’d swear you were a snake.
But snakes are bad, and you’re just sad,
So go and bug some cat.
Cause if you don’t get out of here,
There’s gonna be a splat.

Flurry 9/16/3

[Gabz]

Except, they never reported the methodology used to get the numbers.

In part you are correct.

The methodology was reported, but the major media either put it on the back side of page 54D or they got so many quotes from som many antis that the real "fact" was finally down at the bottom of paragraph 35 and generally never read.

[Hot Tabasco]

Nammy State

Nammy, how I love ya, how I love ...;.oops, sorry thats supposed to be mammy

[Mears]

You are very clever,Flurry!!

You have a smoker's sense of humor,thank God.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Thank you and I thank God everyday for giving me my twisted mind. It is a blessing.