Posted on 08/23/2002 5:39:18 PM PDT by SheLion
NEW YORK, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- If you were to be strapped down on a surgical table while four guys exhaled smoke directly into your mouth and nostrils for 30 years, you MIGHT get lung cancer 40 years after they stopped -- but it's not likely.
I'm using this absurd example, because ALL of the other examples in the available scientific literature are equally absurd.
The second-hand smoke scare is a political farce. It was invented in the mid-1990s by the Clinton administration -- it has Hillary's hands all over it -- because anti-smoking radicals, who tend to be like anti-abortion radicals in their zealous devotion to the cause, actually convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to change its "conventional standard for statistical significance" so that second-hand smoke could be proven to be a killer.
Normally nobody but specialists would care -- substandard scientific reports get released all the time -- except that it's now being used to justify anti-smoking legislation that, in the case of New York City, could result in smokers not even being able to light up in their own clubs, their own bars, and, in one case, their own apartment buildings -- even if the place is clearly marked as a smoking establishment.
If Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets his way, they won't even be able to smoke in smoking lounges, cigar bars or tobacco shops.
Wouldn't the American way be to put a big sign on the front of your restaurant? "People Smoke In Here -- Don't Come In If It Bugs You." And then let everyone act like grownups?
The simple fact of the matter is that by about 1990 everyone had reached a compromise on this issue. Smokers would sit in smoking sections.
Ventilation systems would be installed in public buildings. Everyone would live and let live.
Not good enough for the smoke-haters. They knew that arguing against a legal substance on the basis that it was hurting the people who LIKED IT was a losing battle, and un-American besides. But if they could somehow prove that innocent people were dying ...
And so they proved it with "junk science." The Bush administration recently rejected a scientific report, 30 years in the making, signed by some of the top researchers in the world that said fossil fuels were the principle cause of global warming in the form of air pollution. The reason Bush rejected the findings: it was "junk science" from "the bureaucracy."
If that was junk science, then the second-hand smoke research comes from a junkyard infested with giant rats and scavenging stray dogs. Most of the available studies have "confidence intervals" right around 1.0 -- which means no confidence at all. And almost all of them fail to take into account the other sources of air pollution. It's as though our polluted air were made up of 140 parts car exhaust, 70 parts smoke from fossil-fuel-burning factories, 40 parts methane, and .0000001 parts smoke from that guy on the corner sneaking a cigarette on his lunch hour. So what do we do?
KILL THE SMOKER. HE'S DESTROYING THE AIR.
The fact is, there have been 40 epidemiological studies of second-hand smoke, almost all of them based on the experience of non-smokers married to smokers. Thirty-two of them found no evidence of second-hand smoke causing any disease at all. The other eight showed "weak association" -- but in some of the studies there was actually a NEGATIVE result, indicating that non-smoking spouses of smokers are LESS likely to get a serious disease.
Of course, the ones that showed a negative result were thrown out as wacky, but the others are equally wacky. For one thing, they're all infected with what science calls "recall bias." People interviewed are asked to reconstruct smoking patterns over their entire lifetimes, and it's been shown time and again that their memories are faulty, and in many cases, designed to mislead. The non-smoker frequently turns out to be a smoker for a portion of those years; he changes his story for insurance reasons or because of pending litigation. And the non-smoker with lung cancer tends to seek external causes and fasten on the most convenient one, even when we know that a person living in an urban area is subject to multiple possible causes of lung cancer, most of them far more potent than cigarette smoke.
Complicating the issue is the media treatment of second-hand smoke. If you say something often enough, it acquires the patina of truth even if the original basis for it is phony. I could use dozens of examples, but I'll just use the most recent one that I know of. Here's the lead paragraph from a July 12 article in the Globe and Mail, the Canadian newspaper:
"People who are routinely exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke, such as workers in bars and restaurants, can see their risk of lung cancer triple, a new study says. The Canadian study provides some of the most compelling scientific evidence yet for a total ban on workplace smoking, including bars and restaurants."
Okay, now let's look at the study the article was based on. It was published in the International Journal of Cancer and signed by a lead researcher for Health Canada -- a government agency with a vested interest. (Public health agency research tends to be uniformly alarmist.) Even so, the Globe and Mail's report leaves out the most important conclusion in the study:
"Although more years of and more intense residential passive smoke exposure tended to be associated with higher risk estimates, no clear dose-response relationship was evident."
Any particular reason this would be left out? Other than that it's inconvenient? Of course, to report the data without any agency spin on it, you would need to study the tables, evaluate the "confidence intervals," allow for "recall bias," and do all the other things scientists normally do, and journalists SHOULD do.
Apparently Australian journalists are a little more diligent. When the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council released a second-hand smoke report in 1997, the authors decided to omit the statistical tables entirely because they feared the press might study them.
An outraged judge eventually censured the government agency for what he called lying by omission -- the same thing that happened in a North Carolina court case, when a judge said the Environmental Protection Agency's report was rife with "cherry picking" of statistics, and had excluded half the available studies for no good reason. Later the Congressional Research Service issued a blistering report of its own, essentially calling the EPA study irresponsible and alarmist.
The reason the issue of second-hand smoke is such a raging issue right now is that it's being used as the rationale for additional anti-smoking laws. Waiters, bartenders and cooks need to be protected. This is what Bloomberg is basing his whole campaign on.
People might not LIKE smoke. They might find it unpleasant. But it's a huge jump to say it's actually harming their bodies, as though they were coal miners, soon to be diagnosed with Black Lung Disease. In fact, we have two studies that measured Environmental Tobacco Smoke -- the scientific name for it -- and came to the conclusion that, first of all, the smoke inhaled from the air is chemically and physically different from the smoke inhaled from the end of the cigarette, and, secondly, people who work eight hours a day in heavy-smoking environments had the following CE's (Cigarette Equivalents):
Sydney: 0.2
Prague: 1.4
Barcelona: 4.3
That's cigarettes PER YEAR. The worst case they could find had the bartender adding to his cancer risk at the rate of 4.3 cigarettes per year, which is, of course, like saying somebody who eats six Lifesavers is a candidate for heart disease.
Even more to the point, scientists computed what would happen if a 20-by-20-foot room with a 9-foot ceiling were filled with smoke, and then compared that exposure to the EPA's lowest published "danger" doses. Here are the results:
For the lowest level of danger for benzopyrene, you would need to have 222,000 cigarettes burning in the room. For the lowest level of acetone, you would need to burn 118,000 cigarettes. For the lowest level of hydrazine, you would need 14,000 cigarettes. And for toluene, you would need a cool million smokes, all burning at the same time. Unless, of course, you opened the door or window -- then you would need more.
John C. Bailar, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine recently, said that, if you sum up all the available evidence, the MOST alarming case you can make for second-hand smoke being related to disease is "We don't know." (He was primarily writing about heart disease, but the conclusions on lung cancer are similar.)
Bailar was being polite. We know. Get a ventilation fan. Put up a sign. Go to separate rooms. But let's not start a whole new era of Prohibition in which people have to open speakeasies and private clubs just to enjoy a meal or a drink. We can't all afford to go to Paris to smoke.
--
(John Bloom, a smoker, writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at joebob@upi.com or through his Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)
Smoking pot, leaving kids in hot cars, physical abuse. What the heck does any of that have to do with adults who choose to smoke a legal commodity?
Smoking around children is such an act.
Most of the women in here who smoke, were born into smoking households, started smoking ourselves, got pregnant, smoked, delivered fine healthy BIG baby's, with NO asthma, nursed and smoked, grew our children up to be find healthy adults with NO asthma. How can you explain this?
I believe our children are a lot more healthier today then the children that are put into plastic bubbles and grow into sickly human beings that can't be exposed to anything the air has to offer. Not exhaust fumes, bar-b-ques, wood fires, and the list goes on and on. I have not one regret about smoking, being around smoking, or giving birth to a beautiful daughter as a smoker.
Smoker insensitivity has persuaded me. The force of law is needed here to help nonsmokers reclaim their right to not have to breath cigarette smoke! Nicotine addicts, on the whole, are not near as polite and considerate as they like to imagine themselves. I think smoking areas should be designated by law and smoking should be banned in most public areas. You see it coming at ya. Blame the rude smokers that a nonsmoking majority has had to 'tolerate' for too long for the anti-smoking backlash.
Your right to not breath cigarette smoke: I believe there are plenty of places today where you can go and not be around people who smoke. The Government has seen to that.
Smokers are NOT nice anymore. Smokers have become outraged and very cranky for the foul treatment we are receiving. Like I said before, if they think it's so deadly, if they think it's a killer, why don't they ban it! Because THEY want our money! That's why!
Once we had smokers and non-smokers. Still to this day, our non-smoking friends could care less. It's the anti-smoker that has entered to cause all of this uproar. Over what?
Like I said: I hate beer. I can't drink beer. Beer stinks. Yet I am forced to kiss a beer drinker and love it. Am I on a soap box trying to ban beer just because I don't like it, can't drink it and it stinks to me? NO!
Although probably true, the subject is second hand smoke.
And on the related topic, if genetically I am not predisposed to lung cancer what entitles you (or anyone else) to meddle in my private affairs?
Actually, even if I were predisposed the same question is appropriate; Are you ready to outlaw all high risk recreation and life choices because you are neurotic or have a need to control others?
Is your need to moralize so great as to be unable to remain on topic?
On the other hand, lifestyle choices of all kinds could save many more lives. The question is is that the government's concern in a "free" society?
Heart disease, as I understand is a greater killer than smoking.
AIDS kills more than smoking (or we're throwing billions down a rathole).
Does that justify the acceptance of a nanny government?
Why is it, a ANTI-SMOKER who professes to be a CONSERVATIVE yet does not really grasp the true meaning. This is something I am trying to put my finger on.
Are you serious?
Why should anyone waste their time studying why people smoke for scores of years and never get lung cancer?
Where's the fun in that?
On the other hand, I do have a question for your soon to be "ex" doctor:
How is it possible that of the ten documented longest-lived people, nine smoked past age 100 (both male and female)?
You have my admiration.
You have resisted the so-common new sport:
Perhaps the strongest need in human nature is the desire to lay down rules of conduct for others.
I couldn't care less what you reject or not reject. Judegement prior to exposure to evidence is the sign of a neurotic mind.
Just don't attempt to formulate public policy on behalf of all of us based on your ignorance.
Isn't that weird? I am working on that Wisconsin thread, (not posted yet), and typed Wisconsin. Then, when I re-read, I thought I better correct myself. Could be confusing to a lot of people. LOL!
And anyone who can't tell the difference between opinion and science is a dumber ass.
What's your point?
The number of opinions from ignorant people seems directly proportional to the square of their IQ, and inversely proportional to their grasp of science.
Obviously a neurotic hypochondriac who wasn't getting sufficent attention on the AIDS chat.
So feed his need for attention, why don'tcha.
Go for it dude.
You genes are not fit to pass on anyway, evidently.
What isn't!
Hospitals challenged by obese patients
Since the act of eating a fast-food cheeseburger involves a series of voluntary behaviors -- you must decide you want McDonald's, you must go there, you must take money from your pocket and you must lift the burger to your lips -- it's hard to see how anything that comes from eating that cheeseburger could be someone else's fault.
Surgeon general warns obesity may overtake tobacco as leading preventable killer
Three hundred thousand people die each year due to obesity-related causes. In terms of dollar amounts, the study found that obesity raised healthcare costs by an average of $395 a year, while smoking increased costs by $230 and heavy drinking is associated with a $150 annual increase. click here
The Feds: Terrorizing With Fat
AND OBESITY THREATEN U.S. HEALTH GAINS
Communities Can Help Address the Problem, Surgeon General Says
The list goes on and on.
All about control and all about the money! Exactly!
They are working hard to have marijuana legalized. Yet, they want smoking tobacco banned. What's up with this!
My cigarettes never make me go all funny in the head. Never put me on "cloud 9" doing a go-go.
You know what? I saw an ad on TV the other night about a mother screaming at her daughter for getting her tongue pierced and she "didn't shop around for a better price."
It's always been the American Way to shop around for the best price. Yet, by buying cigarettes from the Internet and the Reservations for a "cheaper price," it makes us all criminals.
Did you notice that?
Ahhh... Yup.
Einstein and Oppenhiemer both puffed away like crazy and were both (among many others) right down there with you IQ- wise...
You may have a point.
You know what. I was a professional dancer before I got married. I smoked. Since I was a dancer, I was in top shape. If a person eats right, maintains their weight and exercises, smoking is not going to reduce any lung power. Believe me, I know.
Smoking is a vice, an addiction
Smoking is an acquired habit. Those that do not like to smoke, don't. Those of us who smoke thoroughly enjoy it, otherwise we would not smoke. My Dad smoked for a long time. One morning, he got up, was so totally disgusted with smoking, that he never smoked another cigarette! I love to smoke. It's my choice to smoke. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it.
All this "smoker's rights" talk is very liberal
We are talking personal property rights here. If the government is left to take away the business owners choice, then the government will be into more of our personal lives. Is that what you wish for Americans?
Why don't you guys get together with sharpton, jackson, the gays, et al
Your a jerk. Last night, I was starting to like you. Maybe you had a few beers. This afternoon, my like for you has turned into distaste. Why don't you go kiss Hitlery arse then.
But that whole issue is a red herring in this case because we are discussing smoking and how wonderful it is for your health.
Ok! Name one thing you do in this life that the government hasn't already put a warning on it! If you have a son, the government is even trying to outlaw play grounds for the kids to play in. Isn't this wonderful! How about those greasy fast food burgers you grab on the run!
And since your so PERFECT, funny that your not sitting at the Right Hand of God.
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