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."

[Leonard210]

Doesn't make it a RIGHT? Since when is it not a right to use a legal commodity?

You and I have a right to carry bleach into a restaurant to disinfect environmental surfaces. I have no intention to infringe on others right to eat in an environment free from the scent of bleach, I merely feel that I need to exercise my right to eat in a sanitary environment. Bleach, after all, is a legal substance. If, however, my use of bleach disturbs the patrons of that restaurant and they in turn pass a law limiting my use of that substance, then certain uses of this legal substance have been restricted...BY LAW. By implying that cigarettes are a legal commodity, you have specifically placed the use of tobacco in the realm of LAW and therefore it is also legitimate to use the LAW to restrict your use as soon as it interferes with my right to eat in a smoke-free environment.

[VRWC_minion]

Who called YOU out of your box!

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.

[Old Professer]

ex viet nam vet, black belt instructor packing heat?

I wish I had read all of the way to this before I sent the earlier comment; I actually thought you were being mostly truthful, now I see that you are merely a boastful child.

[SheLion]

Nobody said smoking was good, only that the anti-smokers are using false and misleading claims to support their agenda.

Thank you, Old Professer. You are exactly correct in this!

[Leisler]

They should of outlawed cameras and spared us his so-called acting.

[VRWC_minion]

Most smoking adults have little interest in "honoring" (I can't believe you said that) your children or their interests.

In fact, a lot of smoking adults have little interest in any child's interests.

That is painfully obvious.

[JoeSixPack1]

If, however, my use of bleach disturbs the patrons of that restaurant.......

They have every right to boycott that restaurant until he stops using bleach or goes out of business!

[SheLion]

facedown, your amazing! Thanks for all your hard work in this, today! This is GREAT STUFF!

[Leisler]

Ah, you should of tried a different substance than bleach, which is basically watered down chlorine. The leftist enviros have over the last five years or more been on a endocrine disrupter kick, the main criminal chemical element being , yes, chlorine. The EPA even talked a city in Peru to give up chlorinating its water supply, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands in a few months from fecal contamination.

[Old Professer]

my wife says I have to fix the dryer.

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

[cinFLA]

Copy this:

(from the Philip Morris website)

"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."

[HIDEK6]

That is painfully obvious.

I'm tempted to dismiss you with the cavalier, "So what's your point?". However, I feel compelled to first point out that you assume (without basis and therefore without reason or forethought) that I smoke.

This invalid assumption prompts me to assume that you have exhausted your feeble attempt at argument.

Please gather the children and exit stage far left.

[SheLion]

I go hours on end with out even thinking of smoking a cigarette -- but that's my choice. But for someone else to demand and force me to - that's another story, if you know what I mean.

There's a LOT of times I don't want to smoke. Even at night, when I get up to go to the powder room, I turn on the Weather Channel, have a glass a milk and go back to bed. Never light up! Now, if I was "so addicted," as THEY would love to think we are, I would be puffing from bedroom to powder room and BACK! LOL!

Lots of times, riding into town, I never light up. These anti's are all warped, IMHO!

[Old Professer]

By the way, I don't burn wood in my fireplaces, either.

Sounds like the time I visited my aunt and almost broke a tooth on a wax apple in the fruit bowl.

[Publius6961]

Joe, when they reach the end of what they can debate or get to the end of their "knowledge" about a subject, then they start the insults. I see it time and again.

You know, the only ones still missing from this thread are the usual bowling balls screaming hysterically about how stupid smokers are?

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?

[cinFLA]

"Instead of honoring the children and giving them a clean environment they rationalize away the potential dangers so they can selfishly indulge their addictions without the inconvience of leaving the room and smoking outdoors or in a closed room away from the children."

[Just another Joe]

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

[SheLion]

...BY LAW. By implying that cigarettes are a legal commodity, you have specifically placed the use of tobacco in the realm of LAW and therefore it is also legitimate to use the LAW to restrict your use as soon as it interferes with my right to eat in a smoke-free environment.

Why don't YOU give it a break, as well! We never ever eat in a smoke free restaurant. NEVER will they get our money. So, your safe THERE!

And let's leave it up to the restaurant owner if he wants smoking sections or not. How about that?

[JoeSixPack1]

It wouldn't matter if it was purified cow dung, the point being governmental control over a private business where boycott never worked.

[VRWC_minion]

I made no such assumption. My assumption is this: Parents who smoke in the same room with their children are selfish.