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Hey Max,

Another thing they didn't report, even when accepting quotes from Fat Stan was...drum roll.. he was a co-author of this "study". From the ACC conference website:-

411. Late-Breaking Clinical Trials II Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. McCormick Place, Lecture Hall D 411-1. Immediate Reduction in Acute Myocardial Infarctions After the Implementation of a Comprehensive Smokefree Ordinance (Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.) Authors: Richard P. Sargent, Robert M. Shepard, Stanton A. Glantz.

Why in the world would any Western democracy endanger their relationship with one of their oldest friends and allies on behalf of a psychopathic, inhuman pissant dictator in the Mid East?

No matter how much you disagree (and friends will always disagree, from time to time) with the reasons for a fight, you don't sit back and watch your friends taking on a thug and hope the thug whips your friend's ass. You get in and help out!

My article:-
"Pierce Brosnan as James Bond smokes a cigar!" - 2002

Keep up with the times, minnie. James gave up for a while, but now he's baaaack!

Just the stench of fascism and the residue of freedom. (Oh, and the pollution from your SUV.)

Well done, oh committed Republican - you serve your country and your party mightily. If we had more like you in our midst we might be just like....hmmm...a democrat forum?

Ve have vays of making you quit, you know?

Ach tung! My fine democratic friend.

I beg to differ. You smell just like a nasty little fascist.

Yeah, and when you were a smoker, I take it you were as polite as the Queen of England?

Dr. Luv,
Max's assertion that you are not honest is probably better expressed as the proposition that the entire medical community is not totally honest regarding smoking.

The medical fraternity has happily facilitated and perpetuated the idea that any level of smoking for any period of time so massively increases your chance of an early death that anyone who smokes must be retarded ("intellecually challenged", in PC - polite company, in the historical sense).

There is no "safe" level of smoking, as far as MD's are concerned. One smoke a month is as bad as 1,000 smokes a month.

This "dishonesty" has resulted in the present second-hand smoke hysteria, wherein people inhaling the odd whiff of smoke believe their health is seriously at risk.

A further "dishonest" ommision by the medical community is the proposition that cancer is not one disease, but over 200. However, virtually every cancer known to man (bar those now shown to be due to viruses, polyps, radiation, etc.) are sheeted back to smoking, so long as the patient is a smoker. If the patient is not a smoker, the cancer is from "causes unknown".

Various mechanisms have been suggested to explain why smokers should develop cancer at a greater rate than non-smokers in areas of the body not directly exposed to smoke. However, when a smoker looks at the studies to do with, for example, penile cancer for which smoking apparently increases risk, the additional risk from smoking is approx. 0.005% greater for smokers than for non-smokers. Yet, these "scientists", who increasiningly rely upon study-specific grants to pay their rent and therefore require some positive results in order to have their funding continued, seem to go unchallenged and even congratulated by the medical community.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that smokers begin to believe that clinicians are prepared to applaude dubious, inconclusive and sometimes downright fraudulent (eg. EPA 1993 SHS study) "research" in the belief that such approval and bastardisation of the scientific process is justified because....wait for it - the end justifies the mean.

I am an educated, intelligent individual who smokes. I recognise there are risks involved in my behaviour. Part of that risk is that I may have a greater chance of visiting one of your colleagues in future and being given some bad news (but, then, were I not to smoke I would still have a significant chance of that - 1 in 3 if statistics are to be believed).

So, the "dishonesty" of which Max speaks is not necessarily personal dishonesty on your part, but a perception which smokers have garnered by the medical profession's participation and acclaimation of dubious and exaggerated risks of both active and passive smoking over the last couple of decades. It does your credibility no good in our eyes and, eventually, not in the eyes of the general public, either.

Have you completely lost the plot???

From E!Online:-
Brosnan is a longtime cigar smoker off-screen and even appeared in a cigarette ad in Japan back in the early 1990s. He was featured puffing on a stogie on the cover of the November/December 1997 issue of Cigar Aficionado.

In an in-depth interview, he said of cigars: "I enjoy them. People give me fine cigars and I enjoy sharing them with people who really appreciate a fine cigar. There have been times when I've gone out with business guys and smoked cigars, and they've been among the most pleasurable evenings I've had. Good cigars and good company. Hard to beat."

Then you are truly a conservative, my friend. Thank you for upholding the values which some think our society can do without.

What does that have to do with a couple of hundred people with penile cancer who answered a telephone survey?

How old are you? Believe me, if you'd been around and in a position to implement that belief in the 1940's - 1980's, you'd have had 85% of the kids in the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, etc. removed from their homes.

Yeah, that would have been "a good thing", would it?

Yeah Joe,
I agree. Every movie should be required to feature 25% - no more, no less - of the cast smoking, in order to properly reflect reality.

Otherwise, they should be required to display a warning at the outset:- "WARNING: ABSENCE OF PEOPLE SMOKING IN THIS FILM IS A FANTASY AND DOES NOT REFLECT THE REALITY OF LIFE."

Additionally, each film should be required to feature at least one in 100 anti-smoking nazis, otherwise it should be required to state:- "WARNING: THIS FILM DEPICTS LESS ANTI-SMOKING NAZIS THAN MAY BE ENCOUNTERED IN REAL LIFE. THIS MAY LEAD SMOKERS INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY. ANTI-SMOKING NAZIS HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO CAUSE VERBAL ABUSE, PHYSICALLY ABUSE AND MURDER IN UNSUSPECTING SMOKERS."

Yeah, OK, name a company which doesn't pay for product placement.....Can't? No, nor can I!

BUT Bond smokes because Ian Fleming was a smoker and he created Bond as a smoker. Only total fascists want to revise history to suit their own views and ends.

Regardless of how much you might dislike smoking, surely you don't agree with historical revisionism (eg. airbrushing cigarettes out of James Dean's mouth).

No, he smokes because Ian Fleming, a smoker, created Bond as a smoker.

"A good deal of the literature of the past was, indeed, already being transformed in this way. Considerations of prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain historical figures, while at the same time bringing their achievements into line with the philosophy of Ingsoc. Various writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens, and some others were therefore in process of translation: when the task had been completed, their original writings, with all else that survived of the literature of the past, would be destroyed. These translations were a slow and difficult business, and it was not expected that they would be finished before the first or second decade of the twenty-first century. There were also large quantities of merely utilitarian literature--indispensable technical manuals, and the like--that had to be treated in the same way. It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050."
George Orwell - 1984

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past...You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right…But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane."
George Orwell - 1984

As will the smartest man of the 20th Century:

You've got that right! With the odd exception, the most rabid anti's in here (I could name 'em, but won't for the moment) spew vitriol about smoking for months, then it comes out that they're all ex-smokers.

Go figure!