Public Health and the charities have been using discrimination of smokers for years, as an excuse for ignoring the cigarette itself as the largest potential of health risk reduction.
If the product were the focus, in place of the ideological and moralist scold. We would see broad support for regulations to reduce health risks by reducing the most suspect toxins involved. The dilution of focus entitled by the 4000 and now the 10,000 and likely the 100,000 said to be "toxins" is only self service to consensus capitulation to the most obvious flaws in the "harm reduction" strategy.
We know we can reduce the tobacco specific carcinogens and by significant amounts, reduction of carcinogens and PAH is seemingly a no brainer. If Public health at very least, advocated for moderation in reducing the number of cigarettes one smokes they could precariously lay claim to some form of credibility in relation to their goals and ambitions.
What we see in place of a campaign to encourage smokers to reduce consumption by eliminating the cigarettes you light involuntarily is a promotion of the extremes of addiction, which likely results in higher personal consumption, by the implanted "unquestionable truth", the evidence supports that with reduced exposures the health risks would decline significantly. What we can not see currently is any explanation of a failure to consistency, beyond a; "who cares if they die its their own fault" consensus. Justification is found in a perverse sense of an application of punishment and Penance for their sins, by medical prescription no less?
If we controlled the manufacturing process by regulation, to reduce NAK and PAH as a matter of law, which is done in countries which demand it already. The products are currently exhibiting reduced risk by reduced exposures. Integrity and humanity which respects basic human rights principles, would dictate that policy be aligned with science and observation and more fundamentally with common sense in the target of your advocacy which logically does not currently exist.
If the fear of toxins is the strength of your advocacy and exists as an effect increasing fear in the public; By refusing to follow best practices of reduced risk by reduced exposures to the named secondary toxin exposures, your whole platform which demands "smoking bans to protect employees" falls flat, in a logical sense, fundamentally because the increased risk being mitigated by smoking bans and the unavoidable bigotry which is occurring, is a fault only of those who are demanding those huge concessions and financial loss, associated with the extremes of smoking bans, as any sort of intelligent solution or community respect.
If nicotine is taken from tobacco it makes no logical sense that the carcinogens that exist in the products that contain that nicotine could have a reduced concentration of Tobacco specific carcinogens. The same carcinogens and at the same level they are found in cigarettes are also pre-existing in any product which contains nicotine. The only difference being; when you burn tobacco the carcinogens are reduced by the burning and in significant amounts. So to claim the levels in an e-cig or in the chewing gum or incredibly in chewing tobacco are "safer" caries with it an obscene level of delusion in observation and the realm of possibilities even available. When you combine that thought with a battle cry that "there is no safe level of tobacco smoke" the hypocrisies abound.
It is obvious, or at least it should be obvious, that the cancer societies collecting billions of dollars over the years with markedly little progress in producing the promised "cures", and now "defeat of cancer", would be at a distinct disadvantage, if cigarettes actually were made safer and the risk was reduced in measurable amounts. Those who oppose such a development rail against safer cigarettes with the simple minded claims that; if smokers believed they were using a safer product more people would smoke.
The only conclusion anyone can draw from all of this is that public health covets increased fear much more than it seeks to reduce those fears or any levels of risk, and financial conflicts stand as the only viable explanation, for their crimes demanding an increased mortality risk by bigotry, as we see being promoted by the public health mafia.
And what is the most popular phrase among “Public Health” Lobby groups and their benefactor Politicians, purchasing the creation of our concerns and fears, with our own money?
“Follow us on Twitter”?
This brings forth a vision of mindless sheep following the ever familiar ass in front, to wherever it leads.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
When Doctors become preachers
You can lay the blame wherever you like, but the top risk factors for “smoking related diseases” remain; Doctors, Prescription Drugs and stress.
When doctors act as preachers in a healthiness bandwagon fashion such as we are experiencing now, people are subjected to undue stress. When they promote that personal worth is tied to health, the level of stress increases, especially among the largest demographic at the bottom end of the socioeconomic scale. When they move to spewing moral dictates and impose regressive sin taxes, that demographic will always suffer the most. When they drive large numbers of people out of social settings, depression and isolation increase the risks. When someone is forced to quit smoking they are going to gain weight and there is little doubt in that department, the chemical shift and not their own actions demands it.
Every move the irresponsible and greedy medical prophets have made to date has increased not only the risks, but the number of those who are at risk. Commensurate with the number exposed to their swill and snake oil.
The constant level of dread and remorse associated with their daily lobby group bombardment has depressed entire nations. Isn't it time we felt proud and happy in some small part of our existence. We need to ban the scolds and the emotional blackmailers from the air waves and release people from the imposed medical dread. Happy people have less health problems, protected people die after a tortured life which is unnecessarily shortened and diseased.
Bring back hanging and the stocks to remind them of their shame, the last time these pompous leeches and moralist scolds pulled this crap. A few more community social events could only suit the situation and what we need to be healthy again, without all the greed inspired tinkering and interference.
Here is my proposal for health care reform; yes we can...
Tax dollars from the MSA deal can be utilized for the purchase of State convoys of forty foot trailers filled with stocks and rotten vegetables.
The convoys would visit every town in the nation and community involvement would have the municipal residents armed with news clippings and political minutes as evidence of healthiness scold, the real health pandemic. To make citizens arrests of the perpetrators; in wellness centers, Charity offices, Universities, government offices, ad agencies and media outlets. With the accused to be treated to the confines of the stocks for a 24 hour period, while the people assisted with old fashioned picnic lunches and candy floss vendors, could be treated to a dose of healthy medicine, and a rejoining in a common cause, which could only enrich them all.
We could then do a Helena like, heart study and see the levels of hypertension, depression and heart attacks tumble, as pride in community in a sense of unity and mutual trust does its work, making the entire nation feel better after they cast aside the effects of perpetual scold and gloom.
Nine of ten people polled don't believe Environmental Tobacco Smoke [ETS] will cause them to suffer cancer. In fact you would be hard pressed to find anyone who seriously believes ETS would cause them harm at all, although it makes an excellent excuse to force people to smoke elsewhere.
One of the largest miscues the Tobacco Control [TC] bandwagon pulled off was to declare ETS [a multitude of products with no scientific description] as a class one carcinogen. In direct comparison there is a large expanse of difference, between ETS and the other toxins on the list. This political decision not only protects industries who produce the other toxins by lessening the traditional perception of harm, but the longer it remains on the list; the less confidence anyone will have in the integrity or credibility of the American scientific community.
How frightened can one be, when told that; something is carcinogenic, but who cares even cigarette smoke is a carcinogen. With the entire population exposed for so many years and cancers didn't really start to rise in large numbers among non-smokers, until the exposures declined in equal proportions. It almost makes sense to seek out carcinogens to protect yourself against cancers.
The Cancer societies now declare half of the entire population will experience Cancer during their lifetime. The claims of immanent risk have never been so dire, after close to a 60% reduction in smoker prevalence since 1960 the parallels are painting the inverse of the picture they claimed would be seen and have continued to claim for almost 50 years.
Daily we are told by the cancer societies and their numerous franchised and specialized charities, which all connect smoking as the most significant cause, the need for funding has never been greater.
The more "good news" we receive from people our protectors in Public Health institutions, the more bad news we receive from those who should be praising the effort and downsizing their operations, yet that is not what they are telling us. At what point will the Health scare moralists be demonstrating any effects, which could legitimize the huge expense they deliberately imposed on the hospitality industry or the rising level of promoted bigotry and the regressive taxation of our sins?
The more we are "protected" the greater is our risk. Looking back in the history books, which seems to be the trend we have always seen. Science seems to be failing at ever increasing rates, or perhaps what we are listening to, is not scientific at all. It does become difficult to distinguish between the modern label as "scientist" and the traditional label as a "preacher".
When doctors act as preachers in a healthiness bandwagon fashion such as we are experiencing now, people are subjected to undue stress. When they promote that personal worth is tied to health, the level of stress increases, especially among the largest demographic at the bottom end of the socioeconomic scale. When they move to spewing moral dictates and impose regressive sin taxes, that demographic will always suffer the most. When they drive large numbers of people out of social settings, depression and isolation increase the risks. When someone is forced to quit smoking they are going to gain weight and there is little doubt in that department, the chemical shift and not their own actions demands it.
Every move the irresponsible and greedy medical prophets have made to date has increased not only the risks, but the number of those who are at risk. Commensurate with the number exposed to their swill and snake oil.
The constant level of dread and remorse associated with their daily lobby group bombardment has depressed entire nations. Isn't it time we felt proud and happy in some small part of our existence. We need to ban the scolds and the emotional blackmailers from the air waves and release people from the imposed medical dread. Happy people have less health problems, protected people die after a tortured life which is unnecessarily shortened and diseased.
Bring back hanging and the stocks to remind them of their shame, the last time these pompous leeches and moralist scolds pulled this crap. A few more community social events could only suit the situation and what we need to be healthy again, without all the greed inspired tinkering and interference.
Here is my proposal for health care reform; yes we can...
Tax dollars from the MSA deal can be utilized for the purchase of State convoys of forty foot trailers filled with stocks and rotten vegetables.
The convoys would visit every town in the nation and community involvement would have the municipal residents armed with news clippings and political minutes as evidence of healthiness scold, the real health pandemic. To make citizens arrests of the perpetrators; in wellness centers, Charity offices, Universities, government offices, ad agencies and media outlets. With the accused to be treated to the confines of the stocks for a 24 hour period, while the people assisted with old fashioned picnic lunches and candy floss vendors, could be treated to a dose of healthy medicine, and a rejoining in a common cause, which could only enrich them all.
We could then do a Helena like, heart study and see the levels of hypertension, depression and heart attacks tumble, as pride in community in a sense of unity and mutual trust does its work, making the entire nation feel better after they cast aside the effects of perpetual scold and gloom.
Nine of ten people polled don't believe Environmental Tobacco Smoke [ETS] will cause them to suffer cancer. In fact you would be hard pressed to find anyone who seriously believes ETS would cause them harm at all, although it makes an excellent excuse to force people to smoke elsewhere.
One of the largest miscues the Tobacco Control [TC] bandwagon pulled off was to declare ETS [a multitude of products with no scientific description] as a class one carcinogen. In direct comparison there is a large expanse of difference, between ETS and the other toxins on the list. This political decision not only protects industries who produce the other toxins by lessening the traditional perception of harm, but the longer it remains on the list; the less confidence anyone will have in the integrity or credibility of the American scientific community.
How frightened can one be, when told that; something is carcinogenic, but who cares even cigarette smoke is a carcinogen. With the entire population exposed for so many years and cancers didn't really start to rise in large numbers among non-smokers, until the exposures declined in equal proportions. It almost makes sense to seek out carcinogens to protect yourself against cancers.
The Cancer societies now declare half of the entire population will experience Cancer during their lifetime. The claims of immanent risk have never been so dire, after close to a 60% reduction in smoker prevalence since 1960 the parallels are painting the inverse of the picture they claimed would be seen and have continued to claim for almost 50 years.
Daily we are told by the cancer societies and their numerous franchised and specialized charities, which all connect smoking as the most significant cause, the need for funding has never been greater.
The more "good news" we receive from people our protectors in Public Health institutions, the more bad news we receive from those who should be praising the effort and downsizing their operations, yet that is not what they are telling us. At what point will the Health scare moralists be demonstrating any effects, which could legitimize the huge expense they deliberately imposed on the hospitality industry or the rising level of promoted bigotry and the regressive taxation of our sins?
The more we are "protected" the greater is our risk. Looking back in the history books, which seems to be the trend we have always seen. Science seems to be failing at ever increasing rates, or perhaps what we are listening to, is not scientific at all. It does become difficult to distinguish between the modern label as "scientist" and the traditional label as a "preacher".
Monday, March 23, 2009
Hype is as Hype does;
This is interesting in a total population study ordered by the surgeon general in 1964 the numbers are quite interesting. Prior to the politicizing of cancer, long before most TC advocates of today were out of diapers yet.
Go to page 8 and look at the chart;
What was found first; was that former smokers had twice the mortality risks compared to current smokers.
The more startling result saw smokers of less than 11 cigarettes a day, were at decreased risk compared to both non smokers and the general population risk.
Similar findings were seen in the Whitehall studies exposing beyond lifestyle choices including smoking and obesity 60% of total increased mortality risk was seen as a result of stress. So how do you describe a smoker or an obese person? How many of them have you killed “prematurely” today?
By the numbers 160,000 Lung cancers annually of the 2.4 million total mortalities, is less than 1% so even if smoking caused them all, you eliminate less than 1% of the total mortalities. In 1960 with the same number of smokers we see today [USA 60 million] there were only 1/6th the number of Lung Cancers we see today [26,000] among 1/3 the population [100 million]. As we should understand, smoking is only a related disease factor, there are many and many reasons all people will die. Any death believed by one cause, would now be realized by another cause of death and at the end of the day, we would still have 2.4 million total mortalities every year so the predicted reduction is a wash.
The same could be observed of every other “smoker related” disease because death is inevitable. John Banzash of ASH and dozens of others involved in the rent seeking fraud and hate promotion, which is the Tobacco Control movement today, as a lawyer, he claims that we will save tens of billions in healthcare expenses, by eliminating smoking. This should be seen immediately as a huge lie and misrepresentation of the facts at hand, if any measure of common sense were applied, however the product brand advertising seems to have eliminated all trace of reason, replaced by confidence in self anointed "experts" which is being grossly abused.
All of the so called “smoking related” diseases will still exist after smoking is eliminated. Smokers only actually represent 20% of the population and a maximum of 20% of the annual mortalities, as expected and representative of any group. The Public Health nuts tell us only “half of smokers die of smoking related diseases” when you look at the list, of diseases discussed; that makes them pretty much normal and dying of those diseases in the same proportions as everyone else. It should be obvious the only way to save a healthcare dime would be to eliminate all the smokers by immediate mass executions, thus avoiding the unavoidable costs they will eventually produce, whether they smoke or not.
So if the savings of healthcare dollars is the Holy Grail, executions are the only way to achieve the goal. How much will we be loosing in future tax dollars after the smokers are executed?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that, without smokers [with the theft of cigarette taxes aside] income taxes and productivity lost would quickly be seen to dwarf the savings achieved.
So Tobacco Control and the Public Health cartel in general, represent; much to do about nothing and the Emperor has no clothes, in spite of what you may have been told.
BTW it should be broadly realized the real cost of healthcare is out of the consumers control, therefore cost is not tied to personal lifestyle choices, rather cost is predicted as a direct factor of longevity. Longer life creates the larger cost. There is no larger factor of deficit health outcomes than personal economy which suggests the lobby promotions [reflective of those who pay them]have been on the wrong track all along, causing more death and destruction than was ever necessary.
If you seek reduction in healthcare expenses, that can only be found in dealing with the gross profiteering of the vendors. Forcing them to tie profit to production costs with a more realistic mark-up than the traditional 2000-10,000% we allow them now. One wonders how much the economy and our standard of living would improve if all products listed the production costs on the label? A smoking patch had almost no development cost, and the cost of production in real dollars is around a nickel. Let the facts speak for a change and we will find more efficient and immediate means of achieving the goal of cost reductions, only by eliminating the current "experts" from the discussion.
We could by the solution of executing them, see huge and sustainable cost reductions, but that is an argument for another day, after the hype is exposed.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Evaluating “no safe level”
“No safe level” is not sufficient; this term provides no information, we have a right to know more.
They say; second hand smoke exhibits a health risk
I would argue the following;
"It should never be as simplistic as declaring "no safe level exists" to which every opponent with half an ounce of common sense will counter "there is no unsafe level" either. Predictably Health Departments and Globalist politicians, who front for the lobby groups they hire, use this term all the time. They attempt to hoodwink us with framework or sustainable development, never clearly explaining what they are constructing, making their point with a lack of evidence, or understanding, which parallels cult belief, much more than their claims to legitimate science.
Epidemiology after all measures what people recall which is heavily influenced by what they believe so in fact what is measured is not risk but belief. They admit to ignorance themselves, in using the “no safe level” terminology. The large Whitehall studies both confirmed stress is the largest risk factor with obesity, smoking and all other major factors combined you can only account for a 40% offset, compared to a 60% factor presented by increased chronic stress. Stress such as that provided in the so called “public health” messages. A tremendously larger danger is invented by these bandwagon and profit bearing messages, than ever existed in the smell of a little cigarette smoke. In simplistic terms if you can not afford to live the high life demonstrated in beer commercials, you will die much sooner than those who can. The stress you apply to achieving that life while the cards are stacked significantly against you will kill you 3 times as often as smoking [Whitehall]. And at worst case 30,000 times as often, as the faint risk your demise would be caused by second hand smoke. Follow along and I will prove it.
The epidemiological research they use to package the fears implies you can define a risk and simply assume all the other risk factors, which make this risk believable, are in place and universal in total population. Meaning everyone is fat and lazy everyone has high blood pressure and afflicted by the list of thousands of other factors, which allow the risk to be a risk at all, a condition which describes everyone at all times. They then apportion offsets or confounders, and declare their identified risk is what remains to elevate our fears.
Otherwise if they studied only those at risk, of actually dying from ETS exposures; their risk factor would be so small even if you legitimately applied it to the population at risk or as they do the population as a whole, you couldn't find a single body, by calculation or prognosis. In the real world they haven’t found one yet.
By embellishing the dangers of "no safe ETS" you increase the general population’s health risk, among both the smokers, being forced to quit, but with a much larger potential for disaster, by a larger degree of stress invented among the general public, as the targets of these ads, people who don't smoke. People who might be exposed at one time or another, who are being forced to live with un-necessary fears and elevated levels of stress, not supported by the science. By this fear we have divided communities and declared some people are more important than others, by healthiest caste designations. Smokers cost “x” fat people cost “y” alcoholics cost “z”, pretty much any personal choice or activity when observed as excess, can rate your cost and net worth to governments, allowing advertisements with your own tax money to invigorate the levels of societal rage against you. Once they told us they sought the “cures” today it is all about laying the blame, to mask failure.
We need to do the work and find out if this ETS stuff is safe or not.
The lobbies should be told to do the work first, and demonstrate a reason to fear, in place of resting on ignorance, providing irresponsible promotions, inciting rage and hatred, as the only foundation for all of their arguments. You could then point out "no safe" nonsense, [which is an unknown in scientific perspectives], creates an accumulation of 4000 or 400,000 pages of ignorance delivered to decision makers by the so called “charity groups” as the political arguments they will be presenting in their defense of anti autonomy principles which delineate our most basic rights. [Increasing stress once again]
Whitehall;
From WIKI;
No safe?
“The right to health relevant information derives from the principles of autonomy and self direction and has been recognized in international declarations. Providing accurate health information is part of the basis for obtaining "informed consent" and is a recognized component of business ethics, safety communications, and case and product liability law.”
Related data for consideration;
Socialized theory and advocacy; A lack of information [fear of the unknown] resides as the best case for any healthism proposal, to adjust either social order or individual behaviors.
Mitigation of risk for smokers to a level no risk, is apparent after cessation; leading to the truth, the risk is mitigated over time and time dependent. Epidemiology is limited in its scope to provide useful evidence for policy making, because it can only produce a measure which demonstrates an instant in time. This denotes a rule being ignored by the lobbies, which demands a test of time line before a theory can be considered significant or relevant. By the massive reductions of both second hand smoke and smoking prevalence, but not the true number of smokers which has remained stable over the past fifty years. Observing the six fold increase of virtually every so called smoking related disease, we have to view all presentations by this process of estimations, with extreme caution.
The maximum risk in worse case scenarios; for maximum levels at a maximum continuous duration of second hand smoke, demonstrates a non significant health risk which remains controversial if a risk is evident at all [1.19] . By regressive modeling of all the selected research which indicated increased risk; the chart indicates a level 1000 times below the level of risk for active smoking of 25 cigarettes a day. For an exposure to second hand smoke at worst case the risk resides below 10% of even that risk well below 10,000 times that of active smoking, which is well below the 5% level accepted for tolerance or error in the calculations hence “no safe” and “no unsafe” level of risk. By the knowledge demonstrated in the research that time mitigates all risk of smoking, we can say with confidence any exposure risk to second hand smoke, would be sufficiently mitigated long before the next exposure occurs, therefore to the general public there is no demonstrable level of increased risk and “no safe level” remains non informative.
From the same study the risk of worst case at 1.16, bias is increased by elimination of ETS exposure bias, for the comparative group, without an identical elimination which should be warranted for the study group; creating a false impression, the maximum “risk” resides by accumulation of all statistical evidence in the 1.24 range. Even by accepting these formulations, the risk of casual exposures is reduced by 10% at minimum, seen to be at 1.024 or one half the allowance for error with a 95% confidence interval [1.05] and as we can see less than 10,000 times below the lifetime risks of active smoking. If as Doll predicted and no one has disputed; the risks of smoking can be successfully mitigated ten years after cessation to a level equal to that seen in the general population. The risk by a factor 10,000 times lower should be mitigated in a time frame 10,000 times as efficiently. By calculation 1000 times a year or .365 days [roughly 8 hours] which coincides with the mitigation of all suspected toxins found in the smoke and measures of blood quantities over time, regardless of bio marker utilized to gauge the levels of toxins by exposures among non smokers.
By comparison the “clean air” demanded by lobbies who seek smoker free spaces by advertisements claiming elimination of cigarette smoke would produce clean air. The inescapable risk of that clean air is much more deadly than any semblance of increased risk, which exists in ETS exposure which could be measured by credible scientific methods. The advocacy for smoker free fear promotions, works as a placebo treatment for an imagined disease, this increases the real risk, of all other pollution risks which are minimized seriously by lobby and political promotions, taking our focus away from what really does us harm.
The Oil companies and their conflicted statisticians don’t like the numbers, but there they are, and by rough calculation if you apply the risk to those actually at risk for direct comparison, the six cities studies might well have proved, primary smoking is far from the largest cause of lung cancers, heart and cardiovascular disease. While we are so absolutely focused on second hand and soon third hand smoke?
“In their recent article, Laden and colleagues have added 8 more years of follow-up to the Harvard Six Cities study of air pollution and mortality (1). They suggested that total mortality, as well as mortality for cardiovascular disease and lung cancer, were associated with ambient fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5), and that the results were consistent with other cohort studies.”
“The overall effect estimate of 1.16 for the total follow-up is based on a linear model. The model is incorrect and overestimates risk since the relationship is not linear, as observed when the data are plotted”
Sounds like tobacco industry execs are not the only execs; living in denial while selling us poison.
“Conflict of Interest Statement: J.F.G. is retired from full-time employment with ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences, Inc. M.J.N. is currently employed full time by ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences, Inc.”
They say; second hand smoke exhibits a health risk
I would argue the following;
"It should never be as simplistic as declaring "no safe level exists" to which every opponent with half an ounce of common sense will counter "there is no unsafe level" either. Predictably Health Departments and Globalist politicians, who front for the lobby groups they hire, use this term all the time. They attempt to hoodwink us with framework or sustainable development, never clearly explaining what they are constructing, making their point with a lack of evidence, or understanding, which parallels cult belief, much more than their claims to legitimate science.
Epidemiology after all measures what people recall which is heavily influenced by what they believe so in fact what is measured is not risk but belief. They admit to ignorance themselves, in using the “no safe level” terminology. The large Whitehall studies both confirmed stress is the largest risk factor with obesity, smoking and all other major factors combined you can only account for a 40% offset, compared to a 60% factor presented by increased chronic stress. Stress such as that provided in the so called “public health” messages. A tremendously larger danger is invented by these bandwagon and profit bearing messages, than ever existed in the smell of a little cigarette smoke. In simplistic terms if you can not afford to live the high life demonstrated in beer commercials, you will die much sooner than those who can. The stress you apply to achieving that life while the cards are stacked significantly against you will kill you 3 times as often as smoking [Whitehall]. And at worst case 30,000 times as often, as the faint risk your demise would be caused by second hand smoke. Follow along and I will prove it.
The epidemiological research they use to package the fears implies you can define a risk and simply assume all the other risk factors, which make this risk believable, are in place and universal in total population. Meaning everyone is fat and lazy everyone has high blood pressure and afflicted by the list of thousands of other factors, which allow the risk to be a risk at all, a condition which describes everyone at all times. They then apportion offsets or confounders, and declare their identified risk is what remains to elevate our fears.
Otherwise if they studied only those at risk, of actually dying from ETS exposures; their risk factor would be so small even if you legitimately applied it to the population at risk or as they do the population as a whole, you couldn't find a single body, by calculation or prognosis. In the real world they haven’t found one yet.
By embellishing the dangers of "no safe ETS" you increase the general population’s health risk, among both the smokers, being forced to quit, but with a much larger potential for disaster, by a larger degree of stress invented among the general public, as the targets of these ads, people who don't smoke. People who might be exposed at one time or another, who are being forced to live with un-necessary fears and elevated levels of stress, not supported by the science. By this fear we have divided communities and declared some people are more important than others, by healthiest caste designations. Smokers cost “x” fat people cost “y” alcoholics cost “z”, pretty much any personal choice or activity when observed as excess, can rate your cost and net worth to governments, allowing advertisements with your own tax money to invigorate the levels of societal rage against you. Once they told us they sought the “cures” today it is all about laying the blame, to mask failure.
We need to do the work and find out if this ETS stuff is safe or not.
The lobbies should be told to do the work first, and demonstrate a reason to fear, in place of resting on ignorance, providing irresponsible promotions, inciting rage and hatred, as the only foundation for all of their arguments. You could then point out "no safe" nonsense, [which is an unknown in scientific perspectives], creates an accumulation of 4000 or 400,000 pages of ignorance delivered to decision makers by the so called “charity groups” as the political arguments they will be presenting in their defense of anti autonomy principles which delineate our most basic rights. [Increasing stress once again]
Whitehall;
From WIKI;
No safe?
“The right to health relevant information derives from the principles of autonomy and self direction and has been recognized in international declarations. Providing accurate health information is part of the basis for obtaining "informed consent" and is a recognized component of business ethics, safety communications, and case and product liability law.”
Related data for consideration;
Socialized theory and advocacy; A lack of information [fear of the unknown] resides as the best case for any healthism proposal, to adjust either social order or individual behaviors.
Mitigation of risk for smokers to a level no risk, is apparent after cessation; leading to the truth, the risk is mitigated over time and time dependent. Epidemiology is limited in its scope to provide useful evidence for policy making, because it can only produce a measure which demonstrates an instant in time. This denotes a rule being ignored by the lobbies, which demands a test of time line before a theory can be considered significant or relevant. By the massive reductions of both second hand smoke and smoking prevalence, but not the true number of smokers which has remained stable over the past fifty years. Observing the six fold increase of virtually every so called smoking related disease, we have to view all presentations by this process of estimations, with extreme caution.
The maximum risk in worse case scenarios; for maximum levels at a maximum continuous duration of second hand smoke, demonstrates a non significant health risk which remains controversial if a risk is evident at all [1.19] . By regressive modeling of all the selected research which indicated increased risk; the chart indicates a level 1000 times below the level of risk for active smoking of 25 cigarettes a day. For an exposure to second hand smoke at worst case the risk resides below 10% of even that risk well below 10,000 times that of active smoking, which is well below the 5% level accepted for tolerance or error in the calculations hence “no safe” and “no unsafe” level of risk. By the knowledge demonstrated in the research that time mitigates all risk of smoking, we can say with confidence any exposure risk to second hand smoke, would be sufficiently mitigated long before the next exposure occurs, therefore to the general public there is no demonstrable level of increased risk and “no safe level” remains non informative.
From the same study the risk of worst case at 1.16, bias is increased by elimination of ETS exposure bias, for the comparative group, without an identical elimination which should be warranted for the study group; creating a false impression, the maximum “risk” resides by accumulation of all statistical evidence in the 1.24 range. Even by accepting these formulations, the risk of casual exposures is reduced by 10% at minimum, seen to be at 1.024 or one half the allowance for error with a 95% confidence interval [1.05] and as we can see less than 10,000 times below the lifetime risks of active smoking. If as Doll predicted and no one has disputed; the risks of smoking can be successfully mitigated ten years after cessation to a level equal to that seen in the general population. The risk by a factor 10,000 times lower should be mitigated in a time frame 10,000 times as efficiently. By calculation 1000 times a year or .365 days [roughly 8 hours] which coincides with the mitigation of all suspected toxins found in the smoke and measures of blood quantities over time, regardless of bio marker utilized to gauge the levels of toxins by exposures among non smokers.
By comparison the “clean air” demanded by lobbies who seek smoker free spaces by advertisements claiming elimination of cigarette smoke would produce clean air. The inescapable risk of that clean air is much more deadly than any semblance of increased risk, which exists in ETS exposure which could be measured by credible scientific methods. The advocacy for smoker free fear promotions, works as a placebo treatment for an imagined disease, this increases the real risk, of all other pollution risks which are minimized seriously by lobby and political promotions, taking our focus away from what really does us harm.
The Oil companies and their conflicted statisticians don’t like the numbers, but there they are, and by rough calculation if you apply the risk to those actually at risk for direct comparison, the six cities studies might well have proved, primary smoking is far from the largest cause of lung cancers, heart and cardiovascular disease. While we are so absolutely focused on second hand and soon third hand smoke?
“In their recent article, Laden and colleagues have added 8 more years of follow-up to the Harvard Six Cities study of air pollution and mortality (1). They suggested that total mortality, as well as mortality for cardiovascular disease and lung cancer, were associated with ambient fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5), and that the results were consistent with other cohort studies.”
“The overall effect estimate of 1.16 for the total follow-up is based on a linear model. The model is incorrect and overestimates risk since the relationship is not linear, as observed when the data are plotted”
Sounds like tobacco industry execs are not the only execs; living in denial while selling us poison.
“Conflict of Interest Statement: J.F.G. is retired from full-time employment with ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences, Inc. M.J.N. is currently employed full time by ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences, Inc.”
Monday, March 02, 2009
Fear of the truth is a top down venture
Hello Johan;
In response to an article; comparing those who challenge the conclusion that secondhand smoke causes heart disease and lung cancer with those who deny the Holocaust.
I understand the Editors obvious insult taken, by the length of my initial response. Perhaps if I condensed it to include the most relevant points, he might well understand more precisely, what was being said. Understanding this is an effort of repeating myself, I believe the message might become more clear the second and now the third time around.
First and foremost; the article is offensive and promotes hatred targeting individuals. In a crass attempt at ad hominid logic, in the very worst of insensitive design. Supported by ideology and fundamental extremism, in regard to normal and casual exposures to second hand smoke [which are not known to be harmful] much more than credible ""science""", which is reported to be the context of your publication. Secondly there is an undisclosed conflict which should be obvious to anyone reading this discussion of DENIALS no less.
I would like to report a failure to disclose personal conflicts of interest, on behalf of the authors. Provocative details which would not be apparent or obvious to the reader. Details which would add support to the authors credibility in a failure to disclose; who these people are and what they devote so much of their time and efforts to support. In my opinion; not entirely without compensation [both financially and in direct support of their other Medical Journal publication proposals], one would also have to assume. Disclosures which are relevant and require notation.
Evidence?
Diethelm as a Career?
http://www.tobacco.org/resources/rendezvous/diethelm.html
"During the 1980s and early 1990s, I gradually developed a sense of anti-smoking advocacy, mainly for two reasons: first, because it caused me pain to see obvious signs that friends and people around me were ruining their health by smoking; second, because I grew more aware of the discomfort and health risks of secondhand smoking.
As an anti-smoking advocate, I follow two tracks.
One track is in my capacity of WHO staff member.
I volunteered a few years ago to develop a computerized system aimed at producing and retrieving country profiles and regional profiles of tobacco consumption.
Since then my interest in helping WHO in its fight against smoking has continued.
I was delighted when Dr Brundtland declared tobacco one of her top priorities, created the Tobacco Free Initiative, and asked Derek Yach to lead it.
In my capacity of Team Leader, Networking and Telecommunications, my role is to provide IT support to the project. "
McKee By his own hand?
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/326/7398/1057
"Competing interests: As editor of the European Journal of Public Health, MM published another paper by authors funded by the Center for Indoor Air Research. This publication was the centre of a long-running dispute between the journal and the authors concerning undeclared conflicts of interest. It led to his involvement as a witness in a lengthy legal dispute that has recently been resolved (referred to in response). He has received funding from several national and international agencies for work on tobacco control. "
Hypocracy?
http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/news/2004/tobaccopmorris.html
"Professor McKee concludes: "we believe that it is essential that those involved in reviewing evidence on smoking and health should be aware of what appears to be the selective nature of what is eventually published by some scientists with links to the industry, and the evidence that sometimes mechanisms appear to have been used to disguise these links. Any research in this field must involve full disclosure of competing interests and any involvement of the tobacco industry in the instigation, design, analysis or interpretation of findings. Specifically, Philip Morris should be required to explain why it took the steps documented here to maintain what appears to have been considerable secrecy about its role in research on the effects of sidestream (passive) smoke and consequently its knowledge of its effects, effects that appear at odds with its public statements."
Lancet Editor Richard Horton comments: "Given the continuing debate about the way governments should respond to calls for a ban on smoking in public places, we have published this work early online to inform that discussion as a matter of urgency. Pascal Diethelm and his colleagues reveal attempts by one company-Philip Morris-to conceal their links to a research centre in Germany studying the health effects of smoking. The research conducted in that facility appears to have been selectively reported in order to favourably shape public impressions about the safety of passive smoking.""
From my submission;
The anti smoking movement is largely indebted, in trust and in league with conflicted Industrial interests who are profiting tremendously just as the brokers of that partnership predicted they would. The Lobby never denied it and proudly congratulate their Industrial partners openly in UN forums and at the many anti smoking conferences internationally. Industry partners represent an obligation to produce profit; not as a duty to communities, but as a duty only to their own stakeholders. Although not as well examined as the Tobacco industry, fully of the same educational standards operating procedures and community values, as any other industry executives in current communities. The problem with this continual oration of “the evil tobacco industry” described often in context as a single person on trial for decades is that society has evolved, and the current executives, would not dare to travel, where their predecessors felt comfortable in a much less restrictive world.
Chasing pseudo-dragons is a great talking point, however in real world evaluation, some of the stuck in the sixties mentalities, simply have to grow up and move on, to more current problems and perspectives. Connecting “debaters” or “dissenters” instinctively? First as advocates of “the evil industry”, and now as something as repulsive or detracted as a “Holocaust denier” is self serving, without the necessary credibility of truth or evidence. If this is a scientific discussion and not, one of theology in a dark age’s reign of superstition; this declaration is not helpful and has no place in scientific evaluation. It has become common knowledge the use of certain buzz words in Internet connected documents, will increase the readership, because they attach the article to unrelated searches. Does credible science, in an age of expanded access to our knowledge base, truly wish to define its own integrity or credibility so casually?
This publication demands apology and retraction, for those who take insult by the casual ignorance expressed by self service, in an outrageous connectivity, we see a failure to respect the emotional tragedy, by the memory of those who perished, or what is still experienced by those who survived them.
Best Regards;
Johan Mackenbach wrote:
Is this the same person whose letter we have rejected earlier? Let's be
careful. I think this letter is too long, and difficult to follow, so I am
not inclined to publish it, but please check first.
Johan
Original submission
Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee in their article herald the absolutes of scientific reason, as a measure of the biggest dog in the yard. The renaissance foundation of modern science; while standing on the slippery slope of the next dark age. The halt of all further investigations as they describe it; because if the largest group can form consensus; even if that consensus excludes all recognition of selected voices, the discussion is over? This should form the basis for protecting what has been achieved or determined, in place of science, for all time? Real science is normally found outside of a group think atmosphere, as a result of effort, and not an ideology in opposition to that legitimizing work, the preordained or scientific antithesis. We have achieved a level where we can declare we know everything and we can prove it, with advertising campaigns? Does the strength of a Lobby partnership now presume to undermine the reproducibility measure of science, as secondary to theological evaluations, which only allow group think results?
The Lexis on which they rest their case, by revisiting the flat earth theologies immediately suggest a huge obstacle in the foundation of integrity or freedom to investigate without restrictions or disdain. This article is entirely consistent with the reasoning; if a being is capable of speech, intelligence and logic can automatically be assumed. The parrots, who call for nationalization of the science as a cultural reality, have yet to pass further investigation.
Science in its traditional sense is not determined as a beachhead, to be held in dictatorship as a nationalist or fascio ideology. If it is, we have to ask who rules this nation and where are this nation's boarders? Beyond the prophesies of would be; UN partnered despots dealing out “Public Health Protections”. While protecting us only from ourselves; while exaggerating the levels of fear and apprehension to solidify only their own prominence.
If second hand smoke and or environmental tobacco smoke carries a larger degree of risk than we once believed, where is the offset? Are we to believe religiously as Thun has attested; Enstrom and Kabat are in error, because they fail to realize the large exposures of the non smoking public. Inexplicably this exposure in its minor or casual level, would not be an offset by universal exposure, but would have to increase only the health risk among non smokers?
This alternate form of logic can be found in the belief that all, so called “clean air” is and was always absolutely harmless. Air which comprises the vast bulk of ETS with no recognition ETS might ever be diluted in air. Reinforced now by claims of “no safe level”. The “clean” air in high demand, by their presentations which affirm its actual existence; is now thought to be harmless and of no concern by any evaluation or comparison. Or at least until the next Thunesque statement arises, to use the “clean” air similarly.
We have to now concede this promotes the idea; because smokers themselves are far more exposed; that primary smoking is not as dangerous as we once believed? Those determinations of risk were initially made on the basis of comparing non smokers to smokers directly, without any risk of ETS considered. If in fact we now have two significant risk factors to be examined separately, a new perspective must be followed to its logical conclusion without the preposterous rating of detractors by ad hominid evolution in place of legitimizing science to examine the new proposals. I for one do not deny the Holocaust happened and the entire scientific community had the largest hand in creating the atmosphere, which made it possible; when Science, Industry and Politics became as one. (Fascio)
Let’s take a look down that road shall we and follow this new logic? If smoking is now believed less toxic, how toxic are the constituents of the smoke; which present themselves in Pico grams and Nano grams, far below levels of the same toxins found in ambient air. How do we now differentiate the effects of one compared to another? The Tobacco Industry is already avoiding civil actions, by the failure to produce proof of which brand of cigarette caused an injury, and further what air toxins as confounders could logically result in similar damages. With the new reduced risk of smoking, compared to increased risks of ETS their case is solidified. As the risk ETS is elevated, so to will there be an elevated prominence, by such observations as the six cities study, to a degree that no one could possibly link smoking to any diseases outcome directly. Is this the intent of protagonists and politicians who declare themselves as scientists, to in effect protect the tobacco industry’s historical claims that cigarettes are not that dangerous?
Look to simple pie chart logic and understand how the public is measuring credibility;
In 1970 close to 50% of the population smoked and 60% were ever smokers. During the span between 1960 and 2005 population tripled. Cancers increased six fold and heart disease climbed along side population numbers. While the actual number of smokers remained almost consistent.
How does anyone ever hope to assign the following information as proof of smoking causation? I see no evidence proving smoking caused anything beyond systemic hysteria?
Legitimate evaluation, seems to indicate for lung cancers smoking is curative rather than causative.
In the American populace .7% of a 320 million population is 2.24 million. Now we see by a subset of that population “smoking causes 450,000 smoking related mortalities every year”. Surprisingly by evaluation to determine the effect we multiply .7% by the 20% of current smokers or 64 million and we find 448,000 almost but not quite the identical number we expect to see in total population. So is this “smoking related mortality” or “smoker related mortality” in search of a sound bite?
We go on to the always popular 80% of current lung cancer patients are ever smokers or “smoking causes 80% of lung cancers”.
We have to understand cancer does not happen overnight and the cancers we see today by the most significant group affected are those who smoked for many years and indicative of the population who started many years ago. 160,000 lung cancer deaths annually in a 320 million populace or .0005 today however the observations are skewed, because the effects today are results of lifestyles yesterday.
100 million population
60 % ever smokers 40% never smokers.
Divide a pie into 10 pieces each representing 10 million people
Smokers get 8 pieces [80%] and non smokers get 2 pieces [20%].
Take away 2 from the non smokers to represent cancers from other causes take away 3 from the smokers to reflect their 50% larger population.
What do you have left?
5 pieces and by comparison we concluded 50% will be affected by smoking and among non smokers 50% will be affected by not smoking, as represented in the two pieces they were allotted in addition to the number you took away from the smokers believed to be not caused by smoking.
As a risk you have a balance, and no conclusive evidence of increased risk despite how it originally seemed.
No one has ever resolved the largest problem with Doll’s research, so many years ago which connected smoking with cancer. When it was revealed a larger risk existed among those who claimed they did not inhale, than the smokers who claimed they did. Observation reveals at the time, smoking was fashionable and many who described themselves as smokers to gain popularity, could not smoke in the traditional sense, without choking. So they did not inhale. Proof can be seen in many of the post 1960s movies were the actors can be seen in the majority, doing a not very good imitation of smoking. When they never did really inhale smoke, how could it cause the diseases we commonly refer to as smoking related? So were the diseases really all simply “smoking related”? In retrospective studies, what was the actual smoking prevalence, long determined to cause so much harm and how much harm was assigned to the wrong side of the balance sheet? Doll never defended his failure to fully disclose this reality, in the numerous news conferences to follow, however he did fix the problem. By removing the question in further studies, to determine who actually inhaled and who did not. Politics is a matter of promotion and opinion, but is this really science or remotely scientific?
The epidemiology processes itself, by well known structural weaknesses, will always develop many contrasting figures and conclusions, as a sheer reality of randomization, confounding balances and chance. If there is a complete void of those findings, it encourages a perspective of impropriety that the process is being interfered with. Credibility and randomization is lost. By the fact people chose to start or stop smoking, or not to start at all, suggest we never truly had randomization in the post study separation, based in smoking status, this defeated the claim and the legitimacy of randomized control evaluation. Further those who have a specific disease compared to groups who are not so afflicted are also defined correctly as a non randomized trial.
Declared consensus while attacking any alternate result, opinion or even discussion as discourse, now preposterously viewed as a cultural norm in science? Tossing aside a reality by social marketing and irresponsible oration, their absolutely conflicted HIA group, created the poll counting culture deliberately, as described in the HIA process of stakeholder partnerships. Social Marketing as it was employed, by divisive policies not targeting smoking or the Tobacco industry, but the smokers themselves. To have the audacity to declare no conflicts in this social experiment is nothing short of a contemptible act.
The anti smoking movement is largely indebted, in trust and in league with conflicted Industrial interests who are profiting tremendously just as the brokers of that partnership predicted they would. They never denied it and proudly congratulate their Industrial partners openly in UN forums and at the many anti smoking conferences internationally. Industry partners represent an obligation to produce profit; not as a duty to communities, but as a duty only to their own stakeholders. Although not as well examined as the Tobacco industry, fully of the same educational standards operating procedures and community values, as any other industry executives in current communities. The problem with this continual oration of “the evil tobacco industry” described often in context as a single person on trial for decades is that society has evolved, and the current executives, would not dare to travel, where their predecessors felt comfortable in a much less restrictive world.
Chasing pseudo-dragons is a great talking point, however in real world evaluation, some of the stuck in the sixties mentalities, simply have to grow up and move on, to more current problems and perspectives. Connecting “debaters” or “dissenters” instinctively? First as advocates of “the evil industry”, and now as something as repulsive or detracted as a “Holocaust denier” is self serving, without the necessary credibility of truth or evidence. If this is a scientific discussion and not, one of theology in a dark age’s reign of superstition; this declaration is not helpful and has no place in scientific evaluation. It has become common knowledge the use of certain buzz words in internet connected documents, will increase the readership, because they attach the article to unrelated searches. Does credible science, in an age of expanded access to our knowledge base, truly wish to define its own integrity or credibility so casually?
This publication demands apology and retraction, for those who take insult by the casual ignorance expressed by self service in an outrageous connectivity, we see a failure to respect the emotional tragedy, by the memory of those who perished, or what is still experienced by those who survived them.
In response to an article; comparing those who challenge the conclusion that secondhand smoke causes heart disease and lung cancer with those who deny the Holocaust.
I understand the Editors obvious insult taken, by the length of my initial response. Perhaps if I condensed it to include the most relevant points, he might well understand more precisely, what was being said. Understanding this is an effort of repeating myself, I believe the message might become more clear the second and now the third time around.
First and foremost; the article is offensive and promotes hatred targeting individuals. In a crass attempt at ad hominid logic, in the very worst of insensitive design. Supported by ideology and fundamental extremism, in regard to normal and casual exposures to second hand smoke [which are not known to be harmful] much more than credible ""science""", which is reported to be the context of your publication. Secondly there is an undisclosed conflict which should be obvious to anyone reading this discussion of DENIALS no less.
I would like to report a failure to disclose personal conflicts of interest, on behalf of the authors. Provocative details which would not be apparent or obvious to the reader. Details which would add support to the authors credibility in a failure to disclose; who these people are and what they devote so much of their time and efforts to support. In my opinion; not entirely without compensation [both financially and in direct support of their other Medical Journal publication proposals], one would also have to assume. Disclosures which are relevant and require notation.
Evidence?
Diethelm as a Career?
http://www.tobacco.org/resources/rendezvous/diethelm.html
"During the 1980s and early 1990s, I gradually developed a sense of anti-smoking advocacy, mainly for two reasons: first, because it caused me pain to see obvious signs that friends and people around me were ruining their health by smoking; second, because I grew more aware of the discomfort and health risks of secondhand smoking.
As an anti-smoking advocate, I follow two tracks.
One track is in my capacity of WHO staff member.
I volunteered a few years ago to develop a computerized system aimed at producing and retrieving country profiles and regional profiles of tobacco consumption.
Since then my interest in helping WHO in its fight against smoking has continued.
I was delighted when Dr Brundtland declared tobacco one of her top priorities, created the Tobacco Free Initiative, and asked Derek Yach to lead it.
In my capacity of Team Leader, Networking and Telecommunications, my role is to provide IT support to the project. "
McKee By his own hand?
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/326/7398/1057
"Competing interests: As editor of the European Journal of Public Health, MM published another paper by authors funded by the Center for Indoor Air Research. This publication was the centre of a long-running dispute between the journal and the authors concerning undeclared conflicts of interest. It led to his involvement as a witness in a lengthy legal dispute that has recently been resolved (referred to in response). He has received funding from several national and international agencies for work on tobacco control. "
Hypocracy?
http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/news/2004/tobaccopmorris.html
"Professor McKee concludes: "we believe that it is essential that those involved in reviewing evidence on smoking and health should be aware of what appears to be the selective nature of what is eventually published by some scientists with links to the industry, and the evidence that sometimes mechanisms appear to have been used to disguise these links. Any research in this field must involve full disclosure of competing interests and any involvement of the tobacco industry in the instigation, design, analysis or interpretation of findings. Specifically, Philip Morris should be required to explain why it took the steps documented here to maintain what appears to have been considerable secrecy about its role in research on the effects of sidestream (passive) smoke and consequently its knowledge of its effects, effects that appear at odds with its public statements."
Lancet Editor Richard Horton comments: "Given the continuing debate about the way governments should respond to calls for a ban on smoking in public places, we have published this work early online to inform that discussion as a matter of urgency. Pascal Diethelm and his colleagues reveal attempts by one company-Philip Morris-to conceal their links to a research centre in Germany studying the health effects of smoking. The research conducted in that facility appears to have been selectively reported in order to favourably shape public impressions about the safety of passive smoking.""
From my submission;
The anti smoking movement is largely indebted, in trust and in league with conflicted Industrial interests who are profiting tremendously just as the brokers of that partnership predicted they would. The Lobby never denied it and proudly congratulate their Industrial partners openly in UN forums and at the many anti smoking conferences internationally. Industry partners represent an obligation to produce profit; not as a duty to communities, but as a duty only to their own stakeholders. Although not as well examined as the Tobacco industry, fully of the same educational standards operating procedures and community values, as any other industry executives in current communities. The problem with this continual oration of “the evil tobacco industry” described often in context as a single person on trial for decades is that society has evolved, and the current executives, would not dare to travel, where their predecessors felt comfortable in a much less restrictive world.
Chasing pseudo-dragons is a great talking point, however in real world evaluation, some of the stuck in the sixties mentalities, simply have to grow up and move on, to more current problems and perspectives. Connecting “debaters” or “dissenters” instinctively? First as advocates of “the evil industry”, and now as something as repulsive or detracted as a “Holocaust denier” is self serving, without the necessary credibility of truth or evidence. If this is a scientific discussion and not, one of theology in a dark age’s reign of superstition; this declaration is not helpful and has no place in scientific evaluation. It has become common knowledge the use of certain buzz words in Internet connected documents, will increase the readership, because they attach the article to unrelated searches. Does credible science, in an age of expanded access to our knowledge base, truly wish to define its own integrity or credibility so casually?
This publication demands apology and retraction, for those who take insult by the casual ignorance expressed by self service, in an outrageous connectivity, we see a failure to respect the emotional tragedy, by the memory of those who perished, or what is still experienced by those who survived them.
Best Regards;
Johan Mackenbach wrote:
Is this the same person whose letter we have rejected earlier? Let's be
careful. I think this letter is too long, and difficult to follow, so I am
not inclined to publish it, but please check first.
Johan
Original submission
Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee in their article herald the absolutes of scientific reason, as a measure of the biggest dog in the yard. The renaissance foundation of modern science; while standing on the slippery slope of the next dark age. The halt of all further investigations as they describe it; because if the largest group can form consensus; even if that consensus excludes all recognition of selected voices, the discussion is over? This should form the basis for protecting what has been achieved or determined, in place of science, for all time? Real science is normally found outside of a group think atmosphere, as a result of effort, and not an ideology in opposition to that legitimizing work, the preordained or scientific antithesis. We have achieved a level where we can declare we know everything and we can prove it, with advertising campaigns? Does the strength of a Lobby partnership now presume to undermine the reproducibility measure of science, as secondary to theological evaluations, which only allow group think results?
The Lexis on which they rest their case, by revisiting the flat earth theologies immediately suggest a huge obstacle in the foundation of integrity or freedom to investigate without restrictions or disdain. This article is entirely consistent with the reasoning; if a being is capable of speech, intelligence and logic can automatically be assumed. The parrots, who call for nationalization of the science as a cultural reality, have yet to pass further investigation.
Science in its traditional sense is not determined as a beachhead, to be held in dictatorship as a nationalist or fascio ideology. If it is, we have to ask who rules this nation and where are this nation's boarders? Beyond the prophesies of would be; UN partnered despots dealing out “Public Health Protections”. While protecting us only from ourselves; while exaggerating the levels of fear and apprehension to solidify only their own prominence.
If second hand smoke and or environmental tobacco smoke carries a larger degree of risk than we once believed, where is the offset? Are we to believe religiously as Thun has attested; Enstrom and Kabat are in error, because they fail to realize the large exposures of the non smoking public. Inexplicably this exposure in its minor or casual level, would not be an offset by universal exposure, but would have to increase only the health risk among non smokers?
This alternate form of logic can be found in the belief that all, so called “clean air” is and was always absolutely harmless. Air which comprises the vast bulk of ETS with no recognition ETS might ever be diluted in air. Reinforced now by claims of “no safe level”. The “clean” air in high demand, by their presentations which affirm its actual existence; is now thought to be harmless and of no concern by any evaluation or comparison. Or at least until the next Thunesque statement arises, to use the “clean” air similarly.
We have to now concede this promotes the idea; because smokers themselves are far more exposed; that primary smoking is not as dangerous as we once believed? Those determinations of risk were initially made on the basis of comparing non smokers to smokers directly, without any risk of ETS considered. If in fact we now have two significant risk factors to be examined separately, a new perspective must be followed to its logical conclusion without the preposterous rating of detractors by ad hominid evolution in place of legitimizing science to examine the new proposals. I for one do not deny the Holocaust happened and the entire scientific community had the largest hand in creating the atmosphere, which made it possible; when Science, Industry and Politics became as one. (Fascio)
Let’s take a look down that road shall we and follow this new logic? If smoking is now believed less toxic, how toxic are the constituents of the smoke; which present themselves in Pico grams and Nano grams, far below levels of the same toxins found in ambient air. How do we now differentiate the effects of one compared to another? The Tobacco Industry is already avoiding civil actions, by the failure to produce proof of which brand of cigarette caused an injury, and further what air toxins as confounders could logically result in similar damages. With the new reduced risk of smoking, compared to increased risks of ETS their case is solidified. As the risk ETS is elevated, so to will there be an elevated prominence, by such observations as the six cities study, to a degree that no one could possibly link smoking to any diseases outcome directly. Is this the intent of protagonists and politicians who declare themselves as scientists, to in effect protect the tobacco industry’s historical claims that cigarettes are not that dangerous?
Look to simple pie chart logic and understand how the public is measuring credibility;
In 1970 close to 50% of the population smoked and 60% were ever smokers. During the span between 1960 and 2005 population tripled. Cancers increased six fold and heart disease climbed along side population numbers. While the actual number of smokers remained almost consistent.
How does anyone ever hope to assign the following information as proof of smoking causation? I see no evidence proving smoking caused anything beyond systemic hysteria?
Legitimate evaluation, seems to indicate for lung cancers smoking is curative rather than causative.
In the American populace .7% of a 320 million population is 2.24 million. Now we see by a subset of that population “smoking causes 450,000 smoking related mortalities every year”. Surprisingly by evaluation to determine the effect we multiply .7% by the 20% of current smokers or 64 million and we find 448,000 almost but not quite the identical number we expect to see in total population. So is this “smoking related mortality” or “smoker related mortality” in search of a sound bite?
We go on to the always popular 80% of current lung cancer patients are ever smokers or “smoking causes 80% of lung cancers”.
We have to understand cancer does not happen overnight and the cancers we see today by the most significant group affected are those who smoked for many years and indicative of the population who started many years ago. 160,000 lung cancer deaths annually in a 320 million populace or .0005 today however the observations are skewed, because the effects today are results of lifestyles yesterday.
100 million population
60 % ever smokers 40% never smokers.
Divide a pie into 10 pieces each representing 10 million people
Smokers get 8 pieces [80%] and non smokers get 2 pieces [20%].
Take away 2 from the non smokers to represent cancers from other causes take away 3 from the smokers to reflect their 50% larger population.
What do you have left?
5 pieces and by comparison we concluded 50% will be affected by smoking and among non smokers 50% will be affected by not smoking, as represented in the two pieces they were allotted in addition to the number you took away from the smokers believed to be not caused by smoking.
As a risk you have a balance, and no conclusive evidence of increased risk despite how it originally seemed.
No one has ever resolved the largest problem with Doll’s research, so many years ago which connected smoking with cancer. When it was revealed a larger risk existed among those who claimed they did not inhale, than the smokers who claimed they did. Observation reveals at the time, smoking was fashionable and many who described themselves as smokers to gain popularity, could not smoke in the traditional sense, without choking. So they did not inhale. Proof can be seen in many of the post 1960s movies were the actors can be seen in the majority, doing a not very good imitation of smoking. When they never did really inhale smoke, how could it cause the diseases we commonly refer to as smoking related? So were the diseases really all simply “smoking related”? In retrospective studies, what was the actual smoking prevalence, long determined to cause so much harm and how much harm was assigned to the wrong side of the balance sheet? Doll never defended his failure to fully disclose this reality, in the numerous news conferences to follow, however he did fix the problem. By removing the question in further studies, to determine who actually inhaled and who did not. Politics is a matter of promotion and opinion, but is this really science or remotely scientific?
The epidemiology processes itself, by well known structural weaknesses, will always develop many contrasting figures and conclusions, as a sheer reality of randomization, confounding balances and chance. If there is a complete void of those findings, it encourages a perspective of impropriety that the process is being interfered with. Credibility and randomization is lost. By the fact people chose to start or stop smoking, or not to start at all, suggest we never truly had randomization in the post study separation, based in smoking status, this defeated the claim and the legitimacy of randomized control evaluation. Further those who have a specific disease compared to groups who are not so afflicted are also defined correctly as a non randomized trial.
Declared consensus while attacking any alternate result, opinion or even discussion as discourse, now preposterously viewed as a cultural norm in science? Tossing aside a reality by social marketing and irresponsible oration, their absolutely conflicted HIA group, created the poll counting culture deliberately, as described in the HIA process of stakeholder partnerships. Social Marketing as it was employed, by divisive policies not targeting smoking or the Tobacco industry, but the smokers themselves. To have the audacity to declare no conflicts in this social experiment is nothing short of a contemptible act.
The anti smoking movement is largely indebted, in trust and in league with conflicted Industrial interests who are profiting tremendously just as the brokers of that partnership predicted they would. They never denied it and proudly congratulate their Industrial partners openly in UN forums and at the many anti smoking conferences internationally. Industry partners represent an obligation to produce profit; not as a duty to communities, but as a duty only to their own stakeholders. Although not as well examined as the Tobacco industry, fully of the same educational standards operating procedures and community values, as any other industry executives in current communities. The problem with this continual oration of “the evil tobacco industry” described often in context as a single person on trial for decades is that society has evolved, and the current executives, would not dare to travel, where their predecessors felt comfortable in a much less restrictive world.
Chasing pseudo-dragons is a great talking point, however in real world evaluation, some of the stuck in the sixties mentalities, simply have to grow up and move on, to more current problems and perspectives. Connecting “debaters” or “dissenters” instinctively? First as advocates of “the evil industry”, and now as something as repulsive or detracted as a “Holocaust denier” is self serving, without the necessary credibility of truth or evidence. If this is a scientific discussion and not, one of theology in a dark age’s reign of superstition; this declaration is not helpful and has no place in scientific evaluation. It has become common knowledge the use of certain buzz words in internet connected documents, will increase the readership, because they attach the article to unrelated searches. Does credible science, in an age of expanded access to our knowledge base, truly wish to define its own integrity or credibility so casually?
This publication demands apology and retraction, for those who take insult by the casual ignorance expressed by self service in an outrageous connectivity, we see a failure to respect the emotional tragedy, by the memory of those who perished, or what is still experienced by those who survived them.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
What got lost in the fine print
I know everyone is heavily into this debate about what a little smoke can and cannot do. Is there a serious unbiased mind left, who would admit; in purely scientific terms second hand smoke does not actually exist?
That sounds like a pretty wild statement, considering what we have been told for a number of years. In the strictest sense second hand smoke, is a creation of the human mind and the fear being promoted is a reaction to a wedge issue which satisfies the majority of self interest. The costs of healthcare, is often cited as a societal detriment however the real numbers simply don't support such poorly informed claims. Oh we all know what cigarette smoke is and many don't like the smell or the atmosphere when smoke is present, but the "Risk" factor nonsense, is the worst kept secret since the emperor was informed he was unclothed.
Why do we continue to lie to ourselves? If smoking prohibition is the target, why has no politician the courage to stand and announce it? The cost of this process of oppression by increment is extreme and wasteful. The resources wasted should be expended treating patients hands on. Our economies are being made to suffer largely by the cost of cowardice. This backdoor prohibition charade only attacks our claims to a civil and equitable community. The way this is being played out is a promotion of bigotry and stereotyping, more than any claimed interest of public safety or compassion for our neighbors. Public Health CONTROL groups are a collection of cowards, prostitutes and well connected terrorists, who haven't the courage to don the appropriate Nazi uniforms, and stand up for the principles they believe in.
People need to know what they are dealing with and decide whose camp they actually support.
Does anyone seriously believe that by allowing governments to create laws which target law abiding citizens, we are moving in a positive direction? Or does anyone believe a government afforded that ability, will not use the example to legalize other similar campaigns. Or worse that they will easily surrender that ability, without major unrest in our communities, which will only occur after major damage, is already done. Dalton McGuinty expressed his beliefs on the eve of his smoking ban implementation when he stood in front of the cameras and stated clearly and proudly;” If smokers don’t quit, they will be punished” Distinguishing his ideal, that punishments for personal legal behavior is his to deal with, without any mention of the courts. Smoking bans are extortion and an affront to the security of the person and the rights of autonomy, in every context human rights abuse. In place of a traditional sign and equitable compromise, seeking respect in all of the community.
We as the broader community are being controlled by the “social marketing” campaigns [Health Canada] much more than anyone who chooses to smoke, drink or eat to excess; being programmed into the school of divisions. Taxes are purchasing a media campaign promoting intolerance, regressive taxation [or theft by moral edict] and divided communities at the behest of a UN Industrial partnered agency, which undermines by lobby, the spirit of democracy and the legitimacy of all elected officials who don’t bend to every lobby demand. People, who deserve respect, are being driven wide brush out of our communities, by this nickel and dime Nazi movement. People don’t like the harshness of that word, so seldom used of late, but can it be different than a scientist claiming anyone, who doesn’t agree with,the promotion of the day, purely ignorant. Science by edict with no discussion or debate doesn't sound like science, rather something else.
The fog
It is, after all, only a theoretic proposal and not a stable product, which could always be described or quantified precisely or consistently.
With all the renditions of calculations and broad assumptions we see every day. Logically, should a little smoke we have always ignored, suddenly provoke so much fear? Why did the millions invested in the medical charities for so many decades, miss a toxin so significant, if it really exists. Where did all the research money go? The alternative would be acceptance that; while we watched Heather Crowe die of lung cancer; as the poster girl for the anti-smoker lobby, the charities stood silent, while knowingly letting it happen?
It falls to the incredible, we are on our knees trembling, fearful of a product known only, and defined only, as "smoke" which is realistically; only a product of the imagination, much more than it could ever be claimed to be a product of traditional reproducible science.
The Facts
Can anyone define Second Hand Smoke according to its physical composition or reactions in consistent terms; relative to half life, barometer, humidity or temperature?
Can anyone even list, what the "smoke" might contain and in what levels or how the components compare to their own known safe levels, already accepted by traditional assessments by legitimate quantities and reproducible science?
If we can not be offered a stable comparative sample, taken from more than one location, the smoke seems to be a product which varies more than fingerprints, DNA or the patterns of snowflakes.
Can anyone define a surface description so we can differentiate it from other smoke products?
Do that investigation first and then come to us with your evaluations of "risk" that would be consistent with normal science and process. Otherwise you’re only a politician, resting on speculation and moralist propaganda.
Nothing we haven't seen done before, and nothing has happened since, other than improvements in advertising efficiencies, to increase the probability that the prophesies are any more believable today than they have ever proven to be in the past.
This theological element, is then taken to have a physical quantified value based entirely in biological variances, between one group and another;
measured constants of averaged mean values even when the groups are less than ten people in number? With other biological features which could explain a multitude of plausible variations of the separate etiologies. Individual elements of smoke vary as much as the compound products, in their consistencies as a whole separately within the product with changes occurring within nano-seconds of its production.
What remains suspect beyond the fact the “smoke” is considered to exist at all, in physical terms as a constant, is that a process exists to precisely measure its variable effects, over a lifetime of variations a body would experience and the reactions of variable defenses within, predicting [we are told consistently] what would evolve.
http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/extract/19/1/2
Sorry I simply don't buy it. In a recent article published in The European Journal of Public Health this month; Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee et al; make a unforgivable pronouncement, that the debate is over with a claim to victory, despite the science which indicates otherwise; either I am to accept a designation as a Holocaust denier or should agree the debate is over, designating the smoke in all forms and regardless of dilution levels, as the most deadly toxin ever discovered with “no safe level”?
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/14/suppl_2/ii3
I find a third more logical option is available; that it is the "science” which should be dismissed as a defective when it surpasses all reasonable bounds of credibility.
“The right to health relevant information derives from the principles of autonomy and self direction and has been recognized in international declarations. Providing accurate health information is part of the basis for obtaining "informed consent" and is a recognized component of business ethics, safety communications, and case and product liability law. Remarkably, anti-tobacco and pro-tobacco sources alike have come to emphasis the message that there is "no safe cigarette" or "no safe tobacco product". We propose that the "no safe" message is so limited in its value that it represents a violation of the right to health relevant information. There is a need to go beyond saying, "there is no safe tobacco product" to indicate information on degree of risks.”
To demonstrate the problem with“no safe” risk claims;
50,000 in a population of 320 million is an absolute risk of .016% in a population virtually all exposed to some degree. But who will be effected or killed by heart attack, due solely to their exposure, in that 320 million population? With no safe level, they should all die, whether they smoke or not. The same lobby group tells us if a smoker quits smoking, his level of exposure will be nullified over the years, to a level of risk not detectable beyond the norm? Who could be exposed to the “Smoke” more than a smoker? Are smokers in possession of some internal curative ability no one else has?
If death is a result of quantity and/or duration of exposures, we should be able to just collect all the bartenders and bingo operators and give virtually everyone else a clean bill of health.
That doesn't seem to work very well either because there are far too many bartenders alone, to prove the “prophesy” is consistent, while leaving over any risk to distribute among the public, so we have to assume the risk is non linear.
A lack of linear dose response relationships eliminates any possibility to predict any outcome with any hope of precision, by simply comparing one group to another, so the "science" or the evaluation process is the problem. Legitimately ETS never was a problem and the promises of potential “lives saved” are irresponsible and ill advised.
You can confirm that level of logic, with visual observations. Theoretical tobacco smoke has killed no one that we can identify in the physical world.
When Doctors mistakes kill more people than smoking, who is really left, we can believe?
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/death/what.htm
How credible is the opinion, in regards to risk and so called significant risk.
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/lists/deaths.htm
50,000 compared to total figures of heart attack death at 460,000 annually, represents 50/460 which suggests a 10.8% increased risk but only if we can agree the entire population knows what second hand smoke smells like, so they are all exposed. Are they all permanently damaged by that exposure and will they all die in the specified 10.8% of the total .27% of total mortalities [.88% of population] which will always occur every year, even if no one smokes?
What is causing the other 90% is the larger issue. Even smoking in its totality [assuming 450,000 is caused by smoking and not more realistically; 1/5 of total mortality seen in 1/5 of the population] only increases the annual population risk @ .88% by .16% representing 20% of the population.
Chronic exposure among non smokers as a more credible claim would eliminate many of the 50,000 predicted and reduce the 11% figure drastically in current risk perspectives. Of course, the control freaks don't ever want to talk about current risk applicable to the current population; It blows away all the fear...
In the current diatribe "there is no safe level of second hand smoke" if we believe it, the increased risk for second hand smoke 10.8% is far below the most moderate insignificant estimates at 19% in population increased risk.
Few can escape the 100% death rate within 100 years. By comparison in realistic terms the .88% we see annually is minuscule. .16% as the worst case, when it only affects half of those who smoke is the real figure to consider and how much does it really matter when every person beyond 35 years of age has a higher risk of dying, whether you smoke or not?
Who is really considering the risks exhibited these truly shocking numbers? Certainly not the "deniers" who believe only smoking is dangerous. Something for the anti smoker crusaders, to consider, while bemoaning the health risk of smoking and the comparative minuscule risks of second hand smoke; Anyone surviving beyond the ripe old age of 35 years has a 4% higher risk of dying [.199%] than the [.16%] risk of dying of smoking related diseases and it only gets dramatically worse as you grow older.
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/d/death/intro.htm
"Death comes to us all at a rate a little less than 1% per year in the USA (0.877% or 1-in-114). However, annual mortality rates vary with age and generally increase with age after the first year: infant (less than 1 year) 0.706% or 1-in-141 (highest in the first 28 days, down to 0.188% or 1-in-531 after that), age 1-4 years 0.034% (1 in 2,941), 5-9 years 0.017% (1 in 5,882), 10-14 years 0.021% (1 in 4,761), 15-19 years 0.069% (1 in 1,449), 20-24 years 0.093% (1 in 1,075), 25-34 years 0.108% (1 in 925), 35-44 years 0.199% (1 in 502), 45-54 years 0.427% (1 in 234), 55-64 years 1.021% (1 in 97), 65-74 years 2.484% (1 in 40), 75-84 years 5.751% (1 in 17), and 85+ years %15.475% (1 in 6) [CDC NVSR 2001]. "
Or these?
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/statistics/index.htm
"The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) commissioned a phone survey in 1997 to review patient opinions about medical mistakes. Of the people reporting a medical mistake (42%), 40% reported a "misdiagnosis or treatment error", but did not separate misdiagnosis from treatment errors. Respondents also reported that their doctor failed to make an adequate diagnosis in 9% of cases, and 8% of people cited misdiagnosis as a primary causal factor in the medical mistake. Loosely interpreting these facts gives a range of 8% to 42% rate for misdiagnoses.
Misdiagnosis rates in the ICU or Emergency Department have been studied, with rates ranging from 20% to 40%. These misdiagnosis rates are likely to be higher than the overall health care misdiagnosis rate because of the time-critical and serious nature of the diagnosis under these crisis conditions. "
For lung cancers we are told 90% are found among smokers, which leaves only 10% to be distributed among 80% of the public. The real numbers, in American terms and by the most popular lobby move to find Canadian numbers, divide by 10.
Total Lung cancers;
160,439 x .1 = 16,044 [10%] or 1604 Canadians among 32 million
16,044/ [320 – 64 million smokers] =
16044/256,000,000
a risk to a non smoker of .0006% [1 x .0000626]
If 1% of the American workforce are employed in the hospitality trade, the bartenders most exposed to the “smoke” would number in the hundreds of thousands. Which doesn’t leave any large measure of risk for the rest of us to fret about, does it? When you consider the term “half of smokers will die from smoking” why not bartenders by the same proportion killed by the “smoke”? One theory rests in the fact they only inhale the equivalent of a single cigarette every five to ten days, which should explain part of it. But how about the claims of risk which extend outdoors and in a brief smell, while walking down the “Blue air” filled streets and parks. How is that believed to be possible to describe as a significant risk or any risk, when the bartenders insist on hogging all the available mortalities?
Once again distribution by the above measures using 16,000 [if we assume all are caused by the “smoke”] in place of the 50,000 by the claimed heart risks and you quickly realize how extremely; [this “smoke”, who is really being smoked, and how far imagination,] is being, over hyped. It falls now to the imagination, to determine if the 10s of Billions spent creating pictures in your mind over the past five decades, were invested in research and real medical treatment; how many would die from either cancer or heart diseases today?
That sounds like a pretty wild statement, considering what we have been told for a number of years. In the strictest sense second hand smoke, is a creation of the human mind and the fear being promoted is a reaction to a wedge issue which satisfies the majority of self interest. The costs of healthcare, is often cited as a societal detriment however the real numbers simply don't support such poorly informed claims. Oh we all know what cigarette smoke is and many don't like the smell or the atmosphere when smoke is present, but the "Risk" factor nonsense, is the worst kept secret since the emperor was informed he was unclothed.
Why do we continue to lie to ourselves? If smoking prohibition is the target, why has no politician the courage to stand and announce it? The cost of this process of oppression by increment is extreme and wasteful. The resources wasted should be expended treating patients hands on. Our economies are being made to suffer largely by the cost of cowardice. This backdoor prohibition charade only attacks our claims to a civil and equitable community. The way this is being played out is a promotion of bigotry and stereotyping, more than any claimed interest of public safety or compassion for our neighbors. Public Health CONTROL groups are a collection of cowards, prostitutes and well connected terrorists, who haven't the courage to don the appropriate Nazi uniforms, and stand up for the principles they believe in.
People need to know what they are dealing with and decide whose camp they actually support.
Does anyone seriously believe that by allowing governments to create laws which target law abiding citizens, we are moving in a positive direction? Or does anyone believe a government afforded that ability, will not use the example to legalize other similar campaigns. Or worse that they will easily surrender that ability, without major unrest in our communities, which will only occur after major damage, is already done. Dalton McGuinty expressed his beliefs on the eve of his smoking ban implementation when he stood in front of the cameras and stated clearly and proudly;” If smokers don’t quit, they will be punished” Distinguishing his ideal, that punishments for personal legal behavior is his to deal with, without any mention of the courts. Smoking bans are extortion and an affront to the security of the person and the rights of autonomy, in every context human rights abuse. In place of a traditional sign and equitable compromise, seeking respect in all of the community.
We as the broader community are being controlled by the “social marketing” campaigns [Health Canada] much more than anyone who chooses to smoke, drink or eat to excess; being programmed into the school of divisions. Taxes are purchasing a media campaign promoting intolerance, regressive taxation [or theft by moral edict] and divided communities at the behest of a UN Industrial partnered agency, which undermines by lobby, the spirit of democracy and the legitimacy of all elected officials who don’t bend to every lobby demand. People, who deserve respect, are being driven wide brush out of our communities, by this nickel and dime Nazi movement. People don’t like the harshness of that word, so seldom used of late, but can it be different than a scientist claiming anyone, who doesn’t agree with,the promotion of the day, purely ignorant. Science by edict with no discussion or debate doesn't sound like science, rather something else.
The fog
It is, after all, only a theoretic proposal and not a stable product, which could always be described or quantified precisely or consistently.
With all the renditions of calculations and broad assumptions we see every day. Logically, should a little smoke we have always ignored, suddenly provoke so much fear? Why did the millions invested in the medical charities for so many decades, miss a toxin so significant, if it really exists. Where did all the research money go? The alternative would be acceptance that; while we watched Heather Crowe die of lung cancer; as the poster girl for the anti-smoker lobby, the charities stood silent, while knowingly letting it happen?
It falls to the incredible, we are on our knees trembling, fearful of a product known only, and defined only, as "smoke" which is realistically; only a product of the imagination, much more than it could ever be claimed to be a product of traditional reproducible science.
The Facts
Can anyone define Second Hand Smoke according to its physical composition or reactions in consistent terms; relative to half life, barometer, humidity or temperature?
Can anyone even list, what the "smoke" might contain and in what levels or how the components compare to their own known safe levels, already accepted by traditional assessments by legitimate quantities and reproducible science?
If we can not be offered a stable comparative sample, taken from more than one location, the smoke seems to be a product which varies more than fingerprints, DNA or the patterns of snowflakes.
Can anyone define a surface description so we can differentiate it from other smoke products?
Do that investigation first and then come to us with your evaluations of "risk" that would be consistent with normal science and process. Otherwise you’re only a politician, resting on speculation and moralist propaganda.
Nothing we haven't seen done before, and nothing has happened since, other than improvements in advertising efficiencies, to increase the probability that the prophesies are any more believable today than they have ever proven to be in the past.
This theological element, is then taken to have a physical quantified value based entirely in biological variances, between one group and another;
measured constants of averaged mean values even when the groups are less than ten people in number? With other biological features which could explain a multitude of plausible variations of the separate etiologies. Individual elements of smoke vary as much as the compound products, in their consistencies as a whole separately within the product with changes occurring within nano-seconds of its production.
What remains suspect beyond the fact the “smoke” is considered to exist at all, in physical terms as a constant, is that a process exists to precisely measure its variable effects, over a lifetime of variations a body would experience and the reactions of variable defenses within, predicting [we are told consistently] what would evolve.
http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/extract/19/1/2
Sorry I simply don't buy it. In a recent article published in The European Journal of Public Health this month; Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee et al; make a unforgivable pronouncement, that the debate is over with a claim to victory, despite the science which indicates otherwise; either I am to accept a designation as a Holocaust denier or should agree the debate is over, designating the smoke in all forms and regardless of dilution levels, as the most deadly toxin ever discovered with “no safe level”?
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/14/suppl_2/ii3
I find a third more logical option is available; that it is the "science” which should be dismissed as a defective when it surpasses all reasonable bounds of credibility.
“The right to health relevant information derives from the principles of autonomy and self direction and has been recognized in international declarations. Providing accurate health information is part of the basis for obtaining "informed consent" and is a recognized component of business ethics, safety communications, and case and product liability law. Remarkably, anti-tobacco and pro-tobacco sources alike have come to emphasis the message that there is "no safe cigarette" or "no safe tobacco product". We propose that the "no safe" message is so limited in its value that it represents a violation of the right to health relevant information. There is a need to go beyond saying, "there is no safe tobacco product" to indicate information on degree of risks.”
To demonstrate the problem with“no safe” risk claims;
50,000 in a population of 320 million is an absolute risk of .016% in a population virtually all exposed to some degree. But who will be effected or killed by heart attack, due solely to their exposure, in that 320 million population? With no safe level, they should all die, whether they smoke or not. The same lobby group tells us if a smoker quits smoking, his level of exposure will be nullified over the years, to a level of risk not detectable beyond the norm? Who could be exposed to the “Smoke” more than a smoker? Are smokers in possession of some internal curative ability no one else has?
If death is a result of quantity and/or duration of exposures, we should be able to just collect all the bartenders and bingo operators and give virtually everyone else a clean bill of health.
That doesn't seem to work very well either because there are far too many bartenders alone, to prove the “prophesy” is consistent, while leaving over any risk to distribute among the public, so we have to assume the risk is non linear.
A lack of linear dose response relationships eliminates any possibility to predict any outcome with any hope of precision, by simply comparing one group to another, so the "science" or the evaluation process is the problem. Legitimately ETS never was a problem and the promises of potential “lives saved” are irresponsible and ill advised.
You can confirm that level of logic, with visual observations. Theoretical tobacco smoke has killed no one that we can identify in the physical world.
When Doctors mistakes kill more people than smoking, who is really left, we can believe?
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/death/what.htm
How credible is the opinion, in regards to risk and so called significant risk.
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/lists/deaths.htm
50,000 compared to total figures of heart attack death at 460,000 annually, represents 50/460 which suggests a 10.8% increased risk but only if we can agree the entire population knows what second hand smoke smells like, so they are all exposed. Are they all permanently damaged by that exposure and will they all die in the specified 10.8% of the total .27% of total mortalities [.88% of population] which will always occur every year, even if no one smokes?
What is causing the other 90% is the larger issue. Even smoking in its totality [assuming 450,000 is caused by smoking and not more realistically; 1/5 of total mortality seen in 1/5 of the population] only increases the annual population risk @ .88% by .16% representing 20% of the population.
Chronic exposure among non smokers as a more credible claim would eliminate many of the 50,000 predicted and reduce the 11% figure drastically in current risk perspectives. Of course, the control freaks don't ever want to talk about current risk applicable to the current population; It blows away all the fear...
In the current diatribe "there is no safe level of second hand smoke" if we believe it, the increased risk for second hand smoke 10.8% is far below the most moderate insignificant estimates at 19% in population increased risk.
Few can escape the 100% death rate within 100 years. By comparison in realistic terms the .88% we see annually is minuscule. .16% as the worst case, when it only affects half of those who smoke is the real figure to consider and how much does it really matter when every person beyond 35 years of age has a higher risk of dying, whether you smoke or not?
Who is really considering the risks exhibited these truly shocking numbers? Certainly not the "deniers" who believe only smoking is dangerous. Something for the anti smoker crusaders, to consider, while bemoaning the health risk of smoking and the comparative minuscule risks of second hand smoke; Anyone surviving beyond the ripe old age of 35 years has a 4% higher risk of dying [.199%] than the [.16%] risk of dying of smoking related diseases and it only gets dramatically worse as you grow older.
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/d/death/intro.htm
"Death comes to us all at a rate a little less than 1% per year in the USA (0.877% or 1-in-114). However, annual mortality rates vary with age and generally increase with age after the first year: infant (less than 1 year) 0.706% or 1-in-141 (highest in the first 28 days, down to 0.188% or 1-in-531 after that), age 1-4 years 0.034% (1 in 2,941), 5-9 years 0.017% (1 in 5,882), 10-14 years 0.021% (1 in 4,761), 15-19 years 0.069% (1 in 1,449), 20-24 years 0.093% (1 in 1,075), 25-34 years 0.108% (1 in 925), 35-44 years 0.199% (1 in 502), 45-54 years 0.427% (1 in 234), 55-64 years 1.021% (1 in 97), 65-74 years 2.484% (1 in 40), 75-84 years 5.751% (1 in 17), and 85+ years %15.475% (1 in 6) [CDC NVSR 2001]. "
Or these?
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/statistics/index.htm
"The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) commissioned a phone survey in 1997 to review patient opinions about medical mistakes. Of the people reporting a medical mistake (42%), 40% reported a "misdiagnosis or treatment error", but did not separate misdiagnosis from treatment errors. Respondents also reported that their doctor failed to make an adequate diagnosis in 9% of cases, and 8% of people cited misdiagnosis as a primary causal factor in the medical mistake. Loosely interpreting these facts gives a range of 8% to 42% rate for misdiagnoses.
Misdiagnosis rates in the ICU or Emergency Department have been studied, with rates ranging from 20% to 40%. These misdiagnosis rates are likely to be higher than the overall health care misdiagnosis rate because of the time-critical and serious nature of the diagnosis under these crisis conditions. "
For lung cancers we are told 90% are found among smokers, which leaves only 10% to be distributed among 80% of the public. The real numbers, in American terms and by the most popular lobby move to find Canadian numbers, divide by 10.
Total Lung cancers;
160,439 x .1 = 16,044 [10%] or 1604 Canadians among 32 million
16,044/ [320 – 64 million smokers] =
16044/256,000,000
a risk to a non smoker of .0006% [1 x .0000626]
If 1% of the American workforce are employed in the hospitality trade, the bartenders most exposed to the “smoke” would number in the hundreds of thousands. Which doesn’t leave any large measure of risk for the rest of us to fret about, does it? When you consider the term “half of smokers will die from smoking” why not bartenders by the same proportion killed by the “smoke”? One theory rests in the fact they only inhale the equivalent of a single cigarette every five to ten days, which should explain part of it. But how about the claims of risk which extend outdoors and in a brief smell, while walking down the “Blue air” filled streets and parks. How is that believed to be possible to describe as a significant risk or any risk, when the bartenders insist on hogging all the available mortalities?
Once again distribution by the above measures using 16,000 [if we assume all are caused by the “smoke”] in place of the 50,000 by the claimed heart risks and you quickly realize how extremely; [this “smoke”, who is really being smoked, and how far imagination,] is being, over hyped. It falls now to the imagination, to determine if the 10s of Billions spent creating pictures in your mind over the past five decades, were invested in research and real medical treatment; how many would die from either cancer or heart diseases today?
Friday, January 09, 2009
Letter to the Editor
Hello;
As balance is required in all public distributions of the news, I would like to present a commentary on the third hand smoke articles published recently.
First, I would like to point out, I am not selling cigarettes, or any notion they are safe or they should be promoted as such. What I am more concerned with, is the fundamental shift from denouncing a product we could easily ban, to denouncing real people. A campaign initiated by an agreement signed by our federal government with the world health organization, which clearly is an obligation to reduce smoker prevalence and the use of cigarettes. This is not in any way a green light to wage war on those affected with bigotry or moral impositions. Nor a permission by over funded lobby groups, to recreate morality in their own image, to serve their own needs or purposes to the peril of their victims.
It has to be understood, the industrial component of this campaign is conflicted and seek as partners, in what is referred to as a Public Health intervention, to profit by the sale of alternative products, such as smoking patches and gum. Tax exempted foundations such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are directly profiting from their ownership of millions of shares held in their parent founder, which is Johnson and Johnson with the majority of board members current or former directors of Johnson and Johnson. The organized meetings and strategy sessions, which drive the bulk of Public Health campaigns such as this, are sponsored directly including in most cases; hotel, meal expenses, conference hall bookings, gala functions and awards ceremonies. An investment of billions with a reasonable expectation of returned profits.
Getting back to the study. Jacob Sullum, of Reason magazine made a quite reasonable observation of the so called ‘study” in pointing out; this was not a measure of potential harms or risk by process evaluation, this report was simply a phone survey with a quite limited explanation, of what the interviewer refers as “third hand smoke” and asked if a person were exposed to a list of largely petroleum use and production by-products, which are found as the researcher points out, quantitatively in our daily environment regardless of smoking, would the respondent agree those toxins might cause harm. There is no discussion of the levels and known safe levels discussed, there is no comment on how many, if any, would be affected, there is simply a declared conclusion that a risk exists.
The way this was presented in large scale news releases, carried by virtually every news agency in North America placed the focus primarily on the conclusions, we created a rumor and people reacted impulsively by giving this report, a lot more weight and focus than it should be reasonable to assume it is due.
The article we saw published, listed the numerous impositions and community divisions, achieved by the lobbies to date, and simply wrote an entitlement to continue to encroach further into; the personal lives, parental autonomy and homes of others.
People need to take what they read with a little less trust and that is the sad reality in all of this. The damage to our safety and security is inevitable, when the institutions and charities we have learned to trust, reorganize as political organizations, which serve the needs of institutions and profit, in place of the people paying for them.
Smoking might not be the wisest of choices, however many of those who smoke have done so for many years. People smoked in the majority, well before our health care system existed. We have now accepted “sin taxes” to control the lives of others with the claims they reduce the costs of healthcare as their necessity. The Universality of healthcare was fractured the day smoking taxes were implemented, because targeted taxation taken to benefit only the majority destroyed that claim of universality. More recently we have seen the implementation of taxing a nondescript “non healthy foods” with hidden taxes, most are not even aware they are paying, to combat the costs of obesity and what they named “the fat pandemic”. Although communities are divided in the righteous and moral integrity of imposing such laws, which serve some and degrade others, when the campaign focuses on your “protection” without request, things seem to change and the insult comes much more clearly into focus.
If we can allow bigotry and hatred to guide our laws and communities, we only punish ourselves. Smoking bans could be replaced with signs and good judgment, trusting the property owner to decide what is best for his own business. As confident communities have always used consistently in the past. It is only when we seek to punish others, because they do not share our values, that bans and criminalization become popular for the larger group, in spite of the minority and the hatred we demonstrate in our demands.
The notion of a population bubble moving into old age with new protections in place which seek to extend their lives, will somehow reduce the cost of healthcare is amusing to a fault. If you have more elderly people you have increased the largest demographic of the lions share of health care expenses. Does that align well with lowering the costs of healthcare? Through historical observations, the numbers can never accomplish what the self-important lobbies claim they will. We will always have a number one killer to slay, while we divert ourselves with greenhouse campaigns and pandemic pandemonium away from the industry toxins, causing us all the greatest harm. If we candy coat every citizen in this country with protections from the cradle to the grave what will those protections cost? Communism always fails, because it is simply not viable and never meets the advertised and optimistic expectations. Hitler’s favorite campaign slogans, always involved protecting the children and the race, as do China’s “protections” of Tibet. Are either credible?
People need to get back to trusting each other, because we can no longer trust the media to take out the trash. Conglomerate news agencies and ad agencies who sell third hand smoke, are dictating your news. The papers and the network affiliates exist primarily only to rebroadcast the sold products coming off the news wire. It is up to the rest of us now, to consider the source and follow the money, because it is obvious, no one else is doing it.
Many people today who vote for what is advertised as liberal or progressive ideologies, are in fact promoting neo-conservative candidates, regardless of what is advertised on the posters.
People are constantly let down by their candidates after the elections, by their choice of leaders who never get it quite right. Which explains the decades old desire for change.
Most on both sides of the heath scare debate would prefer to avoid partisan or political language. Divided thinking and pessimism as always, we have a problem dealing with the obvious wedge issue which should be defining party politics, as opposed to allowing poll sitters in government to jump on any issue and make it their own.
A point of division for politicians and rejoining of communities, which should be obvious to anyone who rightly believes politicians are all crooks and none deserve our support.
When you abandon traditional "party first" mindsets and really look; the move of all parties to the center leaves them wide open to embarrassment for abandoning party values.
When Liberals support partnership with old money industries and use taxes to sell their products, how can a liberal claim they are liberal.
Alternately can a conservative deny they have gone back to the motivations of failed corporatist policies? Demanding presumptions of guilt, in shoot first ask questions later, among their many mistakes of the past?
When either party promotes protectionist policies such as smoking bans or fat taxes, serving old money bottom lines, large government and the banging of tambourines, they all find themselves in neo-conservative territory.
Promoting only higher crime rates by punishing the innocent, who would prefer to be left alone.
Lyndon Johnson selling cholesterol in eggs all over again...
If we recognize that communities are no longer motivated by confidence, learned traditional values and intelligence.
They now have to be pushed by the constantly adjusted and always inconsistent overbearing moralist values of the state, entitled substantially by an obscenity described as science, promoted fear, divisions, and exclusions.
The problem lies in lost confidence; in ourselves, our systems of government, and the level [or lack] of intelligence guiding them.
As balance is required in all public distributions of the news, I would like to present a commentary on the third hand smoke articles published recently.
First, I would like to point out, I am not selling cigarettes, or any notion they are safe or they should be promoted as such. What I am more concerned with, is the fundamental shift from denouncing a product we could easily ban, to denouncing real people. A campaign initiated by an agreement signed by our federal government with the world health organization, which clearly is an obligation to reduce smoker prevalence and the use of cigarettes. This is not in any way a green light to wage war on those affected with bigotry or moral impositions. Nor a permission by over funded lobby groups, to recreate morality in their own image, to serve their own needs or purposes to the peril of their victims.
It has to be understood, the industrial component of this campaign is conflicted and seek as partners, in what is referred to as a Public Health intervention, to profit by the sale of alternative products, such as smoking patches and gum. Tax exempted foundations such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are directly profiting from their ownership of millions of shares held in their parent founder, which is Johnson and Johnson with the majority of board members current or former directors of Johnson and Johnson. The organized meetings and strategy sessions, which drive the bulk of Public Health campaigns such as this, are sponsored directly including in most cases; hotel, meal expenses, conference hall bookings, gala functions and awards ceremonies. An investment of billions with a reasonable expectation of returned profits.
Getting back to the study. Jacob Sullum, of Reason magazine made a quite reasonable observation of the so called ‘study” in pointing out; this was not a measure of potential harms or risk by process evaluation, this report was simply a phone survey with a quite limited explanation, of what the interviewer refers as “third hand smoke” and asked if a person were exposed to a list of largely petroleum use and production by-products, which are found as the researcher points out, quantitatively in our daily environment regardless of smoking, would the respondent agree those toxins might cause harm. There is no discussion of the levels and known safe levels discussed, there is no comment on how many, if any, would be affected, there is simply a declared conclusion that a risk exists.
The way this was presented in large scale news releases, carried by virtually every news agency in North America placed the focus primarily on the conclusions, we created a rumor and people reacted impulsively by giving this report, a lot more weight and focus than it should be reasonable to assume it is due.
The article we saw published, listed the numerous impositions and community divisions, achieved by the lobbies to date, and simply wrote an entitlement to continue to encroach further into; the personal lives, parental autonomy and homes of others.
People need to take what they read with a little less trust and that is the sad reality in all of this. The damage to our safety and security is inevitable, when the institutions and charities we have learned to trust, reorganize as political organizations, which serve the needs of institutions and profit, in place of the people paying for them.
Smoking might not be the wisest of choices, however many of those who smoke have done so for many years. People smoked in the majority, well before our health care system existed. We have now accepted “sin taxes” to control the lives of others with the claims they reduce the costs of healthcare as their necessity. The Universality of healthcare was fractured the day smoking taxes were implemented, because targeted taxation taken to benefit only the majority destroyed that claim of universality. More recently we have seen the implementation of taxing a nondescript “non healthy foods” with hidden taxes, most are not even aware they are paying, to combat the costs of obesity and what they named “the fat pandemic”. Although communities are divided in the righteous and moral integrity of imposing such laws, which serve some and degrade others, when the campaign focuses on your “protection” without request, things seem to change and the insult comes much more clearly into focus.
If we can allow bigotry and hatred to guide our laws and communities, we only punish ourselves. Smoking bans could be replaced with signs and good judgment, trusting the property owner to decide what is best for his own business. As confident communities have always used consistently in the past. It is only when we seek to punish others, because they do not share our values, that bans and criminalization become popular for the larger group, in spite of the minority and the hatred we demonstrate in our demands.
The notion of a population bubble moving into old age with new protections in place which seek to extend their lives, will somehow reduce the cost of healthcare is amusing to a fault. If you have more elderly people you have increased the largest demographic of the lions share of health care expenses. Does that align well with lowering the costs of healthcare? Through historical observations, the numbers can never accomplish what the self-important lobbies claim they will. We will always have a number one killer to slay, while we divert ourselves with greenhouse campaigns and pandemic pandemonium away from the industry toxins, causing us all the greatest harm. If we candy coat every citizen in this country with protections from the cradle to the grave what will those protections cost? Communism always fails, because it is simply not viable and never meets the advertised and optimistic expectations. Hitler’s favorite campaign slogans, always involved protecting the children and the race, as do China’s “protections” of Tibet. Are either credible?
People need to get back to trusting each other, because we can no longer trust the media to take out the trash. Conglomerate news agencies and ad agencies who sell third hand smoke, are dictating your news. The papers and the network affiliates exist primarily only to rebroadcast the sold products coming off the news wire. It is up to the rest of us now, to consider the source and follow the money, because it is obvious, no one else is doing it.
Many people today who vote for what is advertised as liberal or progressive ideologies, are in fact promoting neo-conservative candidates, regardless of what is advertised on the posters.
People are constantly let down by their candidates after the elections, by their choice of leaders who never get it quite right. Which explains the decades old desire for change.
Most on both sides of the heath scare debate would prefer to avoid partisan or political language. Divided thinking and pessimism as always, we have a problem dealing with the obvious wedge issue which should be defining party politics, as opposed to allowing poll sitters in government to jump on any issue and make it their own.
A point of division for politicians and rejoining of communities, which should be obvious to anyone who rightly believes politicians are all crooks and none deserve our support.
When you abandon traditional "party first" mindsets and really look; the move of all parties to the center leaves them wide open to embarrassment for abandoning party values.
When Liberals support partnership with old money industries and use taxes to sell their products, how can a liberal claim they are liberal.
Alternately can a conservative deny they have gone back to the motivations of failed corporatist policies? Demanding presumptions of guilt, in shoot first ask questions later, among their many mistakes of the past?
When either party promotes protectionist policies such as smoking bans or fat taxes, serving old money bottom lines, large government and the banging of tambourines, they all find themselves in neo-conservative territory.
Promoting only higher crime rates by punishing the innocent, who would prefer to be left alone.
Lyndon Johnson selling cholesterol in eggs all over again...
If we recognize that communities are no longer motivated by confidence, learned traditional values and intelligence.
They now have to be pushed by the constantly adjusted and always inconsistent overbearing moralist values of the state, entitled substantially by an obscenity described as science, promoted fear, divisions, and exclusions.
The problem lies in lost confidence; in ourselves, our systems of government, and the level [or lack] of intelligence guiding them.
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