Repost - What say you Doctor?
http://www.pr-inside.com/majorit...all-
r665258.htm
Majority Want Smoking Banned in All Homes [06/26/08]
2008-06-25 21:36:33 - A clear majority wants smoking banned in all homes, even if children are not present, and even if the smoke is not drifting into an adjoining dwelling.
"I have no clue where the 35 cigarettes per hour figure comes from, but it is undoubtedly inaccurate."PERHAPS,ONLY PERHAPS,it's the same place that you found you 21/2 pack per 8hr shift information Dr Siegel.What Surgeon General warned AGAINST trying to utilise cigarette equivalents ?
Dr. Siegel wrote - Are they honestly not aware that sitting in a bar for an hour is not the same thing as actively smoking 2 packs of cigarettes per day? Do they sincerely believe that the exposure in these two situations is identical? Or have they just been sloppy and not really thought about it?
I think Health Canada really is stating that exposure of SHS is far worse than active smoking.
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/pub...p-fslp3-
eng.php
Restricting smokers to a separate room will only help the non-smokers in the other room if the smoking room has its own ventilation system, and if the room is completely isolated with no connecting doors. Still, separately ventilated smoking rooms still means these smokers are being exposed to the harmful effects of second-hand smoke. Why would establishment owners want to create an unsafe environment for their customers, their staff and themselves?
For crying out loud Dr. Siegel, lying TO children and encouraging children to lie has been the modus operandi of the anti-smoker cartel practically since its inception and you know it. Why all the flippin' crocdile tears now?
"A nonsmoker in a smoky room inhales the equivalent of 35 cigarettes an hour. Secondhand smoke has twice as much nicotine and tar and five times the carbon monoxide as the smoke inhaled by smokers. The nonsmoking spouse of a smoker has double the risk of lung and heart disease of a nonsmoker living with a nonsmoker."
Cunningham (1996), Smoke & Mirrors -- the Canadian Tobacco War. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.
---------------------------------
The following is from a review of this book:
"An outstanding achievement." — Tobacco Control: An International Journal
"A must read for potential or current lobbyists against tobacco consumption in Canada and in developing countries" — Annals of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada
Smoke & Mirrors provides an insider's view of the Canadian tobacco war, a hundred-year old conflict that began to escalate in the 1980s. Written by a prominent antismoking advocate, the book explains how Canada emerged as a global leader in the public health crusade to regulate the powerful tobacco industry. Author Rob Cunningham exposes the industry's deception and tactics; and describes in fascinating detail the bitter campaigns to maintain high tobacco taxes, ban tobacco advertising, eliminate tobacco sponsorships, require plain packaging, mandate clear health warnings, and prohibit smoking in public places and workplaces.
While tobacco wars continue to rage in Canada and the industrialized North, the battleground is shifting increasingly to less developed countries and eastern Europe. For those in the front lines and other concerned readers, Smoke & Mirrors outlines how to take on the "merchants of death" — and win.
THE AUTHOR
A lawyer by profession, Rob Cunningham holds degrees in political science, law and business. Cunningham first became active in tobacco issues in 1988 and has since become a recognized expert in the field of tobacco control. He has worked as a consultant for provincial, national, and international health organizations. As one of the core group of Canadian activists fighting for tobacco control, Cunningham has testified before parliamentary committees, given hundreds of media interviews in Canada and the United States, published numerous tobacco-related articles, and initiated private prosecutions for violations of tobacco control laws. Cunningham now works in Ottawa as a senior policy analyst for the Canadian Cancer Society.
Btw, this 35 cigarettes an hour "fact" was used by a judge in Ohio in deciding a custody child case.
These cigarette equivalent claims are really emotional rather than factual statements. Antismokers don't mean them literally.
Michael I am happy to see you actually looking at the physical perspectives issues finally.
How do we perceive a risk, with so much confusion in evaluating which risk belongs with which contaminant.
We are being told sitting in a garage with the car running is not nearly as dangerous as encountering a smoker's breath while walking down the street.
If you look at the Link below which explains relative risk according to dimensional studies of particulate matter, and the chemical effects produced. You can see why so many broad and misleading statements are allowed to pass peer review while deliberately encompassing tobacco smoke as the complete range of all particulate.
Coarse particulate is less than 10 microns.
Fine particulates which are in the range of less than 2.5 microns
and ultra fine less than .15 microns.
Cigarette smoke is fine particulate .25 to .33 Microns and second hand smoke is also fine particulate .15 to .25 microns
By statistical calculation which ignores physical properties, you can connect cigarette smoke to almost any particulate matter damaging effect, when in fact we know the size of the particulate is in the lower regions of the fine particulate range which actually produces much less risk of cell damage. Heart disease and Cancer risk, than diesel exhaust, Sulfur, vapor phase heavy metals, carbon, NOX, SOX, PPAH and PAH which are found in particulate which reside in the ultra fine particulate regions.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov...27&
blobtype=pdf
Conclusions;
"Our data demonstrate that the UFP mode in the Los Angeles basin is more potent than fine and coarse PM toward inducing oxidative stress as measured by the DTT, HO-1, and glutathione assays. Electron microscopy also indicates subcellular penetration and mitochondrial damage by UFPs and, to a lesser extent, fine particles. The findings correlate with PM organic carbon and PAH composition, suggesting a role of organic agents in generating redox activity. The results from the DTT assay indicate UFPs are capable of producing greater ROS on a microgram basis than fine and coarse particles."
Stanton has been making similar statements for a very long time. Should we be surprised you didn't notice?
http://www.jointogether.org/news...alth-
risks.html
"Even occasional exposure to secondhand smoke can have dangerous health consequences, according to researchers from the University of California at San Francisco.
HealthDay News reported May 23 that researchers Stanton Glanz and Joaquin Barnoya said that secondhand smoke is only about 20 percent less dangerous than actually smoking, and that even small amounts of secondhand smoke can raise the risk of heart attack."
James-
Thanks for finding and pointing out the apparent source of the 35 cigarette claim. I would be curious to know how Cunningham derived that figure. Not that it affects the validity of the Health Canada claim, because as I've said, they are equating overall exposure to smoking 35 cigarettes; they did not specify a particular constituent. But it would be interesting to know anyway how the figure was derived. By my calculations, I can't get anything close to that figure even for a substance like NDMA or benzo(a)pyrene, which are much more concentrated in sidestream smoke than in mainstream smoke.
We know that Cunningham's figures are suspect anyway, because he is reporting a relative risk of 2 for secondhand smoke exposure and lung cancer and heart disease, when we know the true relative risk for spousal exposure from the literature is only about 1.3.
What a wake up call. Now I know why so many people do home schooling. We all know this is nonsense, pure crap. What I don't understand though is where are these kids parents? Don't they realize they are allowing their kids to be tools? Or is tobacco control now a graded subject and needed before being accepted to any college or university? No wonder so many kids leave school and can not read or do a simple math problem. Just think though Doctor, these kids could be your future students. For that, you are no doubt thankful.
Just exactly who is doing the cutting edge research for Tobacco Control?
Read the poster in the upper left corner and look at the pictures.
http://www.tgmag.ca/smokefree/
That's right; twelve year olds.
From the poster:
Step 1. Recruit Team
Step 2. Plan Survey
Step 3. Conduct Survey
Step 4. Publicize your findings.
E=MC^2
In training to become a highly paid Big Tobacco shill.
Chutzpah on loan from John Banzhaf.
Anyone know the OSHA PEL for NDMA? Or how many cigarettes it takes to reach it?
Dr. Siegel likes to say "the equivalent of 16 cigarettes" in eight hours, bumping it up to twenty later in the post, but he never says how much NDMA that actually is.
When We haven't gotten past defining the smoke, how can anyone consider the risk of exposures? The experts have physically described it by dimension and weight, while observing the citations and peer reviews it is obvious, that description is being deliberately ignored, when quantifying the effects to include all possible effects from all sources while never properly assesing [or more correctly] completely ignoring any weight of other possible agents, to deliberately increase the political drama.
If Tobacco smoke is responsible for the bulk of ultra fine particulate damage, when it is not an ultra fine particulate, Is every other source of particulate forever defined as harmless?
Which Oil company is paying your bills?
Another of those curiosities, the Doctor will not address, due to fear and personal denials.
Dr. Siegel: ”If nonsmokers are inhaling the equivalent amount of NDMA - a single carcinogen - as active smokers of nearly a pack per day, then how can one justify failing to protect them from this exposure?” (Dec3, 2007)
I have found several studies which show that long-term inhalation of N-nitroso-dimethylamine (NDMA) is carcinogenic to rats; that it is a potent liver carcinogen and also of the nasal cavity.
What I can’t find is any reference to an established Threshold Limit Value for NDMA or how many cigarettes would have to be consumed to exceed the TLV (is exposure to 16 cigarettes enough to create a health hazard?).
And, just in passing, when I read the Dec. 3, 2007 post, I assumed that you were associating NDMA with lung cancer. Now, I’m not sure. Is there an association between NDMA and lung cancer?
Brought forward from an earlier post in Case the "good" doctor may decide to answer a real question for once.
Herr Doktor says: "In terms of the smokers lying about where they smoke, I do not blame that at all. I am not attributing any blame to them. I think it's perfectly legitimate. They are under no obligation to be honest, and I understand why they might feel uncomfortable admitting to these investigators that they smoke inside the home with their children present. I have no problem with that and assess no blame to them for not being forthright with the investigators.". and "Finally, in terms of Gabz' concern about my hesitancy to state that anti-smoking groups are lying, the only reason for this is that there remains the possibility that these groups are simply guilty of very shoddy science, rather than deliberate lying. It's difficult to prove intent, unless it is called to their attention and they refuse to change it. This has occurred with a number of groups.".
And you STILL have NEVER called them LIARS for doing so, even when you couldn't find their "webmaster". HYPOCRITE.
BTW, Thanks for being SOOOO friggin magnamious to us smokers Doc, you don't "blame us for lying". BS, In the first place I have NO reason to lie about my tobacco usage, it is legal, and I deserve the SAME respect you give your "comrades" when it comes to ASSUMING I lied, not a pat on the head "poor smokers has to lie to protect his/her image", GO TO HELL and take your bretheren with you.
"While there may be a few very sensitive individuals who are allergic to small amounts of tobacco smoke".
And exactly WHICH constituants in tobacco smoke produce ALLERGIC reactions doctor?, EVERYTHING I have EVER seen on the subject of allergies to tobacco smoke show no ALLERGENS are released by Tobacco Smoke, so which ALLERGENS are being released here?
I know there are quite a few individuals who CLAIM allergic reactions to the IRRITANT factor of TS, but I would truly LOVE to see which ALLERGENS are actually being produced/released by TS.
Matt
"NDMA is found in the diet, in various meat and cured meat products (600 to 1,000 ng/kg in fried pork bacon), fish and fish products, beer (50 to 5,900 ng/kg), milk (90 to 100 ng/L) [III] , cheese, soybean oil, canned fruit, and apple brandy. In the body, NDMA is formed when acidic conditions in the stomach catalyze the reaction between nitrite and dimethylamine (DMA
http://sfwater.org/detail.cfm/MC.../NULL/C_ID/
1865
"N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) is a member of a chemical class, the N-nitrosoamines, which are suspected carcinogens"
But possibly only when its made industrially as rocket fuel.
The industrial version was used to power the V2 rocket.
Oh the hypocrisy. Sarasota Florida announces a smoker free hiring policy, however states:-
"We realize there could be a challenge hiring in certain job classes at some point," said Steve Marcinko, the county's manager of employee benefits and wellness. "Like any policy, it will be subject to review from time to time, and if hiring becomes a serious challenge we may have to revisit the decision."
In other words "we hate smokers and will not hire them, but if things get tough for us we will change the policy and hire smokers."
How very considerate of them, should we be grateful?
many other point are included and worth a read. This one just got my goat.
GreatScot
NDMA:
Median values:
Mainstream per cig. 0.025 microgram
Sidestream per cig. 1.5 microgram (ration SS/MS = 60)
http://www.cdc.gov/Tobacco/sgr/s...86-
Chapter3.pdf
link dead, but the same table can be found in table 3-1 here:
http://www.epa.gov/nceawww1/ets/...pdfs/
etsch3.pdf
We were unable to find an OSHA PEL, but European regulation agencies typically use OSHA PELs. Lowest PEL found is 0.001 milligram/m3 (Germany, Switzerland).
Deluting the sidestream value of one cigarette in 20m3 air, we arrive at:
0.00008 milligram/m3 and reach 8% of the PEL. IAW, 13 cigarettes need to burn at the same time in a space of 20m3 without air exchange.
20m3 corresponds to a space of about 7x7 feet, hardly enough space to accomodate 13 smokers.
OT
News brought to you by Pfizer
U.S. battle against teen smoking stalls: CDC
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Efforts to reduce teen smoking have stalled in the past five years as states lose funding for anti-tobacco efforts and as companies use new strategies to recruit customers, U.S. health officials said on Thursday"
"We are taking the emphases off of youth smoking across the nation," he said. "We have moved on to obesity, we have moved onto other issues."
http://www.reuters.com/article/
d...lBrandChannel=0
I love footnotes and was disappointed there were none so I wrote to Health Canada and asked what the scientific background is on this "fact" and the good news is that I have just received an email stating that they have forwarded my inquiry onto the Office of Research and Evaluation for response.
I will post what they reply with. Hopefully it won't be like the last time I asked their source " Unfortunately, the reference cited for this statement is not available. You may want to look up published literature on such studies. James Repace is a good author to look up in the published literature on this topic."
“to encourage school children in Canada to advocate for smoke-free places in their communities.”
Besides private homes, are there many places left in Canada where smoking is permitted? Just wondering what or who is being targeted here?
Besides private homes, are there many places left in Canada where smoking is permitted? Just wondering what or who is being targeted here?
The homes, David, of course. That's why they have to recruit the children, the adults are not paying attention to TC so they will encourage the child to harass the parent.
My son tried that once. I told him the day he's paying the rent, buying MY clothes, paying for all the food I eat, paying all the utility bills, and working full time to do all that AND buy me toys, THAT was the day he could TRY to tell me what to do. I also told him that the next time a teacher told him to come home and tell me shit like that, he was to tell the teacher that he was forbidden from lying to his mother.
He got my message and never tried again.
Lynda F
And once they get in our homes, that level playing field starts to widen for everyone else.
Dr. Siegel wrote - Are they honestly not aware that sitting in a bar for an hour is not the same thing as actively smoking 2 packs of cigarettes per day? Do they sincerely believe that the exposure in these two situations is identical? Or have they just been sloppy and not really thought about it?
Not only are they aware, but the average non-smoker is citing this "fact" time after time, after time.
This LIE told by TC is truly believed by the average Joe that has any interest at all in the smoking bans wnys and wherefores.
This LIE told by TC is being used by the same "average Joe?" to emote BIGOTED statements against murdering smokers.
This LIE told by TC is being used by the "average Joe?" to bring their long dormant, polictically INCORRECT BIGOTED tendencies out of the closet into this NEW polictically CORRECT BIGOTED society.
Welcome to our GRAND NEW WORLD of BIGOTRY.
Welcome to our GRAND NEW WORLD of BIGOTRY.
Well said, Ladyteal, very well said.
It's a daggone shame that Dr. siegel will not own up to the fact that he played a major roll in this bigotry with his insistence on the stupidity of the average joe/jane. What Dr. Siegel fails to realize is that the average joe/jane may not be as book learned as he is, but has far more common sense and thus smarts than all of his anti-smoker cronies put together.
He and his ilk ignore this fact at their own peril.
Thanks Lynda F,
I’m guessing that’s why a “facilitator’s guide” is included with each “toolkit”. So that the lies can be in sense “professionally” served upon the desired subjects (parents). I’m happy that in your case you were not only able to see right through it, but also place the blame for lying right back where it belongs.
Ann W. wrote that Health Canada told her: “James Repace is a good author to look up in the published literature on this topic".
They seriously said that?
Health Canada has, apparently, adopted the tactics of de-normalization and fear mongering used by their allies in the anti-smoker brigade. From a purely personal perspective, they are no longer a source of reliable, objective information, at least as far as information on secondhand smoke.
And, sometimes it’s not always what they say, but what they don’t.
For instance, the 2002 study conducted by the Canadian Cancer Registries Epidemiology Research Group, which found no statistically significant association between lung cancer and secondhand smoke, is not mentioned on their website. I thought that strange since all but one of the researchers were associated with Health Canada.
Thanks to Rose & benpal for the information on NDMA
Re child "educators".
From the Times.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle4200693.ece
Headline
No, I won't have children telling me what to eat
Our offspring are becoming the footsoldiers of the re-education crusade
Excerpt
Once upon a time, not so long ago, parents were supposed to educate children in the ways of the world. But the Government appears to have turned that arrangement on its head. Now it is deemed the job of children to teach parents right from wrong.
Our children are apparently being educated as self-righteous foot soldiers in a crusade to re-educate us in the official doctrine of “Healthy Living, Whether You Like It Or Not”. The innate tendency towards sanctimoniousness and zealotry among youngsters who see things in fairytale black-and-white terms (“five veg a day good, one fag a day bad”) makes them natural narks.
GreatScot
* Hitler speaks to top Nazi leaders about his youth at Nuremberg (1934) :57
http://easylink.playstream.com/h...itler-
nurem1.rm
"It is our wish and will that this State and this Reich shall endure in the millenniums to come. We can be happy in the knowledge that this future belongs to us completely. (applause) While the older generation could still waver, the younger generation has pledged itself to us and is ours, body and soul!"
Excellent analysis benpal! 
Expanding it to the "small model corner bar" used in Brains with three air changes per hour (much lower than would be the norm today in a smoking bar) we'd be looking at 1200 cubic meters of air per hour.
We would need to jam 780 smokers into a small corner bar to even begin to reach an OSHA type level of concern for the constituent that Dr. Siegel has correctly pinpointed as THE most favorable to the antismoking argument.
Of course if we assume that the air exchange rate was a more reasonable six per hour, and that half the bar patrons were nonsmokers, we'd have to wedge close to 3,000 people into that small neighborhood corner bar... just to BEGIN to have something to worry about.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
http://encyclopedia.smokersclub....ub.com/
130.html
... and Michael, don't you dare open the window, you'd destroy the last argument.
Doc -and lung cancer and heart disease, when we know the true relative risk for spousal exposure from the literature is only about 1.3.
I thought that LC RR was 1.19 and heart disease 1.25.
Was it not th 1992 EPA report that found a significant LC RR of 1.19 only after adjusting the CI to an unprecedented 90%, despite cherry picking which studies to include in their meta-analysis?
GreatScot
http://forces.org/News_Portal/ne...wer.php?
id=1244 The last sentence sums it ALL UP,EPIDEMIOLOGY IS NOT SCIENCE.
Damn I forgot to add to the Doc's assertion - "when we know the true relative risk for spousal exposure from the literature is only about 1.3."
No we don't, and neither do you.
GreatScot
I’m happy that in your case you were not only able to see right through it, but also place the blame for lying right back where it belongs.
David,
Thank you, and that incident took place in the late 1980's.
Basically, I don't take to being told what to do all that well.......hehehe
Yet anti smoking groups wonder why people no longer mind paying taxes in cigarettes!
If this is the type of "research" our tax money gets us; no wonder Canadians no longer care to pay these wages and buy contraband. Many smokers I talk to don't feel guilty!
Hi, Matt,
Health Canada is now a drug mule for Big Pharma - and it has been for some time.
http://www.healthcoalition.ca/yo...a/
yourfired.pdf
TORONTO, CANADA (IPS) - The decision to fire three Health Canada veterinary scientists working in the government office that tests new drugs used on animals raised for food was made at the highest levels of the Canadian bureaucracy with the co-operation of the food and pharmaceutical industries.
That blunt statement comes from Michael McBane, co-ordinator of the Ottawa-based Canadian Health Coalition, which represents groups of seniors, farmers, women, labour unions and healthcare professionals.
"The animal drug industry basically worked really hard with senior management in Health Canada and with the Privy Council office (which advises senior government leaders and helps set departments' policies), to have the scientists removed," McBane told IPS in an interview. Adding to the controversy was the timing of the firings of Shiv Chopra, Margaret Haydon and Gerard Lambert --Jul. 14, just weeks after the national election and before a new group of ministers overseeing all departments, including Health Canada, were sworn in.
At the time the three scientists in the department's veterinary drugs directorate were on stress leave after alleging harassment by departmental officials. Health Canada spokesperson Ryan Baker declined to comment on the suggestion that officials and corporate powers colluded to orchestrate the firings, and called the dismissals "a personal matter."
But Chopra told IPS his letter of termination cited "disobedience" as the reason for the action. "Given your previous disciplinary record and your continued unwillingness to accept responsibility for work assigned to you, I have determined that the bond of trust that is essential to productive employer employee relationship has been irreparably breached," Deputy Health Minister Ian Green wrote in the letter, reported The Canadian Press on Wednesday.
Steve Hindle, the president of the labour union that represents the scientists, says Health Canada "just reached the end of its rope" after years of reprimanding and suspending the scientists for their public opposition to the approval of specific veterinary drugs.
For example, resistance from Chopra, Haydon and Lambert towards a bovine growth hormone developed by agri-business giant Monsanto ultimately led to a Senate inquiry in the 1990s and a decision to not approve the drug in Canada.
Also, before the May 2003 discovery of mad cow disease in a cattle herd in western Alberta province, which led countries like the United States and Japan to ban Canadian beef, Chopra and Haydon had warned that too little was being done by the food industry and its regulators in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to prevent remains of dead cattle being used as feed for other cows. ...
Hindle's Professional Institute of the Public Service says it will appeal the firings before the Public Service StaffRelations Board, an independent tribunal that adjudicates disputes between the federal government and its employees, if Health Canada fails to reinstate them.
Although Chopra applauds the union's support, he says the grievance appeal process will only deal with the technical and legal aspects of the department's action.
Left out, he adds, will be the substance of the issue: the ability of the powerful food and pharmaceutical lobbies to pressure Ottawa to bypass scientific concerns about the introduction of suspected cancer-causing hormones and the excessive use of antibiotics in animals; the latter has been singled out for the declining effectiveness of antibiotics on human beings.
"The pharmaceutical companies openly for years kept on going to the Privy Council (and saying) that there are problems within veterinary drugs at Health Canada; they have backlogs of drugs that are not being passed. When we ask (the drug companies) for data, they don't produce any," Chopra adds.
But Jean Szkotnicki, president of the Canadian Animal Health Institute, the veterinary drugs industry association, denies her organisation played a role in the firings. In fact, her industry benefits from a "robust" review of animal drugs, she told IPS.
At the same time, added Szkotnicki, Canada is losing potential research and development investment dollars from food and pharmaceutical companies because of the slow pace of testing of veterinary drugs at Health Canada. The same drugs have been endorsed by officials in other countries after going through "a similar type risk assessment and risk management programme," she added. "We are often one of the last countries in the world to approve a product," according to Szkotnicki. Chopra counters that the animal drug industry has not produced any new products for many years, beyond "spreading and maintaining" the same types of hormones and antibiotics "of questionable safety" in the Canadian meat industry. McBane adds that the European Union (EU) continues to ban imports of Canadian beef because of its hormone content.
The issue is the right of government scientists to do their job, he adds. "At the end of the day, these scientists were performing their statutory duty under the law, in this case the Food and Drugs Act. And their senior managers, the deputy minister, the associate deputy minister and the director general were basically telling them to operate outside of the rule of law, to ignore the laws of Canada, and to expose Canadians to known health risks." ...
http://
www.beyondfactoryfarming....integrity.shtml
Whistleblowers at Health Canada fired
Integrity of our regulatory system in question
Background
On July 14, 2004, three scientists in the Veterinary Drugs Directorate, Shiv Chopra, Margaret Haydon and Gerard Lambert, were fired by Health Canada. They are known as whistle-blowers as a result of their efforts to publicly raise awareness of various products and practices of questionable safety.
Since the early 1990s they have spoken out about the use of antibiotics and hormones in livestock production, including genetically modified cow growth hormone.
While at Health Canada they were given gag orders, suspended without pay, reprimanded and demoted for disputing orders to approve drugs.
In 2002, Chopra said "We're being told to approve things even without receiving data from the company. If we don't receive the data, then there's nothing we can do. But we're often told that the U.S. has approved it so we should approve it and we shouldn't even ask questions."
From CTV story "Health Canada workers feel pressured to OK drugs".
In 1998 they were ordered to appear as witnesses in front of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry hearings into rBST and the Drug Approval Process. Senate reported, "Several of the Health Canada scientists who appeared before the Committee were so concerned about their future employment that they delayed appearing until they had received assurance that there would be no reprisals. As well, they took the unusual step of swearing an oath before testifying. These concerns are serious, and the Committee re-iterates the point made during their appearance: it wishes to be contacted should they feel they are suffering reprisals related to their appearance, whether in the short or the long term." (emphasis added)
The pharmaceutical industry admits it lobbies Health Canada to speed up the approval process.
The Beyond Factory Farming Coalition and other organizations circulated a petition which was presented to Parliament, calling for an independent and public investigation into Health Canada’s firing of Shiv Chopra, Margaret Haydon and Gerald Lambert. ...
http://www.nutrimedical.com/news...ew&
news.id=1491
?From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act.? Sandra Steingraber
Dr. Shiv Chopra, PhD, must be fire-proof. As a vaccine and drug regulator for Health Canada for nearly forty years, he evaluated every red-hot topic in public health and tried to protect us from unsafe drugs, vaccines, and agricultural practices. Over the years, he tried (sometimes successfully) to stop our government from allowing Canadians to be exposed to ineffective and harmful vaccines, genetically modified foods, pesticides, carcinogenic antibiotics and hormones used in food-producing animals, and agricultural practices that promote Mad Cow Disease. He even went public with his findings, supported by Canada?s public service union, which resulted in legal battles initiated against him by a government determined to shut him up. The courts, however, tended to find in favour of Dr. Chopra, and instead ordered the government to shape up.
This support by the courts, various tribunals, and Senate committee hearings of Dr. Chopra and his fellow scientists at Health Canada was highly unfavourable to corporate interests and, therefore, irksome to those prime ministers and ministers of health dependent upon corporate support. So Drs. Chopra, Margaret Haydon, and Gerard Lambert were fired from Health Canada in 2004 by then PM Paul Martin for ?insubordination?. The reason provided was true, in a sense: they had steadfastly refused for more than three decades to subordinate themselves to corporate and government pressure to pass unsafe substances which were in direct contravention to Canada?s Foods and Drugs Act.
Dr. Chopra has now written a book on his decades of struggle to have the law recognized as being above political policy. His book, Corrupt to the Core, tells of what crimes our government knowingly committed against public health in order to serve corporate financial interests. The book has been three years in the making and is at the press now.
It is sobering to consider that most of the known toxins which made it onto the market and into our bodies did so despite the scientifically based objection of our Health Canada scientists. We now know that the presence in our environment and bodies of these carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and neurotoxins was totally preventable, had our government obeyed the law. Every historical era has had its characteristic problems, and that of ours, since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, has been the pursuit of wealth through manufacturing and distributing known poisons. But the tide is turning. The verifiable science proving harm from pesticides, vaccines, and drugs is no longer just squeezing out from under the lid kept for so long on such information, but is turning into a veritable river that cannot be controlled.
CHOPRA REPORTS ON VACCINE DANGERS
Chopra points out that vaccination did successfully eradicate smallpox. The possibility of eradicating polio in the same way is open to scientific debate. However he also observes that all the other childhood diseases have been unsuccessfully fought with vaccination campaigns involving millions of children every year. Worst of all, these diseases are appearing with increasing frequency in the very populations that have been vaccinated for several generations. Clearly, something is wrong with these programs, the vaccines themselves, and he finds it alarming that ?the list of vaccines being administered to young children has been enlarged to include many more viral and bacterial infections with little or no scientific rationale.?
Indeed, it is outright bizarre how the US Centre for Disease Control publishes data every year, without fail, showing that supposedly 36,000 people die annually of the ?flu. This figure hasn?t changed in some two decades! Yet, available statistics show that usually less than a hundred people, almost always elderly and/or immune compromised, die annually of the ?flu. Who is responsible for this nonsense and the scare-mongering associated with it? (By the way, current research, reported by the International Vitamin D Council, has shown that merely taking more vitamin D (about 2,000 IU daily) reduces the incidence of the flu by more than 70%.)
Currently, those vaccination programs whose scientific basis is so flawed as to border on the absurd involve vaccines against Hepatitis B, the bird flu (Tamiflu), and Gardasil which supposedly protects against the virus that promotes cervical cancer. Tamiflu has been discontinued in Japan because of so many deaths from sudden serious psychiatric disorders; formal warnings to that effect were issued in 2006 in the UK and in Canada. As for Hepatitis B, even according to the CDC guidelines and Harrison?s Principles of Internal Medicine, it is an exclusively adult disease, sexually transmitted by people with multiple partners or through chronic intravenous drug use or contaminated blood transfusions. Yet, it is routinely given to children without a shred of epidemiological evidence to support such practice; side effects are frequent and serious, so much so that Vietnam was the first country to suspend its use in May 2007.
Gardasil is already an unfolding public health disaster: during the first year of its use more than 3,500 adverse events were reported. No vaccine in history can compare in this regard. Between June 2006 and May 2007, some 1,637 adverse events were filed with the FDA in the US, some involving death, spontaneous abortions, neurological injury and more. One large study followed all individuals vaccinated with Gardasil in several California counties ? almost 90% reported adverse reactions. It also increases the risk of developing Guillain-Barre Syndrome twelve fold. This 3-shot vaccine contains a whopping 675 micrograms of toxic aluminum used as a preservative and emulsifier. One of the scientists who developed Gardasil, Diane M. Harper, went public and warned that this vaccine was ?not tested on young girls? before it was released for widespread use by them.
Possibly the worst vaccine is MMR which supposedly provides immunity against mumps, measles, chickenpox, and whooping cough. More than 4,900 U.S. families have so far filed lawsuits after their children became autistic within days of getting this shot. While the industry vehemently denied this causal link, citing many industry-sponsored medical research papers to support them, the first of these cases was won in court on November 9 last year, because the causal link to the child?s neurological damage from the vaccine was indisputable. (The most comprehensive analysis on the MMR-autism connection is found in Evidence of Harm by David Kirby for which he won the top award for investigative journalism in the UK in 2006 . It is essential reading for all parents wondering if they should agree to the MMR vaccine.)
Reaction to this court ruling was swift: the CDC backpedalled in March this year and ?no longer expresses a preference? for combining all those vaccines into one (which increases the amount of neurotoxic preservatives). Predictably, the vaccine industry is pulling out all the stops to maintain profits and escape responsibility: the US Supreme Court heard arguments in February in the case of Warner-Lambert Co. v. Kent which may result in a ruling that consumers cannot sue pharmaceutical companies for any damages caused by drugs and vaccines.
All vaccines are potentially neurotoxic and may cause or promote brain damage (including Alzheimer?s), autism, or asthma. In spite of this, the US got their Comprehensive Child Immunization Act in 1993, which is not only federally funded, but provides for $100 payment to vaccine clinics for every child vaccinated. The vaccine business has been booming ever since.
The prestigious Cochrane Library Review, which studies the effectiveness of drugs and therapies, now insists it is time to do ?some real research into vaccine effectiveness?, as reported by the BBC on Sept 25, 2007. Cochrane researcher T. Jefferson observed ?vaccines are a business, like any other. The only difference is that governments are co-sponsors with industry ? overestimation of the threat by the target diseases, suppression of data on adverse events, and exaggeration of effectiveness are frequent. In the case of population vaccination programs, both governments and industry have conflicts of interest. Beware!?
ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE
...When even simple bacterial infections became resistant to all available antibiotics (especially tuberculosis, killer No 1 in the 19th century and now once again a leading cause of death), enormous efforts were expended by the World Health Organization, and the medical associations the world over, to teach doctors to be cautious in the use of these drugs. So the lion?s share of antibiotic production goes to their prophylactic use in food-producing animals, thereby creating an indispensable cash cow for their manufacturers. ...
There are currently entire classes of antibiotics that should not be on the market; Dr. Chopra fought vigorously and unsuccessfully to keep Baytril and Revelor-H off the market. They were finally banned more than a decade after his warnings because of the undeniable harm they caused. Published in April 2006 were the results of the decision taken by Australia, some twenty years ago, to drastically restrict prophylactic antibiotic use in food producing animals, and the total prohibition of them in the whole of Europe. Those countries are almost totally free of hospital superbugs and the antibiotic resistance in dangerous bacteria stands at about 2% - compared to 64% in North America.
THE VALUE OF RESISTANCE
Winston Churchill used to say: ?Never, never, never give up.? Within the stubborn resistance to lies, and the determination to make lazy or corrupt authority face reality, there lies an energy that eventually transforms the system. Truth is a living force.
Dr. Chopra and his fellow scientists tackled vaccines, many drugs, antibiotic resistance as well as genetic engineering, the use of rendered slaughterhouse waste, pesticides, and sewage-based sludge for fertilizer. They examined the science, considered the potential consequences, spoke the truth as best as they knew how, and did not shut up when told to do so. As public guardians they acted in the spirit of Gandhi who taught that ?in order to fight injustice, one has to make it visible.?
Too bad there's no one left there - and almost no-one in government at all, looking out for us.
I have read all the articles and comments with interest. As an ex-smoker through choice after 50 years of smoking I am not anti-smoking and I witness a generation of ill-informed bigots dictating our lifestyles as pseudo police.
The various moves to ban visible evidence of smoking is, as has been stated a form of apartheid that could be applied to physique (obesity), and physical deformities if not contained.
I live in Bristol (England) and we have a number of public buildings and properties which were built on the profits of tobacco (eg Wills building - University of Bristol) and slavery (various). Should they not be demolished to erase their historic links. Doogooders have already modified history by erasing the cigars from photos and picures of Izambard Kingdom Brunel (an acknowledged chain cigar smoker) - perhaps Winston Churchill will be next.
I am now surrounded by whimps who seek any (so say) health excuse to claim they are unfit to function. Essentially these problems are mental problems with and life cannot be blamed on smoking.
Certain parts of the US amaze me with their hypocritical changes in attitude to reject all but clinical perfection - California in particular is becoming a land of bigots; wasn't Arnie a serious cigar smoker and Hummer driver just a short while ago?
August 26, 2008 finally heard back from Health Canada on the claim.
Thank you for your email of June 26 2008 enquiring about information
contained in the "Smokefree Spaces: Activist Toolkit". Please forgive the
delay in responding.
The following statement to which you are referring "A nonsmoker in a smoky
room, such as a bar, inhales the equivalent of 35 cigarettes an hour." is
from a dated resource. This kit is not going to be re-printed when
supplies are depleted, however it remains in circulation as it contains
useful information for youth who want to get active in their community.
Health Canada has recently developed documents with updated information,
such as "Make Your Home and Car Smoke-free" which can be obtained at
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/tob...s/index-
eng.php.
Thank you for contacting the Tobacco Control Directorate of Health Canada.
Sincerely,
Suzie - Information Officer Health Canada Tobacco Control Directorate
www.gosmokefree.gc.ca
Commenting by HaloScan
