Doctor,
Will you help me with another study? I would be interested in how many in TC will take this shoddy science and run with it and promote it as gospel. Let's say that we give them a window of 2 weeks and then total how much nonsense they will churn with this so called study.
I also think that when they churn out this crap, they also narrow it down to one of the 4 seasons that had the highest hospital admissions due to heart disease. Were these patients playing an extra amount of some sport or where they shoveling snow. Do they own a snow thrower or shovel? Cold weather can put a strain on your heart, so is it possible the snow birds went south for the winter? There are just to many explanations for increases or decreases for any disease, especially diseases of the heart. This isn't even science, but just shoddy research and I with a $5.99 calculator could come up with much better results than this. Do they really call themselves professionals?
Sounds quite lofty but only another HYPOCRITE talking out of both sides of his mouth?
http://www.american.com/archive/...ncement-
address
Being Honest About Ignorance
The temptation to deny scientific truths is timeless—and dangerous
http://www.american.com/archive/...ncement-
address
~snip~
"Truth be told, we human beings are very good at refusing to accept facts or scientific evidence we do not want to hear. There is a long history of our doing so."
(See bottom of article for link to full text of Mr. Brodys speach.)
For the other side of Mr. Brody:
http://www.smokershistory.com/CBrody.htm
~snip~
William R. Brody
Born in 1944 in Stockton, California, Brody became the president of The Johns Hopkins University, the home turf of Jonathan Samet and Leon Gordis, on Sept. 1, 1996 - just prior to the Minnesota tobacco lawsuit, at which Samet was the star perjuror. Brody was the provost of the Academic Health Center at the University of Minnesota from 1987-94, and before that he was at The Johns Hopkins. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology"
Just makes you want to laugh. 
Environmental tobacco smoke revisited: the reliability of the data used for risk assessment. Risk Anal. 2001 Aug;21(4):737-60.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
site..._RVAbstractPlus
"Further, it seems highly improbable that exposure to a concentration of tobacco smoke at a level that is generally much less than 1% of that inhaled by a smoker could result in an excess risk for CHD that-as has been claimed-is some 30% to 50% of that found in active smokers. There are certainly valid reasons to limit exposure to ETS as well as to other air pollutants in places such as offices and homes in order to improve indoor air quality. This goal can be achieved, however, without the introduction of an extremist legislation based on a negligible risk of lung cancer as well as an unsupported and highly hypothetical risk for CHD."
Lung cancer due to passive smoking--a review. Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2001 May;74(4):231-41
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
site...t_uids=11401014
"The question of whether or not ETS exposure is high enough to induce and/or promote the carcinogenic effects observed in epidemiological studies thus remains open, and the assumption of an increased risk of lung cancer due to ETS exposure is, at present, more a matter of opinion than of firm scientific evidence."
Did this happen in Scotland in the first year of it's ban compared to Engalnd without a ban?
If not why not?
west
----
Steady on West, that looks very much like a logical question to me.
Like Diane, I am looking forward to the nonsense that gets around after the study is published.
In case no-one else says it Doc, that was a nice post-mortem. Thanks for the de-construction.
BTW, how much faith do you (still) have in all those studies you co-authored? Any niggling doubts yet?
Genuine question. Not a swipe at you.
Very well done analysis Dr. Siegel! 
Heehee... gotta tell ya something though: I kinda beat you to the game on this one. I wrote about this back in August of 2004 after a Toledo Blade article on the subject. Of course they never printed me (admittedly partly my fault: my piece was 1,000 words... too long for a standard Op Ed) so I'll share it here iin a separate posting since it's even a bit too long for HALO when added to this introduction...
- Michael
To recap, this is doc's data from Bowling green I add the data for the whole USA:
1999: 35 USA = 462467
2000: 24 479000
2001: 24 487010
2002: 36 499736
2003: 22 485953
2004: 26 446100
The data i got for the whole USA was from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project. ( doc, I'll bet you were willing to bet your house I'd be posting here!)
So, look, the whole USA actually did better than Bowling Green 2003 vs 2004.
Also, for you who don't know, Dr Suegel blogged our study http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot....claim-
that.html
which found that states with bans did no better than states without bans regarding hospital admissions for heart attacks..
Since Dr Siegel blogged our study, I got a copy of a graph of heart attack deaths California vs the USA which now appears in our study, which you can reach if you visit Dr. Siegels blog on our study and then click on that link to view our actual study.
Ca banned smoking in all but bars in Jan 1995. Ca did not exempt bars in restaurants. However, from approximately 1991, CA and the USA paralleled in age-adjusted heart attack deaths. The point is there was no change in either hospital admissions or death rates in CA following their 1995 ban.
This, like helena, pueblo, piedmont, and now bowling green, prove the extent to which antismokers will go to use selective research to promote smoking bans. Dave K
The Greening of Helena
The Blade’s August 19th (2004) article about the Bowling Green smoking ban study was depressing. Not because of what it supposedly indicated about the effects of secondary tobacco smoke, but because it was pretty much a duplicate of a thoroughly discredited study done a couple of years ago.
The "Great Helena Heart Miracle" study was originally presented to the public and the media as providing clear evidence of the danger of secondary smoke. Hundreds of articles, interviews, websites, and postings proclaimed Helena as the Holy Grail for Antismokers: virtual proof positive of a drastic and immediate decrease in heart attacks achieved by protecting nonsmokers from smoke.
What was the problem with this? Simply that the study in question did not itself examine the effects of secondary smoke on nonsmokers, did not look at levels of secondary smoke concentrations or exposure, and did not even try to estimate what effect secondary smoke had on its findings. In addition, the authors refused to separate the figures for nonsmokers and smokers because the results would then have shown no support at all for their contention that secondary smoke was dangerous!
Finally, when the study was published a year later (amid a huge publicity splash about “a new study condemning secondhand smoke”) the original claim of a 60% decrease in heart attacks was cut to about 40%. The new claim was likely just a statistical blip (similar to Kent’s 26% drop in the Bowling Green study) combined with the fact that smokers themselves either quitting or traveling out of town with their friends to do their drinking, smoking, and eating. By the way, the Kent decrease means that Bowling Green was actually only 19% below expectations: not the touted 45%!
Just as with Bowling Green, heart attacks outside Helena weren’t counted toward the total. And, not unexpectedly, heart attacks in the towns immediately outside Helena increased: not a statistically significant increase, but enough to strongly counterbalance the claimed decrease.
If you look at the current study, you’ll notice the same pattern: there was an increase in nearby areas, and no attempt was made to separate smokers and nonsmokers in the results. Any decrease that MAY have actually occurred is far more likely to be due to the factors above than due to any decrease in smoke exposure.
How much of the 19% drop was caused by smokers quitting or partying elsewhere? You can't really tell by the data presented... not surprising to those who view these studies with a healthy skepticism. If indeed this $400,000 study ever makes it to a peer-reviewed journal, after even more statistical juggling and grudging corrections made to satisfy journalistic standards, the "statistically significant" finding is likely to become nonexistent.
Indeed, if we never hear of this study again, it may be because those corrections end up showing that heart attack rates INCREASED after the smoking ban was implemented. And if you think we’ll hear about that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
So you may wonder why Antismokers focus so strongly on secondary smoke if it is not the real culprit? The answer is simple and goes all the way back to the “Conference on Smoking and Health” held in 1975. That conference concluded that to eliminate smoking, it would first be “essential to foster an atmosphere where it was perceived that active smokers would injure those around them, especially… infants or young children…”
For the last 30 years this approach has been one of the strongest weapons in the Antismokers’ arsenal, and when the hard science doesn’t support the claim activists have had little hesitation in stretching and exaggerating whatever scraps of soft science they could find.
Adding to this motivation there is of course the issue of money. The Bowling Green researchers received 400,000 dollars to simply gather a few numbers together from local hospitals, perform a few simple statistical manipulations, and then produce a "study" that would “prove” how beneficial it is to ban the deadly threat of secondary tobacco smoke from public places.
The idea of wasting $400,000 of taxpayers' money to produce a study based upon a faulty model and then waste more money promoting fear to achieve a social engineering goal is depressing. What's hopeful is the increasing citizen awareness of the scam being pulled on us through the massive funding of the Antismoking lobby: According to the AMA’s annual tobacco control report, over eight hundred and eighty MILLION dollars was spent just in the year 2001 to attack smoking and smokers.
Just as Big Tobacco’s researchers in the 1950s earned their living by producing studies “proving” the pristine innocence of their product, so too do today's Antismoking-funded researchers manage to produce studies “proving” that the tiniest wisps of secondary smoke are more toxic than Saddam Hussein’s deadliest nightmare.
In summary, the results in this study may have something to do with smoking, they may have something to do with secondary smoke, or they may have something to do with people going out of town to party. They may have something to do with any of many different unknown factors. They may simply be a statistical blip. There is absolutely no reasonable basis for concluding that secondary tobacco smoke played a significant role: most studies indicating damaging effects from such smoke involve smoke concentrations far above anything usually encountered in the real world.
Avoiding concentrated exposure to such things as tobacco or wood smoke, alcohol or paint vapors, or even kitchen cooking fumes makes good sense; but low exposures in decently ventilated settings are not in any real sense a danger and do not deserve special legislation that damages our freedoms and our livelihoods. There is indeed no known “safe level” of smoke exposure, but exactly the same thing can be said about sunlight… and both statements are nonsensical when applied to reasonably low levels of exposure.
We need to return to an appreciation of such common sense, and also return to a respect for the liberty of others to occasionally annoy us with their habits and lifestyles so that we ourselves may also be free to occasionally annoy them with ours.
========
As noted, the Toledo Blade declined to print this when I wrote it almost three years ago. For a simple newspaper to decline a large article is at least somewhat understandable.
What is not so understandable or excusable is the attitude evidenced by medical journals that continue to publish this sort of "research"
Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Colin anther question to ask is all those "references" of the study the doc has completed. When you can have Tobacco Journal say that a biopsy proves the cause of lung cancer, when you have the millions dedicated not to science or a general cause, but the furthering of the agenda only I think its dangerous. Especially since the scientific community says theres a lack of funding that is happening. How many of them used bias to get their point out there?
I no longer give to the furthering of agenda based "science groups" such as the Cancer society, Heart & stroke, or even the Lung assoc. when they plead for funding. Especially since theres actual papers out there that claim addiction to tobacco happens before you even take your first puff on a cigarette. The Dr brings up a good example of why funding should be questioned, when there is no controls in place for decimation without ramifications.
From doc's post ""Due to the novelty of the ban, initial resistance by its opponents and legal wrangling over its enforcement, we believed that several months of consistent enforcement would be needed before citizens would actually change their behavior."
It sounds to me like this is more of a convenient excuse for treating the high observed post-ban heart disease admission rate in 2002 as pre-ban than it is an objective way to conduct this analysis. I'm not suggesting that this was intentionally done to try to make it appear that there was a decline in heart disease rates;"
First, when Helena was published those authors did not say that several months of enforcement would be needed before observing and effects. In fact the whole helena ban did not last 7 months, only 6 months.
So, if it was good enough to publish Helena, then it's good enough to immediately begin counting the effects in Bolwing green. So, obviously the ban increased heart attacks.
Now, to get silly for a minute, probably what happened, is all the antis were so certain they would have 40% fewer heart attacks, that they probably started eating lots of fatty fast food, gave up exercise, and adopted a senidatry lifestyle, KNOWING that they were now protected from the single biggiest thing that causes heart attacks. This explains why there was actually an increase in BG in 2003.
Back to serious, Dr Siegel said he does not suggest this excuse for not assigning the 2003 data as part of the impact of the ban was intentional. Well, just to make it perfectly clear:
I DO !!!!!!!
dave K
Wow.
$400,000 to take 5 numbers and work out percentages! Can I get a piece of the cake please?
GreatScot
...view these studies with a healthy skepticism.
We're big on that in parapsychology.
If indeed this $400,000 study ever makes it to a peer-reviewed journal, after even more statistical juggling and grudging corrections made to satisfy journalistic standards, the "statistically significant" finding is likely to become nonexistent.
But this *has* been peer-reviewed and is now "in press". We're left wondering yet again, *who* reviews this stuff?
The idea of wasting $400,000 of taxpayers' money to produce a study based upon a faulty model and then waste more money promoting fear to achieve a social engineering goal is depressing. What's hopeful is the increasing citizen awareness of the scam being pulled on us through the massive funding of the Antismoking lobby:
Well, you wrote this 2004? Yes? *I* have since awakened. *G* And I am so much cuter than antismokers!
According to the AMA’s annual tobacco control report, over eight hundred and eighty MILLION dollars was spent just in the year 2001 to attack smoking and smokers.
I used this in my little letters. In fact, at the same time, the AMA whined that states weren't spending *enough*--i.e. the amount recommended by the CDC--on TC.
...wisps of secondary smoke ...
Hey! That's the URL I want to use for my website: www.wispofsmoke.org
...low exposures in decently ventilated settings are not in any real sense a danger ...
Alas, the SG disagrees...and so does ASH...and...I vote we go back to "real sense" and work from there.
(FYI: The News-Gazette seems to think that only smokers in "smoke bars" should be given ventilation. Hmmm, guess they don't care so much about nonsmokers after all. *gr* Okay, I'll take my anti-cranky pill now.)
There is indeed no known “safe level” of smoke exposure, but exactly the same thing can be said about sunlight...
Hang on there, Bub! People get radiation poisoning from sunlight! And skin cancer and...I'd *really* like to go back to "real sense" now.
We need to return to an appreciation of such common sense, and also return to a respect for the liberty of others to occasionally annoy us with their habits and lifestyles so that we ourselves may also be free to occasionally annoy them with ours.
A nice byproduct of that would be a return to scientific integrity!
GreatScot:$400,000 to take 5 numbers and work out percentages! Can I get a piece of the cake please?
No!!! Your get a T-shirt that says, "I funded Tobacco Control for years...and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"
DTB--
How 'bout
"Care for a cigarette---
It's way safer than getting it second-hand"
Just a silly thought.
.
Sunz,
If you are printing them on t-shirts then order 4 of them for me. I like them baggy so I guess a size large should do it.
"So, if it was good enough to publish Helena, then it's good enough to immediately begin counting the effects in Bolwing green. "
You beat me to that one, Dave K.
Diane--
I'm getting a collection.
("Hurricane force winds" should produce some howls.)
"Antismoking Guns for Hire: For when you can't think for yourself"
"I funded Tobacco Control for years...and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"
"I smoke to keep antismokers fifty feet away"
“There is no safe level of junk science “
"Smoking Cures Antismokers"?
"Quit Whining and Gimme a Light"
“Fight A Ban, Gain a Freedom”
“I smoke and I smell good (must be you)”
Thanks, Xylog.:
"I was always taught not to give in to Peer Pressure. That's why I keep Smoking."
"I'm not a Quitter!"
Thanks, Jalestra:
If my smoke bothers you, you'll be a lot more bothered when you start paying your share of taxes again
Repace & Glantz: Because the public isn't scared enough.
Repace & Glantz: Because you're too stupid to make your own decisions.
Thanks, Sunz:
Care for a cigarette---It's way safer than getting it second-hand
Thanks Smokenreader:
"Smoking, Love at first Glantz"
Thanks Rod G:
Brother Repace of the Order of the Divine Wind
Repace, Keeper of the Holy Smoke
Brotherhood of the Divine Plume
Lord of the Plumes
Bishop Glantz of Our Lady of Perpetual Epidemics
Co-authors, James Repace and Stanton Glantz: Creative Hysteria and Epidemics for Dummies.
Okay, what sizes/styles...and should we now translate them into German? (No, wait. Germany opposes the bans, yes?)
And now for the news--
Today in Inintended Consequences,
Fag end litter doubles on streets http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europ...sey/
6679427.stm
Watchdogs braced for noise complaints http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europ...sey/
6679427.stm
And here with our special interest piece:
Okay, everybody's invited to a big slumber party in Bolton town centre where we'll all light-up at midnight on July 1. Heck, if you don't smoke, light a candle...or a barbeque. (Seriously, I was at The Big Debate and they're gonna party from the sounds of it.)
Pub landlord says he will defy no smoking ban http://www.thisisleigh.co.uk/
new...smoking_ban.php
PS Every time I look at this blog, I get a weird feeling. I was raised in Bowling Green, KY. Ah, memories.
"Adding to this motivation there is of course the issue of money. The Bowling Green researchers received 400,000 dollars to simply gather a few numbers together from local hospitals, perform a few simple statistical manipulations, and then produce a "study" that would “prove” how beneficial it is to ban the deadly threat of secondary tobacco smoke from public places."
The availability of 400K in this relatively small admissions center leaves you wondering how much was spent chasing significant numbers in New York city and when we can expect the results demonstrating the 50% drop
in admissions there? The potentials could see thousands of people saved from ETS likely more than the annual figures stated to be mortalities attributed to ETS.
Does anyone have a source of admissions in major metropolitan areas?
With the news of this medical miracle we should be asking the major charities when the figures will be made public of expected consistent numbers in all major metropolitan centers where the numbers will be much more impressive.
If they don't pan out we would have to put pressure on the medical institutions asking why their performance is below the expected norm.
I am looking forward to the good news we can expect heart related admissions to drop off by 50% once the numbers are made public.
The cost of smoking to society will soon plummet and we can likely expect smoking taxes reduced to reflect the change.
Of course what we are smoking would have to be altered to be more consistent with the alternative products researchers are smoking to find a belief in that reality.
Smokers prefer cigarettes TC researchers are on the pipe.
This air cleaning system seems to have real promise. Can anyone fugure out how to stuff a TC advocate into it?
The instructions dont indicate feet first head first or if a wood chippper is required.
http://www.sharp.ca/products/ion.../
technology.asp
It seems that Sammet can churn out an overnight study, the study is guaranteed to fit the political and "on the spot study results for the active TC activist.
Of course anyone of you that watched in disbelief as the NCI handed out 135 million dollars of cancerresearch funds to the alpha of tobacco laws suits in 16 states remember the grant administrator Dr Marc Manley ?
The doctor featherbedded his way into BCBS of MN as the tobacco control expert that always gives the best testimony to Minnesota Democrats and ban supporters.
During the recent ban hearings Manley introduced a "new study" from John Hopkins University that has not been released.
The cost of smoking to Minnesota Taxpayers is "certified" as mandated in state statutes 16A.725 as 293.4 million for 2006, and 303 million for 2007 reported to me in data practice request.
Manleys "new study" declares that shs cost's minnesota 215 million dollars,
When the presentation is shown by manleys group they show a 1040 form suggesting taxpayers pay the 215 million. knowing well that the figure is pure conjecture the Minnesota legislature and media suck it up as pure gospel,
The study used to certify the cost to taxpayers and signed as "certified" by the DHS commissioner has a foot note: this study has an error factor of 40.3% Pinnoccioism is alive and well in the good old USA.
"This air cleaning system seems to have real promise. Can anyone fgure out how to stuff a TC advocate into it?"
You've got it the wrong way around, Kevin. It should be, Can anyone figure out how to stuff the air cleaning system up a TC advocate?
.
Wow. This "study" is a real breakthrough in that it represents the first time in history that anti-tobacco has recognized that a lack of statistical significance is a real impediment to credibility.
In this case (the declines in the control city) they're so bold as to treat the findings as disposable garbage. I suggest that we oh-so-ingenuously ask them to apply the same standards to studies they like to tout.
------------------
I'm going OT to reproduce 2 posts that are now officially lost at the tail of another thread, since I think the subject is worth pursuing. (Ignore this if you don't.) The umbrella topic was the vailidity of using ambient nicotine as a marker for death. The immediate reference was to Dr. Siegel's study of pool halls etc.
Walt H wrote:
"...As for PMR actuarial data, this is information collected from death certificates which list occupation and primary, and underlaying or secondary cause of death.
These numbers represent real deaths, not projections, not estimate, no "nicotine air samples". They are then grouped by occupation. These are then compared against other jobs and a ratio is calculated. It's called a PMR.
PMR stands for proportial mortality rate. It doesn't look at what might have caused anything, these are actual deaths, counted by occupation.
If ETS was really a significant hazard, then it should show up in the venues with a high percentage of occupational exposure to ETS.
While anti groups like to herald that 50% more waitstaff die from lung cancer then the national average, they fail to take into account the prevalence of smoking and tend to attribute it to ETS exposure.
However the strongest correlation of lung cancer is associated with smoking, to which the actuarial counts do not take into consideration. They don't go into the why's only the listed cause of death.
If one were to look at the proportion of smoking waitstaff to the national average (or office workers) then we should expect the numbers to be a lot higher, but they weren't.
Looking for why, led me to looking at the ex-smoker rates, and only about 10% are ex-smokers in the job class waitstaff, however the national average is much higher. Had the prevalence of ex-smokers been close to the same proportions as the national average, one could conclude that being exposed to ETS doesn't appear to have an impact on the observed lung cancer fatalities in that job catagory.
Conversely, had waitstaff followed the national average for smoking prevalence, then a PMR of 1.44 would suggest that maybe ETS comes into place, because something is causing waitstaff to have 1.44 times the rate.
So what do we walk away with? The hypothesis is ETS contributes significantly to lung cancer in waitstaff. Looking at the actuarial data, and prevalence of smoking and non-smoking by these two groupings, we end up with neither a yes it does, or no it doesn't, only an I don't know.
Someone a while back asked if this is true, where are all the bodies? This is an attempt to answer that question based on occupationally observed lung cancer rates.
As for being able to see the source, I provided links to the occupational lung cancer rates, and the occupational smoking rates in a previous message.
Here is the main page.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/20...cs/20...1/2003-
111.html
Walt H. | 05.22.07 - 2:09 am | #
To be continued----
Setback in PA:
http://www.centredaily.com/news/...ory/
104383.html
In response, I posed the following questions:
Sorry to have overlooked it if you posted it before, and thanks for taking the trouble to post it again.
I checked 2 sections: "Lung cancer" and "Smoking Prevalence."
Here are my problems and I'm perfectly amenable to having you point out that the problems are merely mine (that I'm being grossly dumb). That said:
While the PMR for pool hall workers is given at 1.80, it's only based on a total of... 19 cases. (No clue about the size of the total sample.) Then I note that the PMR for "eating and drinking establishments" (where traditionally there'd always been ETS) is 1.19, based on 907 cases.
This leads me to suspect a very small sample [19] led to a fairly distorted picture.
Especially when the PMR for coal miners -- given at 1.25 for (case) n=327.-- is lower than for pool rackers. And for retail store workers (n=142) is only slightly lower than for guys mining coal (1.20). And finally, when "health record technologists" (n=5) come in at a chart-topping 3.13.
IOW, I tend to doubt the whole enterprise.
Now let's get to "Estimated [sic] Smoking Prevalence." Maybe I missed it, but I found no listing for pool hall workers. Bar and Restaurant workers came in at 39.7 %, but the charts (there are 4) seem to duplicate occupations and offer different numbers. Q: was each chart based on a different study? Apparently all charts refer to the same year, 2000, so it's not that they represent different time spans.
One reason I ask is that one of the charts, based on a sample of 57, shows miners' smoking rates, given as percentages, are 32.6, while another chart, based on a sample of 9 (count em, 9) shows the miners' smoking rate is 57.4. And further, a sample of 4 (that's four!) guys in the military shows that.. no one in the military smokes; the % of smokers in the service is.... zero.
So unless I'm grossly misreading the whole thing (which remains an embarrassing possibility) it seems that throughout, the size of sample perverts the results, and to such an extent that the "results" are a joke,
Then, too, once again, they're merely attempting to correlate two different sets of data. What x% of x occupation does in general, doesn't meant that 19 specific people did the same thing, let alone at the same rate. Nor do we know how long that specific (but now emblematic) 19 people worked in a pool hall and got exposed to smoke. Or how much smoke they were actually exposed to. And from how many sources.
Therefore, it seems to me the whole thing's a random and unreliable mess, and another lame waste of taxpayer money. In any case, nothing to hang any hats on.
I hope we can keep this discussion rolling. Thanks.
:
Walt | 05.23.07 - 3:46 am |
So--- can we?
zig-zag.
I note these 2 interesting paragraphs from Harry's link about how local PA bans are invalid bec only the state can legislate bans:
"About 2,000 family-run businesses in New York closed within a year after that state's smoking ban took effect, Christie has said.
The Pennsylvania Restaurant Association, meanwhile, has registered support for a statewide
smoking ban here."
:
Yeah, Walt, those are the two things that struck me as well. I may be wrong, but, judging from what went on in N.H., it seems that, generally, the restaurant associations are for a ban and the bars against. No solidarity there!
.
Walt,
Much of what you ask is explained in appendicies, from the last link.
Colin raises a good question:
"BTW, how much faith do you (still) have in all those studies you co-authored? Any niggling doubts yet?"
This is not to question the doctors credibility. But as we know, new science is built on old science. It's not exactly like "precendent" in jurisprudence, but there are similarities. Scientists don't set out to reinvent each and every wheel in each and every study. They have to accept certain premises.
Bit I wonder if the Doctor has thought through where he was, profesionally, when he did many of the studies that serve as the basis of his support for smoking bans. He has openly admitted to being "brainwashed." Doesn't it seem at least possible that such a mindset could have had an impact on how the studies were designed, or some of the biases involved?
I only mention it because, to be honest, I don't necessarily question the integrity of the scientists who did the studies being criticized here. That is, I think they really believe the results. In fact, I suspect that they do.
I am just saying that emotional attachment can be a powerful thing. And when there is evidence that a movement actively tries to "brainwash" its adherents, it begins to call EVERYTHING into question. Even work done by really smart people who are really honest. Especially when so much of the science is political. You know, deciding what level of SHS is "dangerous" is not the same as measuring the carbon weight of cadmium. It demands that certain subjective considerations come into play.
Sam M,
Good thoughts.
I think it is the attachment to their wallets that is a far greater problem than emotional attachment.
FYI,
My wife's family is from Bowling Green. If I'm not mistaken, there were several large industries that shut down about that time, or moved to Mexico. This sure does seem coincidental, I believe there was a wheel plant (my step son was employed at) shut it's doors right around that time.
FWIW -- http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/..._tool=%22EaG%
22
Walt;
The link you posted from the CDC is dead. Here is the info for occupation smoking prevalence.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/
...htsSmoking.html
The costs are discussed here;
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/program...crcd/
risks.html
Here is the link for Cancers by occupation found at the first link at the top.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/...3-01(LC01)
.html
It may take some time to form a list of comparisons further complicated by including all other risk factors listed, however the automatic inference because smoking is at a higher prevalence and some occupations coincidentally have higher cancer risks cannot be considered credible, we must also consider many other factors which do not apply to the entire group. Because the highest incidence is beyond 65 years of age any assessments that do not describe status through the entire working lifetime and beyond the highest incident age, are not comparable in defining conclusions. The most significant factor of socioeconomic status must also be considered. Business managers would be a significantly different subset than factory workers or coal miners with significantly different lifestyles and risk assessment values, each having different views of risk factors governing personal health relevant choices.
The choices one makes in life can determine health outcomes later in life however in [My opinion] most cases the results are strictly random ands beyond our control.
The Nanny state tells us there is no such thing as an accident, I would also disagree.
As for the source the CDC?
I did a search for risk factors and was treated to the opinion all other factors are insignificant compared to smoking and ETS.
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/
b...isk_factors.htm
You have to form your own conclusions by digging through the bulk of political information available to get to the factual information [if any], which may be buried within. I believe the industry lobby influence has distorted all ability to reason out the situation without bias in a rational format.
Thanks Kevin,
Here is a link to the original page. When the other Walt copied it because of the elipses it doesn't move well.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/20...1/2003-
111.html
As for Bowling Green, I was talking about KY. Being a Vette fan there is no other Bowling Green, KY. Unfortunately the Study was on Bowling Green, OH. So never mind.
As for the CDC data, I tend to look upon it as being a little less biased in terms of morbidity and mortality data.
As for editorializing as of late they've grown especially bad about this.
My biggest area of concern with using mortality data is not so much with classification, but rather the influence of smoking dominating the remaining causes. Most others are associated with mining and industrialization. And then their's radon second on the list, so the noise level with smoking may not clearly deliniate any influence by ETS.
It was a thought...
The practicality of treating the irrational as irrational in ridiculing the Detective Monk personality as the most expeditious route back to normalcy carries a lot of weight. Late night comedy is a force not to be taken lightly in controlling public mood.
If we look at the link, which determines risk according to occupation, and only consider occupational risk of cancers above 1.2 we have to recognize those exposed to diesel exhaust and those most likely to shoot pool are most at risk.
Can we draw a conclusion therefore if we ban pool tables and legislate all trucks inside bars have to shut down their engines, the smokers can come back inside?
Kevin,
It's more along the lines of "If ETS is a hazard" then where are the bodies? We have all these wonderful projections of increased risk, so if there's increased risk, there must be bodies, less someone is blowing smoke up the publics collective fanny.
The three most important "risk" factors of dying from any cause (heart failure, cancer of any kind and accidents)are:
-- Age
-- Heredity (genes)
-- Socioeconomic Status (SES)
All other alleged "risk" factors have very little effect compared to the above.
I think that Walt H. touches on a really good point here. The bodies. It's an interesting discussion. because, as far as I can tell, there aren't any. Because there "can't be." That is, no death certificate is going to list "Worked in a bar 30 years ago" as a cause of death. So we are working with something that requires a great deal of finesse. And therefore requires the STRICTEST form of scrutiny if we are going to be passing laws and ruining lives.
And here is where the scientific credibility comes in. In my mind, the real danger is in reverse-engineering the data. That is, it's possible to measure the risk in a lot of different ways. We could try, as Walt says, to count bodies. But that might be tough. Or we could use PELs. Or PMRs. Or whatever.
So which to choose? From what little I know, it seems like the "experts" have been using an extremely strict standard of safety with regard to SHS. OK. That might be fine. And it might not be.
All I am asking the doctor to do is consider what role the "brainwashing" has played in choosing a standard. None? No role whatsover? I just can't imagine that being the case. Especially since the most active anti-SHS activists came to this, not from the field of worker safety, but the field of Tobacco Control. Look at the way avowed anti-tobacco forces control the debate. Look at the names on the studies being cited here. I think it was wrong to allow Big Tobacco to control the field (to the extent that was ever the case) but it is equally wrong to allow TC to dominate.
The doctor makes good points. It does seem like the field is biased. And the "sicence" he mentions in this post seems almost laughable. But he seems to think that it the science has "become" biased. That things are going downhill. But isn't there at least the slightest possibility, Doctor, that things were never really on the level in the first place? Not because people were lying. But because there was an honest, adamant desire to DO SOMETHING?
Given your thoughts on the "brainwashing," would it make sense to revisit some of the earlier studies? maybe you have already done that. Seriously. I am open to the idea that you have, and that you found them to be rock solid.
Is that the case?
Sam,
I sincerely believe that things have deteriorated. While there previously may have been an occasional study here or there which was truly shoddy, now we are in a situation where every single paper that has come out about the effect of smoking bans on heart attack admissions is shoddy. And while there may have been an occasional exaggerated claim by an organization, now we are talking about a recurrent pattern of multiple fallacious claims by over 100 organizations.
Why do I think that things have changed? I think there are a number of reasons. One is the tobacco industry's discontinuation of its own efforts to monitor and challenge the statements being made by anti-smoking groups. I can tell you that seven or eight years ago, the fear that the tobacco industry was monitoring what we said and might call us on it permeated every discussion of communications strategy. Now it's basically a non-issue. I sincerely think that's been a huge factor.
DTB (or was that Diane?) for the collection.
Nobody likes a Quitter.
Harry: It should be, Can anyone figure out how to stuff the air cleaning system up a TC advocate?
*looks carefully at picture of ########*
*turns picture sideways*
Am I allowed to make 3 small incisions?
It's kinda like over-packing a car trunk.
[name of TC advocate edited to ensure joke isn't taken as reality. It's an unproven fact that TC surgically removes the humor gland as part of the initiation]
Dr Siegel: I sincerely believe that things have deteriorated.
It certainly does seem that the newer work is inferior...but that doesn't mean the old work was up to proper critical standards either. It just means that the skews and biases were more cautious and better hidden.
One is the tobacco industry's discontinuation of its own efforts to monitor and challenge the statements being made by anti-smoking groups
I would suggest that the reason they no longer do so is that they are unable to, simply because a high enough portion of the population has been convinced that everything that comes from them is a lie, regardless of the actual truth.
Why do you think that any rational discussion is shouted down with "he's in the pay of...." statements? Why do you think it's effective even when not true?
Personally, when that statement is made, I automatically assume that there is a weak or untenable position and view it with extreme suspicion, but I'm certainly not the norm.
Don't look behind the curtain, indeed.
I can tell you that seven or eight years ago, the fear that the tobacco industry was monitoring what we said and might call us on it permeated every discussion of communications strategy.
I'm sorry to say, but this just makes me think that this was always the case in TC then.
If it really was necessary to have an outside hostile force available to keep ya'll on the straight and narrow, that doesn't say much about the ethics and motives of the people involved does it?
Methinks that the lack of overseeing is an important point, but it's not the only reason for the problem.
Another portion of the problem is that the peer review process is broken....especially regarding TC.
Publication is often in TC-specific journals, reviewed by other "good old boys" in TC, vetted by people that grew up with half-true and questionable anti-tobacco messages from early childhood, and bias is introduced through selective publishing/funding, agenda driven peer ostracization, dis-allowance of any sort of objection/criticism and rewards given to the most extreme.
Is it any wonder after 3 decades of that kind of internal reinforcement that the new research is....um....questionable?
One is the tobacco industry's discontinuation of its own efforts to monitor and challenge the statements being made by anti-smoking groups. I can tell you that seven or eight years ago, the fear that the tobacco industry was monitoring what we said and might call us on it permeated every discussion of communications strategy. Now it's basically a non-issue. I sincerely think that's been a huge factor.
That's because the tobacco companies got smart and instead chose to continually feed you enough rope to hang yourselves. I'd say the strategy is working as the claims get more ridiculous by the hour. Eventually, you will have more than ample rope to take that one last step, but not enough to complete it and your self-made pedestals will be kicked out from under you.
Not enough time now to research and respond to the subject I intruded. "Later."
Meanwhile, on the subject Sam introduced-- how brainwashing effects research, there's this. I'm quoting from an article on ETS and Asthma (no URL available):
The idea that ETS can actually cause asthma, once again has its roots in the EPA Report (1992), but before we go back in time, let's skip to the Later Bulletin:
Dr. Fernando Martinez, director of Respiratory Sciences at the U of Arizona College of Medicine and-- more notably-- the author of the EPA's chapter on asthma, co-author of its chapter on respiratory "risks," made a startling statement
about his previous misconceptions in an article in The Atlantic in May, 2000, "Does Civilization Cause Asthma?" by Ellen Shell:
"Like most people,{he said] I assumed tobacco smoke and pollution were the problem-- that was the politically correct way to think. But these factors turned out not to play a major role."
We repeat: This is the guy who both wrote (and threw) the book at ETS for the EPA. Why? Because it seemed to be a fashionable theory, one professed by the Right-Minded. Call it peer-pressured thinking. Or Post-Modern Science. And besides, to think otherwise was tantamount to heresy. (And no way to get a job.)
:
Walt,
There is an extensive excerpt from the Atlantic article here, including Fernando Martinez's quotes.
http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/
group...icalReading.pdf
It appears asthma cannot be explained by smoking or pollution.
GreatScot
"I can tell you that seven or eight years ago, the fear that the tobacco industry was monitoring what we said and might call us on it permeated every discussion of communications strategy."
But, by your own admission, this did not prevent you from painting each and every one of your opponents as a shill for the tobacco industry. To your great credit, you now admit that is preposterous. But the thing is, you believed it at the time.
So the question is, are there any other assumptions that people make that are similarly false? Similarly ludicrous? Is it at all possible that .00008/m3/40, or whatever it is, is similarly based in propoganda rather than science?
And I mean all of it. Is there any reason whatsover to measure exposures in terms of a 40 year career when we KNOW that the vast, vast majority of hours worked in the industry are being worked be people who will not be in the industry for anything even CLOSE to 40 years?
Maybe that is the standard way to measure things. But seeing that reality is reality, should we not take that into account when making laws? And should we not take it into account when we say things like "40,000 people die from SHS every year"?
These numbers are not "science." These are statistical projections. And they are open to manipulation by a wide range of forces. And seeing that we are talking about submitting property owners to very real manipulation by the state, it would seem that the cautious thing to do would be to apply the "precautionary principle" to government intervention, not whisps of smoke. And it would appear that when a given policy is "de facto zero tolerance," which the doctor has admitted his to be, that even more caution might be in order.
I think a good place to start in this regard might be the 40,000 deaths per year. Walt has asked for bodies. I, too, think that ban supporters ought to be pressured in that regard. But let's say it's impossible. OK. Then here's a question.
Doctor, do you belive that 40,000 people die every year due to SHS they encountered by working in bars and restaurants? Or do you believe that's the number that WOULD die, statistically speaking, if a given number of workers worked in the industry for 40/40? Finally, do enough workers fit that profile to lead to the 40,000 corpses?
I know this seems tedious. And I guess it is. But I am trying to see to what extent the science fits reality, and to clarify who's talking abot real things and who is talking about things that could or would be.
The world stops smoking and we all live to we are 100,your standard of living will go down and the years between stopping working and dying will be miserable since you will be pretty much penniless.So instead of saving a few thousand lives you ensure life becomes as bad as you can make it.Economically you need people to die and you need extortionate taxes to be paid by smokers so the non smokers can live better more health and full-filling lives.Now Dr Siegel,who do YOU think you are helping ?Look at Mother nature,see any resemblance to the human race ?
Sam M,
your point about personal bias is absolutely valid. Did any of the TC researchers ever admit to their personal beliefs? Conflict of interest is not just financial.
For example, in accordance with the tobacco files, Repace's father died of LC aged 59, he himself had to walk out his final exams due to other students smoking as he is extremely sensitive to ETS and he believes he got lower marks than he should have.
If true there must be a doubt about his impartiality.
GreatScot
Doc: Why do I think that things have changed? I think there are a number of reasons. One is the tobacco industry's discontinuation of its own efforts to monitor and challenge the statements being made by anti-smoking groups. I can tell you that seven or eight years ago, the fear that the tobacco industry was monitoring what we said and might call us on it permeated every discussion of communications strategy. Now it's basically a non-issue. I sincerely think that's been a huge factor.
Two things come to mind.
(1) You say that the *fear* be being monitored was ever-present in communications. Do you think this atmosphere of *fear* contributes to brainwashing? If so, do you think that similar fear is being used in other ways for social engineering today? (I'm not being flipant. Do you think that what's happened to smokers has been anything like a "test case" for other matters?)
(2) Did you ever think that maybe the tobacco industry was aware of the direction in which Tobacco Control was headed? Do you think that, maybe, some people in tobacco companies have only been waiting for the whole antitobacco movement to effectively discredit itself with outlandish claims?
Mike Walsh--Thanks. Nobody likes a quitter. BTW, Lynda F came up with a gem! "There's no safe level of Public Health" LOL!
I just think that if there were a Phillip Morris scientist who, later in life, admitted to being brainwashed, that scientist might go back and reassess ALL of his assumptions. Not just some of them.
I am not saying that such a person would necessarily change his views. And even if he did, there are different ways to change. He might not have to come out as a full-fledged tobacco hater. But you might expect him to back away from claims he made earlier in his career. For instance, if he had previously said, "No one dies from tobacco related illnesse," he might now say, "OK. Maybe a few people do. Or thousands." He would not need to go all the way to the 400,000 annual death toll constantly bandied about. But you might expect him to take another look.
And like I said, I don't know that the doctor hasn't. And even if he did/does, like I said, he might conclude that his science was rock solid all along. Which is quite possible. Many, many people are able to separate their work from their personal lives. Their reason from their emotion. The doctor says he failed to do that when it came to casting all opponents as shills. But that's a separate issue. And like I said, he has lived up to it.
Again, what I am getting at here is that so much of this is tied up in subjective things. We WANT it to be about the science. But the science can't save us. Even if we knew EVERYTHING about the deaths and the bodies and the corpses and the causes, there would still be questions to ask and answer. Which is why people try so hard to control numbers like "40,000 deaths every year." What's it really mean? Is that a real number?
DO TC advocate really believe that's the number of people who will die this year because they once worked in a smoky bar? Or do they mean that's how many WOULD die if all these really assumptions hold?
Even if those assumptions are farcical, like the idea that millions upon million upon millions of people work in the bar/restaurant industry for 40 years, and are exposed to SHS the ENTIRE time.
I think every bit of the science needs scrapped and start all over again. It's been so horrible I'll never believe another thing they say unless they do. This mess it waaaaaay too big to be cleaned up...just empty it all out and start again.
"Doctor, do you belive that 40,000 people die every year due to SHS they encountered by working in bars and restaurants?"
Sam, did the doctor really give us a 40,000 figure for bar and restaurant workers? I know he DID say, in 2002, that ETS causes about 53,000 deaths a year in nonsmokers.
.
"It's an unproven fact that TC surgically removes the humor gland as part of the initiation."
Not unproven as far as I'm concerned, Mike.
.
When I was conversing with him here a while back, he said that comparing the risks associated with SHS to the risks of driving NASCAR (which I am wont to do) was unwarranted. Because NASCAR causes maybe a death every year or so. Versus 40,000. I later asked if that were fair. If he were including all SHS deaths or just SHS deaths associated with working in a bar/restaurant. Because if he were including all deaths, then I ought ot be able to include all auto-related deaths in calculating NASCAR risks.
I never really got a clarification, although I sought on. I can go back through and search for instances of the 40,000 figure and how it was used. But that might take a while.
But to be clear, the doctor has occasionally brought out the 40,000 figure in discussions of work related risk. Which seems a bit off if that refers to all deaths and not deaths associated with workplace exposure.
Or we could just ask the doctor:
Doctor: Does the 40,000 figure apply to deaths from workplace exposure? If not, how many to you attribute to workplace exposure?
To be clear, I was discussing workplace hazards with him. And he brought the 40,000 figure. And he said that as far as workplace hazards go, NASCAR was not really worth discussing because the MAGNITUDE of deaths involved did not approach the MAGNITUDE of deaths from SHS exposure in bars and restaurants.
If that number is different from the 40,000, I would be interested in hearing what it is. And equally interested in hearing why deaths from exposure to SHS exposures outside the workplace were part of that discussion.
Or I would be interested in re-opening the NASCAR discussion, but using all auto fatalities to support my claim that driving NASCAR is more dangerous than working in a smoky bar.
The 40,000 figure applies to all workplace exposure, but I should certainly clarify that it does NOT relate to just bars and restaurants. This is the approximate estimate that OSHA gave for ALL workplace ETS-related deaths. Sorry if I inadvertently led anyone to think I was talking just about deaths among bar and restaurant workers. Clearly, that number would be far too high.
The appropriate number of deaths to use, however, is I believe the total number of workplace deaths because the policies I am advocating are for workplace smoking bans. I have never advocated for a bar/restaurant smoking ban in isolation. The policies I have supported and feel are reasonable simply provide a smoke-free workplace for all workers. So I think 40,000 is an appropriate number to use - assuming that it is correct. I think people are certainly entitled to challenge the 40,000 figure. But I don't think you can contest the idea that the number of ETS workplace related deaths is relevant to the discussion. Hope that makes sense, and again, I apologize if I misled anyone.
This is the approximate estimate that OSHA gave for ALL workplace ETS-related deaths.
Doc, I never did find that number on the OSHA site. Where was it again?
Doctor,
Thanks for clarifying. And that makes sense. Except:
When was that 40,000 derived? Seems to me that I have been hearing it for years and years. Am I wrong about that? If not, shouldn't the deaths be going down? Because bars and restaurants are just about the only places left where you can smoke. So the total exposure has been plummeting for well over a decade. Shouldn't the deaths be plummeting, too? Unles, of course, SHS is not really causing the deaths.
And as for this:
"I am advocating ... for workplace smoking bans. I have never advocated for a bar/restaurant smoking ban in isolation. The policies I have supported and feel are reasonable simply provide a smoke-free workplace for all workers."
Interesting. Because a while back you insisted that you were not coming at this from a zero-tolerance perspective. But now it appears that it is the entire basis for your career.
That is, if I have an enormous warehouse and two workers, it would seem to me that even if one of them chain-smoked relentlessly, it is highly unlikely that the other worker would be exposed to highly toxic levels of SHS. But given what you have just written, you would still support a ban in that facility.
To qualify as something other than zero-tolerance, you would have had to been campaigning for some kind of cap on SHS levels. And you wold have named that level. But that does not appear to have been what you have been after. Because all along, you have been aiming for a total ban, regardless of the level of SHS in question.
Even though you say that you have defined the level in terms of exposure over a 40-year career, you have not advocated for exceptions for industries in which that kind of career does not prevail. Which strikes me as odd. Unless you are actually avocating for a total, zero-tolerance ban. Which is a fine position to take. But it is what it is.
Which gets me back to a point I made previously: Where people are coming from in this debate is important. And you come at it from an anti-tobacco position. Which is fine. Admirable, even, perhaps. But again, it is what it is.
This is why I think the idea of comparisons are especially important. We do, in fact, make exceptions for all kinds of dangerous work. Even when that work is something silly like driving a car real fast. If that is part of the job (as it is for NASCAR drivers) then we let them take the risk. Even though other drivers, such as people who drive for FedEx, have safer driving jobs, we allow that there are different ways to do similar things. And different risk levels involved.
And for years, as the doctor mentions, we have made exceptions for other kinds of workers. In the case of SHS, we banned it on airplanes. Then in offices. Then everywhere else. And every step along the way, people grumbled. People moaned. But basically accepted it, knowing that they could still catch a beer and a smoke with their buddies at the bar. As such, we drastically cut the overall level of SHS exposure across the board, but allowed a few people to still take the risk. (A la NASCAR, logging, high iron work, dry cleaning, etc.)
But the whole time that was going on, a group of people, you included, blasted that kind of exception. Calling anyone who questioned the ban a shill for the tobacco industry. A dirty politician. A liar. Saying that the ban must apply EVERYWHERE. Under all conditions. No matter what the level of SHS. No matter what the situation.
NO. MATTER. WHAT.
Despite the fact, as discussed, that we allow exceptions in just about all other cases. We allow people to take jobs. And we know people will die. Sometimes, we even know a lot of people will die.
Which is why the science doesn't matter. Because we DO allow people to die. But only in some cases. So saying they are going to die is not enough. You have to say that their death is not worth it. In the case of NASCAR, society says OK. Sure. It's worth it. In the case of dangerous logging practices that allow us to have affordable pretty cabinets, we say, sure, it's worth it. Even though I know and you know those jobs are far more dangerous than tending bar.
That is, this is not about science. And it is not about worker safety. It is about people valuing things. And generally speaking, people see no value in smoking. And they think it is stinky. And they have the smokers outvoted 75 to 25. So they are just taking what they want.
That's democracy, I guess. But again, it ain't science. And it ain't worker safety.
If it were, this would be simple. We would call in statisticians to calculate evey job's risk. And we would ban all of them that exceeded a certain threshold.
But that is not what happened.
Since smoking bans have been shown not to reduce secondhand smoke exposure of nonsmokers, how could they reduce heart attack rates in any community?
http://www.ifs.org.uk/
publicatio...ication_id=3523
Bill H.--
Um...the abstract on that report..."displacing smokers to private places where they contaminate non smokers"...LOL.
Stand back! Or I'll contaminate you!!
Doctor Siegel,
Please check this article out. Here are some extreme antismoking claims I have not seen before:
http://www.columbiabusinesstimes...?
transferid=594
"While longer exposure to concentrated levels of second-hand smoke in a smoky bar or restaurant are clearly worse, research is now showing that even brief exposure to second-hand smoke can be dangerous. In five minutes of exposure, the arteries that circulate blood through your heart stiffen just as much if you’d smoked a cigarette. After 20 minutes, blood platelets look like a pack-a-day smoker’s, making your blood “sticky” and contributing to stroke causing blood clots. After 30 minutes of exposure, your body’s ability to handle LDL or “bad cholesterol” is diminished.
Why did Columbia adopt a smoke-free workplace ordinance?
1. Because it works. Smoke-free indoor workplace ordinances lead to clean indoor air and are the single most effective means of protecting employees and patrons from the damaging effects of SHS. Historically, bars and restaurants are smoky workplaces. Compared to office workplaces, second-hand smoke levels are approximately 160 to 200 percent higher in restaurants and 400 to 600 percent higher in bars. Constant exposure to SHS increases the risk of heart attack by almost 200 percent."
http://www.columbiabusinesstimes...?
transferid=594
Bill-
Thanks for sharing that. It is indeed quite a fallacious claim. Essentially, they are stating that 20 minutes of secondhand smoke causes strokes in nonsmokers. This is obviously implausible. It is only even possible in someone who already had pre-existing, very severe atherosclerotic disease. Even then, there is no evidence I have seen that strokes are being triggered by 20 minutes of exposure. But the claim clearly is not qualifying itself by referring only to people with severe disease. So it is, in my opinion, untruthful.
DancingTigerBait-
I think you're exactly right. I think the tobacco companies are glad to just sit back and watch the anti-smoking groups destroy themselves through their extremism, which is leading to fallacious statements (like the one above that Bill just pointed out!). Eventually, the groups are going to lose public credibility. How can you be credible if you claim that someone who walks into a smoky area for 20 minutes is at increased risk of having a stroke. At this point, I don't think the tobacco companies need to do anything proactively. They can just sit back and watch us destroy ourselves with our own extremism.
Sam-
I accept your point that the valuation of the activity under question DOES play a role in the argument about how to address the hazard it poses. I agree that smoking is being valued at a lower level than the need for wood and so forth. I think that's a fair characterization.
From Bill's link- In addition to requiring a cut in nicotine the institute - a branch of the National Academy of Sciences - called for higher taxes on tobacco, nationwide indoor smoking bans and other steps to reduce smoking.
It is becoming the norm for these people to admit that the policies are really targeted at coercing primary smokers to quit. ETS is rapidly being exposed for what it is, a tool to ratchet up the pressure on smokers.
For a while the stated cause was to protect non-smokers and children but all the time they were being used, used to demonise smokers. TC advocates are obscene hypocrites period.
How about it Doc which of the following will you support.
1 call for an immediate ban on cigarettes and all other tobacco products.
2 free cessation help for all.(70/80/90% of smokers want to quit don't they?)
3 if cigs not banned, remove all the added regressive taxation on cigarettes.(help the poor and stop exploiting people)
4 demand that all governmental programmes funded by cig tax are abolished or funded by regular tax.(everyone pays or nobody pays)
If I sound a little pissed, it's only cause I am.
GreatScot
Lynda F.: "'This is the approximate estimate that OSHA gave for ALL workplace ETS-related deaths.'
"Doc, I never did find that number on the OSHA site. Where was it again?"
Doctor, would you please provide us with the information? And if you provided it previously, would you please be kind enough to provide it once again?
In addition, where did you get the 53,000 figure, since you stated in 2002 that secondhand smoke causes about 53,000 deaths a year in nonsmokers? Have you changed your mind or are you sticking with it?
Now, subtracting, doesn't that mean that there are 13,000 deaths among nonsmokers in the HOME?
But I've heard that the most exposure occurs in the home. So, if true, how does that give us only 13,000 out of 53,000 deaths in the home vs. 40,000 in the workplace? Doesn't seem to add up.
.
Still haven't had time to do my homework on the CDC stuff, but about the 40,000, I too would like to know what studies this is based on or whether it's just extrapolation from the same (questionable) ballpark RRs.
These studies covered workplace exposure and lung cancer (tho studies I've seen show a similar pattern for heart problems): FWIW--
Garfinkel et al (1985) showed that people exposed at work had a lower expectation of actually getting lung cancer than people not exposed. Exposure for 5 years before diagnosis showed a negative RR of 0.88 and exposure for 25, yielded a negative RR of 0.93.
Kabat and Wynder in 1984 compared the exposed to the unexposed for a negative RR of 0.68, and Lee, in '86, came out in the same ballpark: a negative RR of 0.63. Only Wu ('85) got a small and statistically insignificant RR of 1.3, and his 30% rise was quite effectively cancelled out by the 32% and 37% decreases show by Kabat and Lee. (And then, incidentally, Koo, in Hong Kong, had reported that two (count em) lung cancer cases had reported more general exposure to
ETS than the four (count em) controls.)
Subsequent workplace studies have also borne out this "no effect" effect:
"....there was no elevated lung cancer risk associated with passive smoke exposure in the workplace." Brownson 1992
"...an odds ratio of 0.91...indicating no evidence of an adverse effect of environmental tobacco smoke in the workplace" - Janerich 1990
"...the association with exposure to passive smoking at work was small and not statistically significant." Kalandidi
"...No association observed between the risk of lung cancer and smoking of husband or passive smoke exposure at work." - Shimuzu, 1988
"...no statistically signficant increase in risk associated with exposure to environmental tobacco smoke at work or during social activities." - Stockwell, 1992
" There was no association between exposure to ETS at the workplace and risk of lung cancer." -Zaridze, 1998
And then there was Elizabeth Whelan's categorical statement that no one ever died of exposure in restaurants or bars.
:
The OSHA report in not online. When I'm in the office, I will get the report and provide the relevant quotes from it.
Dr Siegel: The OSHA report in not online.
Ummm. Why not?
From what I can see the OSHA has put everything else online, so why would they neglect that one in particular?
They've even made available summaries of discussions that didn't go anywhere in terms of regulation.
GreatScot -4. demand that all governmental programmes funded by cig tax are abolished or funded by regular tax.(everyone pays or nobody pays)
If I sound a little pissed, it's only cause I am.
=================================
GreatScot,
That's the whole point. Big Tobacco Control and others (programs, entitities, state revenues) that depend for their "wealth" on the continued sale of tobacco products would fight to the death to prevent any law banning the manufacture and sale of cigarettes.
It would be hilarious! Here we would have Big Tobacco Control spending the billions of dollars it has extorted from smokers in legal fees, lobbying fees and a nationwide advertising campaign demanding that tobacco products remain legal!
We'd have passionate testimony from Glantz, Repace and the others that make up these bloodsuckers to stop any ban of this type.
Whole university departments would turn out to protest such a ban.
Then we'd have us smokers testifying for a ban using BTC's own "proof positive" that tobacco kills, SHS Kills, incurs billions of dollars in health care costs, etc.
Also, we'd accuse these people of being paid shills of Big Tobacco - Dealers in Death!
Hey, maybe even Big Drug Pushers (Big Pharma) would oppose it.
Yes, let's get it over with, ban it.
Yes, let's get it over with, ban it.
Oops, that was me above. Rod
It's about time to start saying when studies and research are NOT in the public domain,they cannot form part of an arguement.Transparent Government ?Or fraudsters jumping on the TC money-go- round .Whilst they can sham the research they will continue to screw every penny they can.One tiny little way to get the science back into the research is to ensure everything is available for the public to read.
I have to agree with Mike Walsh here. I find it odd indeed that considering everything else OSHA has online, why NOT something you consider soooooo important?
What concerns me even more, is that given my (or our) distrust of "reports", that you would even consider asking us to have complete faith in something we cannot actually view and read for ourselves.
I may like you Doc, but unfortunately I also don't completely trust you, as I see your bias, and contradictions, daily.......sorry, just a fact of life for me.
Rod, I've been suggesting we all support the illegalization of all tobacco products for months now. However, no one else will back me for it. However, and let me find the link someone here was so kind enough to provide, one state tried it and anti-tobacco were the ones opposing it.
http://www.tobacco.org/news/114664.html
Belter told the House that committee members were frustrated last week with
the testimony from anti-tobacco groups that testified against the tobacco ban .
Rod,
you are absolutely right, lets get on with it. Prohibition gets my vote.
The FDA scam about does it for me, mandate lower nicotine, smokers compensate by smoking more. Big T profits go up, MSA money goes up, tax revenue goes up,smoking prevalence goes up justifying more studies and more obscene persecution of smokers and all on the back of us.
Come on BTC and public health, put your ethics on show, call for full prohibition of all tobacco products, call for the criminalisation of the possession and use of any tobacco product, minimum sentencing severe enough to deter, mandatory free cessation help for all smokers. Shut down BT once and for all.
Yes there will be a black market (you are creating one anyway)however the police can set up special tobacco task forces. There will be people growing their own like the moonshiners of old but in real terms smoking will be eradicated. Mission accomplished, the public health protected and you can go find a real job.
Still pissed? You better believe it.
This morning before going to work I was in my back garden watering the plants and having a smoke. My new next door (2 weeks) neighbour aggressively told me that my smoke was blowing into his garden and if I had any decency I would move down wind. I politely pointed out that to be down wind I would have to climb over his fence, cross his garden and climb into his neighbours garden and that was unreasonable. To which he responded that he should not have to put up with the stink of cigarettes. Normally very polite, at this point I told him he could sell his f%$%£"g house and move out if it bothered him that much.
GreatScot
Oh Great Scott, Sorry to hear of your new neighbor...
Time to BBQ every day, especially fish dishes. It's summer...
Incense, citronella candles---shake up the smells.
Can you install a higher fence too?
That'll help rid you of his face...
C.L.A.S.H.:
1997
"Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded."
-Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Ass't Sec'y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997
1999
Steenland K.
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, Ohio 45226, USA. kns1@cdc.gov
In 1994 the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) published a study of risk assessment for heart disease and lung cancer resulting from workplace exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) among nonsmokers. This assessment is currently being revised. The present article considers different possible approaches to a risk assessment for heart disease among nonsmokers resulting from workplace ETS exposure, reviews the approach taken by OSHA in 1994, and suggests some modifications to that approach. Since 1994 the literature supporting an association between ETS exposure and heart disease among never smokers (sometimes including long-term former smokers) has been strengthened by new studies, including some studies that have specifically considered workplace exposure. A number of these studies are appropriate for inclusion in a meta-analysis, whereas a few may not be due to methodological problems or problems in exposure definition. A meta-analysis of eight relative risks (either rate ratios or odds ratios) for heart disease resulting from workplace ETS exposure, based on one reasonable selection of appropriate studies, yields a combined relative risk of 1.21 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04-1.41). This relative risk, which is similar to that used by OSHA in 1994, yields an excess risk of death from heart disease by age 70 of 7 per 1000 (95% CI 0.001-0.013) resulting from ETS exposure in the workplace. This excess risk exceeds OSHA's usual threshold for regulation of 1 per 1000. Approximately 1,710 excess ischemic heart disease deaths per year would be expected among nonsmoking U.S. workers 35-69 years of age exposed to workplace ETS.
Of course, the quote from C.L.A.S.H. talks of PELs, the Steenland piece of heart disease, but whether that’s entirely apples and oranges, I don’t know. But the figure 1,710 appears to be a far cry from the figure 40,000. (Am I reading that right?)
Also, I love the way these people talk of "a reasonable selection of appropriate studies," since we're all supposed to take their word for it. Guess those such as were included in Walt's list were neither reasonable selections nor appropriate studies!
Note also the CI of 1.04-1.41. Selected studies and still just barely into the statistical significant category!
Politics, politics.
.
This morning before going to work I was in my back garden watering the plants and having a smoke. My new next door (2 weeks) neighbour aggressively told me that my smoke was blowing into his garden and if I had any decency I would move down wind. I politely pointed out that to be down wind I would have to climb over his fence, cross his garden and climb into his neighbours garden and that was unreasonable. To which he responded that he should not have to put up with the stink of cigarettes. Normally very polite, at this point I told him he could sell his f%$%£"g house and move out if it bothered him that much.
I am convinced that most antis are not aware of how much anger and hatred they spread--most are of simple, malleable minds. I don't believe that your neighbor realizes that he's been infected with a disease of the mind and soul.
GreatScot, I think it's good for you to give him pause for thought. Moreover, I hope you still enjoy your garden. (I'm guessing that your "garden" is much like my "lawn" but better kept.) And, for the record, I think that spelling neighbor with a "u" is so...romantic!
DancingTigerBait - "...And, for the record, I think that spelling neighbor with a "u" is so...romantic!"
..............
Well, I don't know about "romantic," but personally I prefer British spelling for some words:
Honour
Valour
Endeavour
Like everyone else, I can be picky about some words, too...
"Ignorance" does not mean the same thing as "stupidity."
All excuses are reasons, but not all reasons are excuses.
The constant overuse of some words and/or phrases:
Impact
Basically, ...
Then, in our struggle, phrases or claims that set off alarms:
"Experts say..."
"Most experts agree..."
"The consensus among scientists..."
"The debate is over."
"It is well documented/established..."
"To protect the children and elderly..."
"A just released study supports..."
And, of course, the deliberate changing of the definition of:
Association and/or correlation to "cause."
"Most experts agree..."
"Four out of five dentists recommend..."?
LOL, seriously, once again, you do make some good points there, Rod.
DancingTigerBait - LOL, seriously, once again, you do make some good points there, Rod.
..........
DTB,
Thank you, but I have to point out that this blog is rich with talented posters. The free exchange of ideas and points of view is very stimulating. Something that is not in evidence with most of Big Tobacco Control.
Understandably, a casual glance at this site would lead one to believe it's all about the right to smoke.
We know it's not.
At bottom, we oppose social engineering. Or rather, we oppose forced change by a person or group that knows what's best for us.
Forced behavior change has a sorry history. As a theory, it is very alluring. But, the very word "engineering" is not very applicable to human nature, culture, etc.
Attempting to apply engineering, mechanical principles to humans has almost always ended in failure, at best, and horrible consequences at worst.
The failures are legion. Yet, inexplicably, attempts are made, over and over to make it work.
I realize it's trite, but:
"One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again,expecting a different result."
At present, the "Social Engineers" have gained power. Dissenters are silenced. The targets are demonized.
It has been said that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Or...
"Power attracts the corruptible."
The best position is to have power and profit by it financially at the same time.
Number Watch
Home URL: http://tinyurl.com/37gkyj
Then and now – a personal view of bias and censorship
Back in the early pre-historical dawn of experimental science, i.e. 1959, I began a PhD project on the electrical breakdown of liquid insulants. An abstruse topic, you might well think, but a small improvement could have saved billions of dollars and put all those overhead power lines that now so excite the epidemiologists underground.
The received wisdom in those days was that there was such a thing as intrinsic breakdown strength. That is to say that the voltage at which the sample breaks down (sparks) depends only on the properties of the liquid and not upon the apparatus and test method. A consequence of this theory was that the higher average breakdown voltage you got (for a given thickness of sample) and the lower the scatter of the normally distributed results, the greater your skill as an experimentalist. Lo and behold, published averages got higher and higher while scatter got lower and lower. I made a few preliminary measurements and got result nowhere near the published ones. I was about to give up and go on to some other topic before it was too late, when I attended a research seminar by one Andreas Sletten. He had demonstrated that high breakdown strengths could be caused by an impurity (oxygen), which blew the reigning theory out of the water. This gave me courage to carry on and I was able to show that the way the voltage was applied by the traditional manual control methods also contributed to high averages and low scatters. When I attended my first scientific conference at Durham University the following year, I discovered in the course of conversation with various people that at least a dozen pieces of research had gone unreported because the results obtained were not considered high enough. If all the unpublished results had been included the average publicly acknowledged value for breakdown strength would have been halved. Some research careers were killed at the outset because they failed to conform to the theory.
This was made all the more poignant by my research supervisor, a classical absent-minded professor who used to get the generations of students mixed up, and often referred to poor John Brignell, who never got his PhD because of low results, yet was probably right.
I have never said it publicly before, but the proponents are all probably now dead and gone, most of the senior academics in this field were lying in their teeth. Many of the published results were, in my view, impossible to achieve. I introduced computer-controlled methods of measurement that eliminated the “human skill” factor (much to the horror of senior colleagues of the “precision measurement” school) and demonstrated that wide statistical variation was intrinsic to the breakdown phenomenon, as the concept of the weakest link and extreme value statistics would demand. Conduction and breakdown properties of the materials had been “shown” to vary with such abstruse phenomena as molecular chain length, when the variations concerned were less than I was getting between nominally identical samples prepared by almost absurdly careful methods (such as multi-stage distillation in a system that had been baked under high vacuum).
The millions of man-hours that went into all that worldwide research have proved worthless in the pursuit of human progress. The main reason for this failure was the formulation of an establishment orthodoxy that prevented the publication of alternatives. In fact, when the intrinsic strength theory collapsed, it was immediately replaced by an equal and opposite, and equally banal, theory that all the phenomena were caused by sub-microscopic solid particle impurities. It again became difficult to publish results that disagreed with the new orthodoxy. The theorists felt secure in the knowledge that no one could make the measurements necessary to undermine their claims. It took me years of work to dispose of that one, and involved an elaborate computer aided experiment that measured the actual charges carried by randomly moving particles (femto-coulombs) and showed that they were many orders of magnitude too small to accommodate the theory. I spent a few more years knocking down theories, which in my Popperian view was the very stuff of science, but gradually moved over to the development of sensors that measured what needed to be measured, rather than relying of indirect deductions. Nevertheless, the general unease about the state of measurement science never left me and, in fact, grew. Most ominous was that fact that a new form of politics was emerging. Radicals of both the New Left and the New Right saw science not as an entity with its own integrity, but rather as a tool that they could bend to their own purposes.
Perhaps this background will go to explain the fact that I became something of a single-issue fanatic on the subject of “the abuse of measurement” and half a century later took early retirement to write a book with that as the sub-title. It is also the reason for the dismay with which I view the current scene. In one very important respect it is now even worse. Governments and the media now form part of the establishment that is trying to maintain particular theories against all the scientific evidence. Statistical fraud is openly practised by state sponsored bodies, such as the EPA. Worst of all, precious primary data, such as the historic temperature records, are being altered with Orwellian casualness to conform to the official theory rather than reality.
As detailed in Sorry, wrong number!, in 1989 Gordon Stewart wrote a paper challenging the official view that AIDs cases in the UK would reach tens of thousands by 1992. His paper remained unpublished during a four-year correspondence in which referees wrote comments such as “Why should I read a paper by someone who believes the earth is flat?”
Stewart’s paper, which was rejected by Nature, Science, the New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal, was proved to be correct to within a remarkable 10%. The “experts” were out by several orders of magnitude. The establishment ignored their shame and simply moved on. The same process is now taking place with the Global Warming Myth. The reward for conforming is millions of dollars worth of grants. The penalty for dissenting is being relegated to a remote corner of the World Wide Web (among the cranks and pornographers), which is the last home of scholarship, as practised by such lone battlers as John Daly.
O tempora, O Mores!
John Brignell, July 2003
The Bowling study was published recently, in April 2007. In the meantime the AMI figures for 2005 and probably even 2006 should be out. It doesn't take ages to count some 40 deaths, does it.
Why wasn't the study updated to at least include 2005 fully before publication, given the fact that this figure supposedly holds the key to the holy grail, the truth or untruth about the study's conclusions.
If any of the posters in this blog know how I can find the missing figures, please let me know. I would like to update the study with the most recent values.
I know this is way late. (My hard drive crashed.) But I thought I might address this from the Doctor:
"I accept your point that the valuation of the activity under question DOES play a role in the argument about how to address the hazard it poses. I agree that smoking is being valued at a lower level than the need for wood and so forth. I think that's a fair characterization."
Well, that is what it is. But treating one hazard differently than another is NOT consistent. And that seems to be an important word around here.
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