Well,
The whole fraud of these heart attack/smoking ban studies rests on various proponents leaving (or allowing) the general public to have the false impression that heart attack rates remain unchanged in the absence of a smoking ban.
it's obvious the authors screened many localities within the state of CO to chose El Paso County for use as a control.
Is there any doubt left that these studies are intentional academic fraud? ...or research misconduct? serious charges, to say the least.
I would hope Doc would notify MMWR of all this. and urge them to retract this study or verify Doc's criticisms and include them in the editors comments ... and if they refuse, then the CDC is just as guilty of research misconduct as the authors are.
If we have a 320 million population which includes 20% [64 million] to 30% [96 million] current, and 60% [192 million] ever smokers.
We should see, by multiplying 64 million by .7% [.007], an expected mortality number of 448,000 smokers dying every year, regardless of smoking with no expectation of a reduced lifespan, which is quite likely, exactly where the 450,000 figure originated.
If we look at TOTAL POPULATION and apply the same .7% [.007] figure we find not surprisingly 2.24 million which is very close to the current mortality rate regardless of cause.
This would indicate "smoking related" has very little effect on mortality or longevity in the short term. The one risk factor which should be recognized as having the lions share of effect would be aging as it always has.
I have questioned the “Professionals” for a few years now, asking if we have the same number of smokers today, as we had fifty years ago, how is it; the smoking related, or smoking caused, disease figures continue to grow? Lung cancers for instance which are believed to be primarily caused by tobacco use have increased six fold and heart diseases have grown in similar proportions. There is an obvious reluctance to answer, because an explanation would reveal their slight of hand, when making other more insidious claims.
Michael's latest evaluations in this thread fails to recognize the obvious. If smoker prevalence has increased or decreased in the short term [less than a decade] or if exposure to ETS has changed, even substantially, we could never see any substantial change in mortality or morbidity rates this soon.
Effects, if any, will not be seen for many years. Simplistically because of the number of years it would require for any of those changes to have any detectable effect.
If the cause takes years to have an effect, how would the reversal of those damages be seen in larger numbers than [in a time line perspective] they are actually claimed to occur, and in far less time than it takes for those effects to develop?
Obviously they could not.
We do not see smoking related diseases develop among young people in any significant numbers so they are known to be diseases seen in old age.
If the cure for heart disease is as simple as restricting a person from exposure to ETS or smoking what do we need heart specialists and surgeons for? We can cure ourselves and in very short order by staying home for a few weeks like you would to recover from a cold.
Once again the Public Health cult is making itself into a laughing stock while trying to sell the laughable risk of second hand smoke.
In short; how can the rate of cure be higher than the rate of new diagnosed cases, unless you are saying there is no other primary cause and the majority of effects of that cause can be seen and substantially mitigated in a very short term [2-3 months?]?
The fat pandemic people will be very upset, when faced with your latest testimony of your conversations with God, and the resulting revelations.
Is heart disease now being described as a bad case of the flu?
Dr. Siegel, why did the authors use the rates per 100,000 person-years? Doesn't the age of the population have to be taken into consideration?
"Dr. Siegel, why did the authors use the rates per 100,000 person-years?"
Pretty obvious Ann,
So that you can capture large numbers of those not at risk and include the effects seen by other causes to create scary numbers.
More of Repace's tornadoes in play.
However, I am first a scientist and I believe that in public health, our conclusions must be based on solid science, not just on conjecture or our deeply felt desire to see the success of our policies.
IF you really felt that way Doc, you would never have pushed your agenda the way you did, using faulty reports.
You claim to have treated thousands of patients suffering from "smoking related diseases".........how many of them were UNDER the age of 65?
It is not only puplic health officials and anti smoking activists who have no integrity. Marcia Angell of Harvard Medical School in The New York Review of Books concludes, "It is no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached over two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."
Ann asked: "Dr. Siegel, why did the authors use the rates per 100,000 person-years? Doesn't the age of the population have to be taken into consideration?"
Ann - In this case, using the raw numbers versus the rates has NO effect on the results. The results are EXACTLY the same either way. The reason is that it appears the authors are using the same population data for all years - from the year 2006. It also doesn't appear that the rates are age-adjusted.
However, because we are looking at changes over a very short period of time, the population and age changes are unlikely to have any major effect on the results.
After the smoking ban,I would have expected a rise in heart attacks
How stress triggers heart attack
"The UCL team looked at 34 men who had suffered a heart attack or severe chest pain an average of 15 months earlier.
From these they identified 14 whose symptoms had been preceded by acute stress, anger and depression." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/healt...lth/
4754658.stm
Sorry, but I think that population does indeed play a great role here. It has been a few years since I have been to Colorado and I am sure there have been many changes in the countryside since my last visit, but I think that comparing Pueblo to El Paso County is like comparing apples to oranges. Colorado Springs alone has a higher population, more buildings, more traffic, etc than Pueblo. Colorado Springs brings with it 4 Military Installations, The Air Force Academy, Peterson Field Air Force Base, Cheyenne Mountain and now I am having a senior moment and can't remember the name of the Army installation. Anyway, those places alone has a revolving population with permanent change of station moves and temporary duties being a daily change. Another problem with using an area with a high military population when bragging about smoking bans is, how many are now out of country and in a war zone and their heart attacks aren't being counted. How many military, active duty or retired once lived in a dangerous area and were proned to dangerous chemicals. I understand that Agent Orange, just one nasty chemical is pretty dangerous. What group are these people lumped into? Are they non smokers, smokers or post ban people? You can give me pre and post ban data, population, area mass or any other criteria you want, but nothing will determine the answer to higher or lower admissions until you have a true account of everyday of every persons life to be able to determine what saved them!
How many people died from Chanticide?
http://whyquit.com/pr/102208.html
Apparently not Diane
http://chronicle.com/news/articl...k-on-
reputation
I feel sorry to say that Rose's link and this one
http://www.preventcancer.com/los.../other/
doll.htm
seem to shed a dim (twi-)light on Doll whom I always considered as a respectable scientist.
Heres another
"Sir Richard offered his unsolicited views in a letter to Justice Phillip Evatt, who headed the inquiry, and gave Agent Orange a clean bill of health"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
scienc...h.lifeandhealth
In writing and releasing this report, the CDC has knowingly engaged in scientific fraud.
Ah, the Army Post in Colorado Springs is Fort Collins. Not that anyone might care, but it is just one of those moments when something you forget and shouldn't forget comes popping back in and you just need to say it. Thankfully it didn't pop in during the middle of the night. Anyway, the solders at Fort Collins has been exposed to so many toxic chemicals, it is hardly fair to lump them or any illness into a smoking related disease. These people do what they do to protect you, not to be a statistic in your false studies in a quest to get a world that only you all see through rose colored glasses!
Bill wrote: "In writing and releasing this report, the CDC has knowingly engaged in scientific fraud."
First, I applaud Bill for having the courage and conviction to express his honest opinion about this work, even though it comes from the tobacco control movement.
But what I'm curious about Bill is why you believe this is scientific fraud, as opposed to simply being a severely biased piece of research?
Re: Stephen Helfer – Quote from Marcia Angell - "It is no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines.”
Just traced the quote to the article, Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption, in the New York Review of Books.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22237
It’s really a scary piece. The pharmaceutical industry is starting to make the tobacco companies look like pikers when it comes to deceiving the public to protect shareholder interests. And, the quote from Ms. Angell is an excellent example of why people start to laugh when you begin a conversation with: “A scientific study says . . .”
Reading articles like this makes it impossible to believe anything the “scientists” or the medical profession have to say on anything, including secondhand smoke. How did science and truth come to occupy opposite ends of the spectrum?
Hell, when even Bill Godshall points out that “the CDC has knowingly engaged in scientific fraud.” there’s obviously a serious problem.
And, Doc, if it’s that severely biased; if it’s meant to deliberately deceive the public, then it’s fraud.
I agree with Bill! This study is fabricated to deliberately mislead, misinform and frighten the public. That's robbery of peace of mind.
That's fraud "for personal gain or to damage another individual".
Michael - I am glad you mentioned “For this reason, the study cannot conclude that the observed changes in heart attacks are due to the smoking ban, rather than to other changes that took place over time, including changes in medications being used to treat heart disease, better diagnosis and more aggressive treatment of heart disease, and a substantial decline in smoking prevalence in Pueblo county during the study period, which may or may not be due to the smoking ban itself”
We would all like the truth, it is getting very hard to know what to believe any more.
So it is nothing to do with this "miracle drug" which must cost millions?
http://news.sky.com/skynews/
Home...And_Stroke_Risk
http://findarticles.com/p/articl...s_/
ai_n20902352
'Statins the miracle drug of the new millennium'.(Health & Fitness)(Prime time)
Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), September, 2004
Snip~
Johnson is one of more than 11 million Americans who receive statins. Health experts say three times as many should be using the drugs because more than 36 million people have high cholesterol. Drugs like Pfizer's Lipitor and Merck's Zocor are ...
This all brings me back to... "If there was no smoking, look how many lves -- smoker and non-smoker alike -- we would save." But also, the medical community in general, aside from the smoking issue, boast about reductions in certain types of deaths.
So let's see... fewer and fewer people are dying from heart-related ailments and cancer. Well then, I just want to know.... WHERE ARE THEY STACKING, OR WILL STACK, THE BODIES that obviously aren't being counted or won't be counted later. Or should we just sit tight and wait for the new forms to be printed with the new Cause of Death choice being "Divine Intervention" (God with wand: Poof, your time is up).
The population of the U.S. is 300 million today. Within 100 years all (from the baby born this second to the very oldest) but a number you can probably count on one, maybe two, hands will be dead.
Whose lives have these people "saved"??
And don't give me any of that "premature" poop. Soon they'll be saying a death before the age of 120 is premature because there've been reports this past week that soon we could all possibly live that long.
FYI everyone .....
now you can all view the study McFadden and I submitted to the BMJ and which was rejected mainly because they did not believe it contributed much for the general reader to what is already known about smoking and health. http://keepstlouisfree.blogspot....s-
no.html#links
what we did is derive regression equations describing the states' ami time trend curves, and got confidence intervals of actual yearly deviations from the line, which we then compared to years post ban to see if those ami rates were statistically different ( lower).
they were not.
we also used comparison states without widepsread smoking bans , and the USA overall for controls.
(notice what happens when one uses proper controls,,,,BTW)
if we worked for big antitobacco, all we would have had to do is omit the controls, and claim the declines after year 2000 were due to smoking bans....
and McFadden and I would be rich by now, and flying all over the USA giving speeches on how great smoking bans are.
versions without the equations, but with data for 2004 which were by then available, were submitted to Tobacco Control and Circulation with similar rejections.
It's easy being and anti...but tough trying to tell the truth.
dave K
“But what I'm curious about Bill is why you believe this is scientific fraud, as opposed to simply being a severely biased piece of research?”
Maybe because it’s both, doctor?
“While I am not arguing here that the study intentionally used El Paso county in order to try to create the finding of a smoking ban effect on heart attacks ... Yes, I do think that the study wanted to find an effect of the smoking ban and that it lost its neutrality somewhere in the process.”
WANTED TO FIND AN EFFECT but lost its neutrality? Somewhere in the process? How about lost its neutrality even BEFORE the process began? How else are we supposed to account for the opening sentence of the editorial note of the study, which claims that brief secondhand smoke exposure triggers heart attacks? Are you trying to tell us that these people aren’t aware of the chicanery of that statement? If so, then you’re in effect calling them incompetent idiots.
So they may have wanted to find an effect of the smoking ban so badly that they were self-duped, poor dears. They may not have engaged in scientific fraud, they may merely have put out this obvious crap because they’re slaves to their own biases. Gotcha.
You know, doctor, there are times when you give people the benefit of the doubt and there are times when, after a long train of mush, Common Sense dispenses with the benefit of the doubt and starts calling a spade a spade.
Godshall is exactly correct. When are you going to stop mumbling namby-pamby inanities?
.
I admit I haven't yet read the study in question but I'll plunge ahead and ask: If, as the lead article here says, hospital admissions for AMI didn't notably decline, then how do they reckon the incidence declined? Are they counting people who were (pre v post ban) told by their GP, "that must've been a heart attack you had last month"? Or the number of people who died (pre ban) before they got to the hospital vs the number of people who, post ban, didn't die at all because they didn't have a heart attack in the first place? How do you count THAT?
Mandy--
In the Angell article Stephen mentioned and Matt linked to, there's a passage about how the cholesterol guidelines were determined by a board of physicians, most of whom had financial ties to statin manufacturers. Then, too, if you read "Good calories, Bad calories," a book by NY Times science writer Gary Taubes, he goes into stunning detail on how the cholesterol/ diet "consensus" was craftily arrived at--money, peer pressure, status, bandwagon, and a huge push from government agencies-- in the face of tremendous opposing evidence. The parallels to ETS "consensus" make it worth reading.
This is not to say--at least not categorically-- that statins can't benefit a small number of people, especially -- or perhaps only-- middle-aged men who've had a previous heart attack-- but their widespread use is highly questionable at best.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/Articl...1231?
hub=Health
"This study is very dramatic," said Dr. Michael Thun, a researcher with the American Cancer Society.
"This is now the ninth study, so it is clear that smoke-free laws are one of the most effective and cost-effective to reduce heart attacks," said Thun, who was not involved in the CDC study released Thursday.
The study assumed declines in the amount of secondhand smoke in Pueblo buildings after the ban, but did not try to measure that. The researchers also did not sort out which heart attack patients were smokers and which were not, so it's unclear how much of the decline can be attributed to reduced secondhand smoke.
I just read the AP story about this today. The link was on Yahoo's main web page. This was the headline:
"Smoking ban leads to major drop in heart attacks"
The tone and content for most of the article reflects the message delivered in the headline. Then towards the end you get this:
“But the study had limitations: It assumed declines in the amount of secondhand smoke in Pueblo buildings after the ban, but did not try to measure that. The researchers also did not sort out which heart attack patients were smokers and which were not, so it's unclear how much of the decline can be attributed to reduced secondhand smoke.
One academic argued there's not enough evidence to conclude the smoking ban was the cause of Pueblo's heart attack decline.
The decline could have had more to do with a general decline in smoking in Pueblo County, from about 26 percent in 2002-2003 to less than 21 percent in 2004-2005. If there were stepped-up efforts to treat or prevent heart disease in the Pueblo area, that too could have played a role, said Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health.
"I don't think it's as clear as they're making it out to be," Siegel said.
If the person who wrote the headline had been more conscientious, the title of the article would have been:
"Some believe smoking ban has lead to major drop in heart attacks"
That would not have been misleading. Instead, it's written as an indisputable fact, so anyone who sees the bold headline on Yahoo and doesn’t read the entire story now believes it to be true. That's a great example of lazy writing and a lack of journalistic integrity. Unfortunately it happens all the time.
Mike inquired:
"But what I'm curious about Bill is why you believe this is scientific fraud, as opposed to simply being a severely biased piece of research?"
First, any objective research on the impact of smokefree workplace policies (on the heart attack rate and/or the hospitalization admission rate for heart attacks) would acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of workers already had a smokefree workplace before (and in many cases, many years before) comprehensive smokefree workplace laws have been enacted/implemented.
In other words, the enactment/implementation of comprehensive smokefree workplace laws provides no more than an additional 10%-25% of workers with a smokefree workplace.
Second, any objective research on the public health impact of smokefree policies would compare data (especially easily obtainable and comparable data) for hundreds (or at least dozens) of municipalities/states instead of
focussing on data from just one, two or three locations.
If the hypothesis is true (that implementing a smokefree law sharply reduces heart attack rates and/or heart attack admissions rates), similar findings should occur in the vast majority of the hundreds of municipalities and dozens of states that have enacted these laws.
Cherry picking, reporting and hyping data from just a few locations, while intentionally ignoring data from all other locations (because considering that other data would render their hypethesis wrong) is not science, but rather fraud posing as science.
"Cherry picking, reporting and hyping data from just a few locations, while intentionally ignoring data from all other locations (because considering that other data would render their hypethesis wrong) is not science, but rather fraud posing as science."
What more needs to be said?
Bill, I thank you, and I agree.
Cherry picking, reporting and hyping data from just a few locations, while intentionally ignoring data from all other locations (because considering that other data would render their hypethesis wrong) is not science, but rather fraud posing as science.
Bill Godshall
An excellent first step Mr. Godshall, it is pleasant to see at least some in the anti-smoker ranks are starting the New Year out in the proper frame of mind. Now if you can just start convincing the rest of your colleagues that truth is the way to go we may actually get somewhere.
The fraud in this particular "study" is nothing new and needs to be addressed in all of the cherry-picked frauds perpetrated upon the masses by the anti-smoker industrial complex.
JustheFacts, Scary thought, living for 120 years, just found this. It will not be tobacco control that will be need in 100 years, it will be population control. For everything there is a consequence. China, one child per family and millions of abortions come to mind.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/
Home...115_In_Portugal
There are now only 82 women and nine men verified as being 110 or older, according to gerontologist Dr Stephen Coles of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr Coles said they appear to share one trait that might account for their longevity - they come from families whose members are long-lived.
He said: "Whether they drink alcohol or not, it doesn't matter. Whether they smoke cigarettes or not doesn't seem to matter.
omments "
The last few lines are interesting, relationg to lifestyle.
Gee Bill, now go back and read the EPA report, the SG report, and every antismoking website on the planet,,
and you'll see they are all cherry-picked data, and hyped just a few small studies about shs while ignoring much larger studies about shs too.
"knowingly engaged in scientific fraud" VS "simply being a severely biased piece of research".
If the CDC knowingly set out to get fixed result, it is deception and therefore fraud.
If the CDC got a good result through incompetence and serendipity then it is just institutionally incompetent and lucky.
It's unlikely that the CDC is institutionally incompetent (or that luck played a part) and given that it (the CDC) is not known to be full of tobacco lovers, I would think that on a balance of probabilities , Bill is right.
It's unlikely that the CDC is institutionally incompetent (or that luck played a part) and given that it (the CDC) is not known to be full of tobacco lovers, I would think that on a balance of probabilities , Bill is right.
Fredrik Eich
We could of course run a test to see the rough percentage chance such a string of results was due to accident/incompetence alone(ie run the test for all towns/states with smoking bans and see how lucky they got just happening to choose Pueblo, Helena, etc.)
At any rate, I appreciate Bill taking a strong stance on this matter.
Dave K wrote:
"Gee Bill, now go back and read the EPA report, the SG report, and every antismoking website on the planet,,
and you'll see they are all cherry-picked data, and hyped just a few small studies about shs while ignoring much larger studies about shs too."
I disagree. But even more importantly, in a civilized society, nobody has a right to force hazardous levels of pollutants into the bodies of other people, especially on a daily basis.
Bill
You can't shut industry down and ban all forms of transport that use fossil fuels, its just not realistic.
Like they used to say in the 50's , pollution is the price of progress.
Luckily air pollution has lessened a bit since then.
"According to the most recent Environmental Protection Agency data, New York City has the dirtiest air in America. In the whole country, no city population has a greater risk of getting cancer from breathing air than residents of our five boroughs"
"History also plays a part. After WWII, General Motors bought up most of America’s railways and destroyed them or left them unused, forcing interstate commerce to shift away from trains and become mostly dependent upon the trucking industry.
GM admitted this in a document entitled “The Truth About American Ground Transport,” which was submitted to the U.S. Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate in April 1974. GM was convicted along with Standard Oil and Firestone for this conspiracy in 1949.
This conspiracy led to more emissions from cars and trucks, especially in California where these oil and car companies battled against transportation alternatives not powered by petroleum. As a frightening result, all over the country, pollution became concentrated in high-traffic urban areas."
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007.../01/
82308.shtml
Bill
Just for you, a wicked lie from the tobacco companies.
"I attended General Motors' press conference this morning for Sir Richard. He should have had on a GM blue blazer.
Doll said it is a mistake to attribute cancer to recent developments in industrial countries.
"I don't expect much trouble from chemicals introduced in the last 30 years," he said.
"Industrial development and high standard of living are not necessarily associated with a high incidence of cancer."
Doll said a decrease in total number of cancers among both men and women in industrialized Japan proves industrial causes are not important. Cigarettes cause 40 percent of all fatal cancers in Britain, Doll said. These would be eliminated if the population did not smoke. He also blames dietetic factors, such as amount of fat eaten.
TTO asked Doll: "Do you have any second thoughts at all -- since your work does deal with cancer and the environment -- about accepting an award from an industry which is having its own controversies concerning polluting the environment."
Doll: "No ....... To be honest with you, No."
(Another scribe to me: "He's blushing.")
http://tobaccodocuments.org/ti/T...10278-
0279.html
Bill makes some excellent points regarding the scientific issues here. First, he correctly points out that most workers were already protected by smoke-free workplaces, so the number of people affected by these laws is only a fraction of the overall population. Thus, it is simply implausible to see effects of this magnitude in such a short time due merely to a reduction in secondhand smoke.
I also think Bill makes an important point in suggesting that using one or two comparison groups is simply not sufficient to draw conclusions like this.
Finally, I applaud Bill for being willing to publicly call the CDC on this poor science.
I disagree. But even more importantly, in a civilized society, nobody has a right to force hazardous levels of pollutants into the bodies of other people, especially on a daily basis.
Bill Godshall | 01.06.09 - 6:11 pm | #
Bill.... other than cherry-picked data, and hype from a few small studies, you have no evidence that these are hazardous levels.
Ring,Ring,Ring.
Doctor: "CDC?"
CDC: "Yes, Thats us, who is this?"
Doctor: "It's Dr Michael Siegel, remember me and how are you?"
CDC: "Oh, Er , Um , Oh ... Hi Dr Siegel, been kicked out of any cults recently?"
Doctor: "Oh, just the usual , Campaign for Otter-Free Kids, Rabbit Free Movies and Campaign for Fat Free Fat, The Campaign for Free Public Money."
CDC: "Oh, really?"
Doctor: "Yes, really. Just one more thing [in the style of Colombo] are you fraudsters?"
CDC: (clunk)
Per Dr. Siegel, "Of course you are going to find that the rate of heart attacks in El Paso County did not decline all that much, given the increase in smoking. El Paso County is clearly not going to give you a good, representative picture of what the actual secular trend in heart attack admissions is."
If you scroll down to the bottom of the study and look at Fig.2 and the table ...
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/
..._cid=mm5751a1_e
you'll find that there has been absolutely no change in the rate of AMI hospitalizations in El Paso county even though the number of tobacco consumers there has grown from "17.4% in 2002-2003 to 22.3% in 2004-2005."
Additionally in every year covered by the study the "rate of hospitalizations" was lower in the control groups, (no smoking bans there) than in Pueblo. Even with the ban Pueblo's rate is only about even with the control groups now who don't have bans.
Without more data that covers more of the years prior to 2002 it can't known if 2002 was just a statistical spike for AMI hospitalizations in Pueblo, (a great date to start with if you are trying to make a point about the subsequent years), or if the control groups have always been twice as heart healthy as the city of Pueblo was in 2002 and previous years.
There is something of significance to this study.
Per Dr. Siegel, "The study doesn't try to hide this fact. It openly acknowledges that the reported smoking prevalence in El Paso County (the comparison group) increased from 17.4% in 2002-2003 to 22.3% in 2004-2005."
It is significant that even with a 28% increase in the number of tobacco consumers that there has been no increase in AMI hospitalizations either for the tobacco consumers themselves or for all of the non-smokers who are exposed to the extra smoke produced by the increased number of tobacco consumers.
I suppose we will have to wait 60 or 70 years to see what impact this increase in tobacco consumption will have on the numbers?
Advocate for CASH
It's the smoke you can't smell that is the most dangerous.
in a civilized society, nobody has a right to force hazardous levels of pollutants into the bodies of other people, especially on a daily basis.
Really Bill? Good, then we can finally ban all cars, trucks, planes, buses. Not to mention fireplaces, wood/coal/pellet stoves, oil burners, gas furnaces.
After all, the pollutant exhausts they produce is forced into the bodies of other people on a daily basis as well. AND in far greater quantities than cigarette smoke - which makes them a whole lot MORE hazardous.
Same goes for all chemicals in cleansers, perfumes, etc.
Anything that is put into the air, for that matter, falls into this category as well.
Be careful what you ask for Bill, you may just get more than you bargained for....because I'd bet the farm there's some mamby-pamby out there just itching to ban something you love.
in a civilized society, nobody has a right to force hazardous levels of pollutants into the bodies of other people, especially on a daily basis.
Bill continues with anti sound bite that has no root in scientific proof or rational thought. It's quite pathetic. And there need only be two very simple responses to it. Dave K. provided the first...
1. No evidence that these are hazardous levels.
2. Stay out of places that you have absolutely NO ENTITLEMENT to be in.
THAT makes for a civilized society. What you demand is the antithesis to that.
I wonder... Bill, if you walked into -- invited yet! -- my home while I was smoking would you accuse me of forcing smoke into your body?
Eich: "If the CDC knowingly set out to get fixed result, it is deception and therefore fraud."
So what did Judge Osteen have to say about that 1992 EPA report? Why nothing more than that the EPA had committed to a conclusion before research had begun. But is that the very same report that Dr. Siegel signed off on? The very same. So obviously there can be no fraud in setting out to get a fixed result in the CDC case when there was no fraud in committing to a conclusion beforehand in the EPA case. Is that not true?
.
Random comments after reading the actual study:
I note that while heart attacks in Pueblo City were reduced by 19% in the first post ban phase, it seems (Table 3) that in the same period there was a reduction in the surrounding banless county of 16%. Tho math's not my suit, the reduction was from 89 to 76 cases or 13 fewer cases which is about 1/6th (16.6%) and even if I figured it the wrong way, it's at least 1/7th or 14+%. Yet that's somehow dismissed as not being relevant.
Then too, what is it about Pueblo (the city) that's so different from the surrounding and alternative county that its AMI rates were so much higher to begin with (and continue to be higher even though reduced)? This apparently points to some other factor. Are the people of the city more heart attack prone? (if so, why?) and therefore more subject,at least in recent years, to preventive interventions? What are the demographic (age, sex, economic, ethnic) and occupational differences? What are the differences in the frequency and quality of medical care? In fact, what are the differences in sheer numerical population?
Finally on the plane of basic logic: The study admits that no data were available on whether study subjects were nonsmokers or smokers, determining what portion of the observed decrease in hospitalizations was attributable to reduced SHS exposure among nonsmokers and what portion was attributable to increased quitting among smokers was not possible
Why limit the reasoning to only these 2 possible explanations? If, for instance, we discovered there were fewer murders in New York City following the ban, would we limit our grapplings for an explanation to whether this was a) attributable to the ban (fewer people being exposed to murderous smokers in bars) or to smokers staying home and therefor not drinking and becoming murderous? Sherlock Holmes said When you eliminate all other possible explanations, the one that remains must be the answer. But in the Mystery of Pueblo, no other possible explanations were explored.
:
Oh-- and finally, if I read it right, they admit they had no data on the smoking prevalence (either pre or post ban) for the city (as opposed to the county) of Pueblo. This makes their assumptions about quit rates accounting for the heart attack decline even more tenuous since nothing backs it up.
:
But even more importantly, in a civilized society, nobody has a right to force hazardous levels of pollutants into the bodies of other people, especially on a daily basis.
Oh, Bill, tell us, is anybody doing this to you? Shame on them.
Have you ever thought about apologizing to those who were forced to inhale YOUR hazardous levels of tobacco smoke while you smoked?
I won't even mention your neighborhood on which you force the deadly exhaust fumes of your car.
But even more importantly, in a civilized society, nobody has a right to force hazardous levels of pollutants into the bodies of other people, especially on a daily basis.
So--Bill--if you agree smokers are addicts, then you'll agree nobody has a right to, essentially, force hazardous levels of cold exposure onto the bodies of other people, especially on a daily basis, and especially towards people who work in places open til 2 AM?
You can say it's a smoker's choice to quit, but actually, it's a nonsmoker's choice to go somewhere nonsmoking. Those places do exist. And deciding, "hey, I'll go somewhere else" is easier than giving up an addiction.
you never layed a glove on the study.
second hand smoke is much more dangerous than anyone dreamed.
you're no scientist.
from reading your comments you seem to rely heavily on the idea that smoking causes heart attacks.
why wouldn't second hand smoke cause heart attacks too?
you can't separate the two.
you're saying smoking causes heart attacks and shouldn't we be against that?
@Larry Thiel: dream on. Are you a scientist?
You know that you can die from inhaling engine exhaust gases within minutes? Why don't people in our cities keel over by the thousands?
Commenting by HaloScan
