The Forces Library
Velvet Glove Iron Fist: a History of Anti-smoking | Christopher Snowdon
Article Published: 2008
Published By: On Line
Available From: Portions of this book are available on line. Publication is pending.
Online Version: See here »»
Date Added: 04/28/2008
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Velvet Glove Iron Fist is brilliantly documented with firsthand sources to chronicle the ups and downs of antitobacco movements through the centuries. Of course, antismoking movements lead to other temperence movements that also morph into prohibitionist states. Using his thorough documentation, the author shows how the inability of healthcare professionals to cope with various conditions, primarily diseases, leads to "preventative medicine" mentalities that might or might not actually be preventative but will temporarily mask incompetence in healthcare professions.
Where preventative medicine is concerned in the passive smoking issue, consider modern experts from antismoking organizations who testify that people will die of diseases from passive smoking in forty years. So ... experts have testified that the disease(s) they are paid obscene amounts of money to fight will still be killing people in forty or fifty years, i.e. those experts are testifying that they aren't doing any good in the fight aganist those diseases. Also, I happen to know that the author initially began his research with the idea that secondhand smoke probably carried some degree of risk but that the risk was negligible; by the time he'd finished his book, he was convinced that the accusations against people who smoke were based on utter epidemiological fraud.
— Stephanie Stahl, FORCES International