 The Good Housekeeping's Secondhand smoke: The Real Risk for You and Your Family article is a splendid example of public opinion engineering: aimed at the intellectual middle-brow -- which constitutes the larger amount of the population -- it divulges one-sided opinions and data straight out of the antismokers agenda to a readership that does not have the means or the knowledge to verify this information. Complete with drawings, schematics, and charts, the lies go as far as stating that, after having a smoking guest, it is necessary to open the windows for several hours to diffuse the residual gases from smoking! Not satisfied of misinforming the public to an almost unprecedented level, the magazine also teaches how to lie about one's health to induce smokers to guilt and psycological discomfort, and obtain the desired nonsmoking result. At FORCES, every day we think we have seen it all. Every day we are WRONG. We guess that this is because our imagination is still limited by a sense of integrity and morality that is quickly falling out of fashion, and political favour.
RESPONSE FROM GIAN TURCI (FORCES Canada) Calling the much-criticized but influential 1993 EPA report on second-hand smoke "definitive", the magazine seeks to convince its readers that second-hand smoke poses high risks for nonsmokers that include lung cancer, cancer of the colon, kidneys, pancreas and ovaries, as well as a host of other ills. More than 50,000 heart and artery disease deaths per year are attributed to second hand smoke. Even old tobacco residues in a room "can continue to give off small amounts of toxic substances for days or weeks," the author cautions, although "researchers generally consider these odors to be unpleasant rather than dangerous." (Maybe not for long: we're told scientists are nowhere near finished cataloguing all the dangers of second-hand smoke. ) Nothing, of course, is said about another environmental crisis -- the overall air pollution problem as it exists in our big cities, which produces megatons of the same substances that cigarettes give off in only tiny amounts. Whether it's bronchitis, heart disease, cancer of Sudden Infant Death Syndome, if you're a non-smoker and you've got it, chances are that second-hand smoke is implicated, the article implies. Readers are urged to lobby for smoking ban legislation, and assured that any opposition mounted toward such measures is surely inspired and funded by tobacco interests. There are even specific suggestions for how to punish a teenager who is caught smoking (the authors apparently are convinced that this will be a deterrent) for those parents who are well-intentioned but can't figure out for themselves how to behave with their families. GOOD HOUSEKEEPING: BAD JOURNALISMBy Martha Perske
I have a problem with Good Housekeeping portraying itself as "the magazine America trusts." Trust carries with it a responsibility to report things in an objective and honest manner, and this has not been done in an article by Phillip Hilts appearing in the magazine's November 1996 issue. ("Secondhand Smoke: The Real Risk for You and Your Family") 1 Mr. Hilts, a science reporter at the New York Times, seems determined to prove his case against secondhand tobacco smoke by selectively reporting only the information that supports his contention and simply omitting all the evidence that doesn't.
Hilts touts as "definitive" the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 1993 report that classified secondhand smoke as a Group A human carcinogen -- but makes no mention of other dissenting government reports. Among them, for example, the 1995 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service which raised questions about the EPA report, and the 1994 U.S. Department of Energy report which deconstructed underlying studies used by the EPA. 2,3 Whether or not Hilts agrees with these reports, as an objective journalist (as opposed to a propagandist) he is obligated to at least acknowledge their existence.
Hilts claims that "more than 50,000 deaths per year from heart and artery disease are brought on by exposure to secondhand smoke" -- yet a 1996 study published in the American Heart Association's Circulation states that any association between coronary heart disease and exposure to secondhand smoke "remains controversial." 4 Results from the Circulation study showed that in the vast majority of cases the risk for male nonsmokers DECREASED with increased exposure to secondhand smoke -- a highly unlikely thing if secondhand smoke is the culprit Hilts makes it out to be. This study (one of the largest ever done) also found no statistically significant increased risk from exposure to tobacco smoke in the workplace. Furthermore, the Congressional Research Service report (ignored by Hilts) questioned claims about secondhand smoke and heart disease, noting, among other things, that two large new studies (also ignored by Hilts) had found no increased risk.
Hilts says that "For children who already have asthma, a smoking parent makes attacks both more frequent and more severe" (i.e., exacerbates asthma). He ignores a 1996 study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that states: "We did not detect an increase in reported exacerbations of asthma and chronic respiratory diseases among children exposed to [tobacco smoke] in the home" 5 Elsewhere Hilts states that children whose parents smoke are almost twice as likely to get asthma, but again he disregards any evidence to the contrary. For instance, a 1992 CDC study 6 found that home-exposure to secondhand smoke was not a factor in causing childhood asthma, and the 1996 CDC study mentioned above also showed no statistically significant association between kids' exposure to tobacco smoke in the home and acute or chronic respiratory conditions (including asthma). Further, the EPA's Science Advisory Board panel found "insufficient evidence" that exposure to tobacco smoke causes childhood asthma. 7
Hilts unduly alarms his readers by saying that "...being married to a two-pack-a-day smoker for 20 years increases your risk of getting lung cancer by about 35 percent." This finding (arbitrarily chosen by Hilts from a controversial study 8) was not statistically significant and therefore proves nothing. However, even if the 35 percent increased risk cited by Hilts were actually true it would still be close to meaningless. That's because a 35 percent increased risk is just a more dramatic way of saying the relative risk is 1.35, and according to the National Cancer Institute, relative risks of less than 2.00 are "small" and "usually difficult to interpret... Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias, or effects of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident." 9 When a recent study showed that abortion increases a woman's risk for breast cancer by 30 percent (a relative risk of 1.30), Boston University's Dr. Lynn Rosenberg described the risk as "so minuscule as to be not worth considering." The EPA (who so readily indicted secondhand smoke based on a relative risk of 1.19) refused to classify electromagnetic fields as a cause of cancer "largely because the relative risks...have seldom exceeded 3.0..." 10 Hilts further spreads fear by claiming that being married to a two-pack-a-day smoker for 40 years brings the risk to 80 percent (relative risk of 1.80). Again, this finding came from the same controversial study mentioned above 8, was not statistically significant, and was based on only 24 cases of cancer!
In Hilts' article, virtually all the people he interviewed (or in any case that he quotes) are tobacco control advocates or anti-smoking activists who are paid (often with taxpayers' dollars ) to impart their "expertise." What's so troubling is that he quotes them without identifying their double roles. Equally troubling, in a side-bar to Hilts' article, a non-smoker (annoyed because her boss "sneaks cigarettes" in the bathroom of their non-smoking office) is advised to start lying. The advice from Julia Carol, a spokesperson from Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, is flat-out: "Tell your boss you're allergic to cigarette smoke (even if you're not)..." Lying, of course, is an interesting means of persuasion, highly effective and highly corrupt -- as is misinforming the public with biased information. Or, as pointed out by Dr. John Luik, Senior Associate of the Niagara Institute, "...the entire project of corrupted science, like all projects of deception, is designed to manipulate individuals and society to do things that they would not normally do, and to do so based on a false picture of reality. The liar's game is, after all, morally deviant precisely because it subverts our autonomy by misinforming us. The liar distorts the truth in order to obtain our consent not through argument but through coercion. And the great enemy of freedom is not so much overt coercion but the coercion brought about by biased information." 11 FOOTNOTES (1) Good Housekeeping, November 1996. (2) Congressional Research Service Report, November 14, 1995. Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer Risk. (3) Choices in Risk Assessment: The Role of Science Policy in the Environmental Risk Management Process. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, 1994. See Chapter 10: Workplace Indoor Air Quality. (4) Steenland et al., Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Coronary Heart Disease in the American Cancer Society CPS-II Cohort, Circulation, August 15, 1996. Vol. 94, No. 4 (5) CDC study: Mannino et al., Environmental Tobacco Smoke Exposure and Health Effects in Children: Results from the 1991 National Health Interview Survey, Tobacco Control 1996; 5:13-18 (6) CDC study: Taylor et al., Impact of Childhood Asthma on Health, Pediatrics, November 1992. Vol. 90, No. 5 (7) Science Advisory Board Report, "An SAB Report: Review of Draft Passive Smoking Health Effects Document," November 1992, p. 5. EPA-SAB-IAQC-93-003. (8) Fontham et al., 1994. Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer in Nonsmoking Women, JAMA, June 8, 1994. Vol. 271, No. 22. (9) National Cancer Institute release, 10-26-94. As reported in the Competitive Enterprise Institue newsletter, Washington, DC, February 1995. (10) Evaluation of the Potential Carcinogenicity of Electromagnetic Fields. EPA Review Draft, October 1990, EPA/600/6-90/0005B, p. 6-2 (11) "Pandora's Box: The Dangers of Politically Corrupted Science for Democratic Public Policy, " by John C. Luik. Bostonia, Winter 1993-94
Good Housekeeping 959 Eight Avenue New York, NY 10019 Abbotsford, B.C. November 19th, 1996 Dear Editor: Having read the article: Secondhand smoke: The Real Risk for You and Your Family, published in the November, 1996 issue, we have a few questions that we would like to have answered.
|
