When a public figure such as a former Surgeon General -- a focal point of American society -- sits on the stand and lies in part or whole -- and the press does not question him, this is a clear indication of a deep social disintegration that goes far beyond the smoking issue. It is inconceivable that Mr. Richmond is unaware that there is a hot scientific debate going on today about the dangers of second hand smoke, yet he says that the debate ended ten years ago (against second-hand smoking, of course). He states that lead is present in second-hand smoke, and it is equally inconceivable that Mr. Richmond does not know that lead exists in any food.
Richmond himself ought to be investigated on suspicion of perjury and conspiracy.
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: ' By 1986, "it was really established scientifically that there was a relationship between environmental tobacco smoke and the development of cancer and other disorders," Richmond testified Wednesday. Asked about the danger from smoke to people like attendants working in enclosed spaces, he said, "The risk would be considerable."'
COMMENTS: In fact, as of March 1992, the EPA's own scientists, such as Terry Harvey and others, were opposed to labeling ETS a human carcinogen, and said so in their reviews of the draft report. Harvey: "I suggest a full discussion of carcinogen category A vs. B, based on the absence of definitive data of PETS in humans. Like it or not, EPA should live within its own categorization framework or clearly explain why we chose not to do so."
Larry Glass, Toxicologist, ECAO-CIN, concurred: "Usually the designation of a `causal relationship' has been reserved for results obtained from analytical studies (case-control and cohort) in which individual risk could be shown to be a function of exposure....given the inherent limitations of the data, and the comparative novelty of the approach used to interpret the data I would recommend that this approach not be used as the basis of a Group A classification....it is recommended that the evidence be summarized as being limited (i.e. `...a causal association is more credible than nonrandom error, although [confounding] cannot be entirely ruled out as an explanation...").
This would classify ETS into a weight-of-the evidence Group B1" (suspected). The EPA's own scientists were virtually excluded from the development of the report on ETS, which was highly unusual compared to similar reports. And the crucial chapters of that report were written via illegal pass-through contracts to Robert Axelrad's hand picked crony, Kenneth G. Brown. He was obviously chosen to fudge the confidence intervals and commit other shady deeds that someone with a scientific reputation to protect would not have done.
This corruption was deliberately concealed by the media. And the media systematically ignored anyone who didn't support their anti-smoking agenda, so they could lie to the public that there was "no scientific dissent."
So, a truthful restatement of Richmond's claim that "debate about the deadly powers of cigarette smoke ended in the scientific community more than a decade ago," would be that debate ended BECAUSE THE ANTI-SMOKING CONSPIRATORS DELIBERATELY SUPPRESSED IT. Richmond himself ought to be investigated on suspicion of perjury and conspiracy. But the media conspiracy will hide the truth, as usual.
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: "Jurors hearing a landmark secondhand smoke case against the tobacco industry were bombarded today with a barrage of numbers meant to illustrate the grand scope of smoking-related deaths. A total of 420,000 deaths a year, or more than 1,000 a day, are directly caused by smoking, said Dr. Ronald Davis, who coordinated three surgeon general's reports on smoking. That means about one-fifth of all deaths in the United States are blamed on cigarettes."
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: "Recent government reports say 420,000 smokers and 3,000 nonsmokers die each year from the effects of smoke."
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: "Recent government reports say 435,000 smokers and 3,000 nonsmokers die each year from the effects of tobacco smoke."
COMMENTS: There's nothing like consistency, is there! Most of those supposed "420,000 deaths" (or is it 435,000) are a Big Lie, the product of deliberate epidemiologic malpractice. The anti-smokers falsely blame smoking for cardiovascular disease actually caused by Helicobacter pylori and other infection. Their old studies, which they pretend "prove" that smoking causes heart disease, did not take infection into consideration.
We now know that HP is more common in the lower socioeconomic classes, as are smoking AND PASSIVE SMOKING, so the deck was stacked in all of those studies. And the ballyhooed similarity between smokers' and passive smokers' heart disease risks is due to their socioeconomic similarities, not to an enormous effect of a minute trace of secondhand smoke.
This means Ronald Davis is committing perjury also by repeating this lie. Those vaunted surgeon general reports have also falsely blamed smoking for ulcers and stomach cancer actually caused by Helicobacter pylori; for perinatal morbidity actually caused by chorioamnionitis; and for cervical cancer by confounding with human papillomavirus. This makes them little more than textbook examples of politically motivated epidemiologic malpractice, worthy of contempt, not scientific gold standards. Yet the anti-smokers not only refuse to correct their mistakes, they strive to perpetuate and multiply them.
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: "Nonsmokers exposed to cigarette smoke contract lung and sinus cancers, emphysema, heart disease and childhood asthma, [Richmond] said."
COMMENTS: The California EPA report, which is the most recent major review, noted that there have been only three studies on ETS exposure and nasal sinus cancers. This is not sufficient evidence for anyone except those with malicious intent.
The single leading cause of severe childhood asthma has recently been determined, by the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to be exposure to cockroaches. "The only thing that really stood out was that the children who had a lot of cockroach exposure in their bedrooms seemed to be a lot sicker," according to Dr. David L. Rosenstreich of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.
This exposure is also socioeconomically associated. Once again, the studies anti-smokers base their claim upon failed the requirement of good epidemiology to account for the most important risk factors first. Emphysema is also socioeconomically-associated. Contrary to the propaganda, EPA-funded studies have shown that it is not vanishingly rare among lifelong non-smoking adults, at four to five percent of the population. Low income non-smokers are at up to several times the risk of wealthier non-smokers, and this disease is most likely due to exposure to some unidentified pathogen which is similar to that of smokers, not to a minute trace of secondhand smoke. QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: "And 43 cancer-causing agents have been identified in cigarette smoke, Davis said. "Lead is in cigarette smoke?" asked Stanley Rosenblatt, attorney for flight attendants seeking $5 billion in damages for illnesses they blame on smoky cabin air. "We've banned it from gasoline and from paints, but it's in cigarette smoke," said Davis, now head of disease prevention with the Henry Ford Health System, a Michigan HMO."
COMMENTS: This is the manner by which sleazy, junk science-peddling lawyers would try to deceive the public that there are risks where none exist. It is not the testimony of a scientist. Lead was banned from gasoline and paints because there were demonstrable health effects from those exposures. There are traces of lead in cigarettes, just as there are traces of lead in food. So these slimy little crawlers try to make up for the lack of any importance whatsoever of these traces of lead by feigning incredulity, to impress the mental retardates.
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: "Jurors will also see a video deposition by Philip Morris president James Morgan, who says cigarettes are no more addictive than his favorite candy, Gummi Bears."
COMMENTS: This is the media's treadbare old trick of deliberately mentioning only the most frivolous aspect of their victims' testimony, in order to trivialize it.
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: "Flight attendants' lawyers charge the industry knows secondhand smoke is deadly but has covered up the dangers with an elaborate, long-running fraud."
COMMENTS: It is a moral outrage of the highest degree that those who have committed, and even admitted to, actual acts of conspiracy, fraud, and corruption in concocting bogus health risks from passive smoking, AND WHO HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH THEM WITH IMPUNITY (thanks to media connivance and to our so-called tobacco-industry controlled Congress), should be permitted to accuse innocent people of "cover[ing] up the dangers with an elaborate, long-running fraud," of which they themselves are guilty.
Counterpoint by
Smokers' Rights Action Group
P.O. Box 259575
Madison, WI 53725-9575
Phone: 608-249-4568