March 17 - Warding Off Neurodegenerative Disorders By Smoking - While the health risks of tobacco are well known, several studies have shown that people with a history of cigarette smoking have lower rates of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. However, the explanations for nicotine's neuroprotective effects continue to be debated.

Now that the pharmaceutical industry is in a marketing war with the cigarette manufacturers, the studies are coming fast and furious about how wonderful nicotine is.  Wonderful, that is, if consumed in nicotine gum, slurped up in nicotine drinks, inhaled from nicotine inhalers or oozed into the blood stream with patches.  The easiest, cheapest and most enjoyable method to take nicotine into the body, of course, is smoking.  The researchers face a tough sell whenever they report the marvels of nicotine while simultaneously telling people not to smoke.  The Native Americans who smoked tobacco for thousands of years were no dummies.

March 10 - Time Trends on Smoking and Health and the Value of the War on Tobacco - Since 1964, the War on Tobacco has caused one of the largest changes in health behavior of a population ever known, over a relatively short period of time. It is now past the time when we have a right to expect profound changes in the health profile of Americans due to the War on Tobacco. This article examines the smoking behavior of various American birth groups, identifies the years when smoking related disease should occur based on the age of these birth groups, and concludes no significant health profile changes have occurred that can be credited to the War on Tobacco.

February 19 - Bureaucratic Recalcitrance - Americans should slash their consumption of salt by half says a new government report. But the recommendation has no basis in science and may even be harmful to your health.

Since 1995, 10 studies have reported on whether lower sodium diets produce health benefits. All 10 studies indicate that, among the general population, lower sodium diets don’t produce health benefits. In fact, not a single study has ever shown improved health outcomes for broad populations on reduced sodium diets.

Observers of the junk science phenomenon remember that salt consumption is one of the controversies that have arisen over the past several decades.  At one point the alarm bells were ringing and the "experts" were directing people to cut down on salt.  Years later the word came out that salt consumptions, more most people, doesn't have much effect on health.  Now we have a government agency recommending a drastic reduction of salt consumptions.

Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com places the salt controversy in perspective and exposes the reason the "experts" can't make up their minds on salt:

The U.S. health establishment’s official position, as espoused for the last 30 years by the National Institutes of Health, is that everyone should restrict their salt intake. Regardless of the science, the NIH is not about to admit it’s been wrong ― even to the extent of refusing to make publicly available all the data on which the current dietary salt recommendation is based.

Fortunately for the NIH, the IOM panel [which urges the public to reduce salt intake by nearly one third] was well stacked with sycophants that could be relied on not to bite the hand that feeds them. A majority of the IOM panel, including chairman Lawrence Appel, all receive research grants from the NIH.

Beyond not wanting to admit to making a mistake, the NIH is filled with anti-corporate activists who never miss an opportunity to target business for regulation.  This latest report has been released in conjunction with calls to regulate the food industry to reduce obesity.  Relying on junk science to pursue political ends is the trademark of an elite that wishes to mold everyone into an image that they decree.

February 18 - Born To Smoke: The Rebirth Of Predestination - - Why are some people hopelessly addicted to cigarettes, while others seemingly can quit at will? A UC Irvine College of Medicine study reveals for the first time the underlying brain mechanisms that link personality traits to nicotine addiction.

It has been long established that hostile personality traits are related to cigarette dependency and smoking cessation difficulties. Now UCI researchers have found that in people who have aggressive personalities nicotine triggers significant brain activity in the areas that help control social response, thinking and planning. In turn, non-hostile people showed no brain activity increases at all to nicotine. These findings suggest that some people are born with a predisposition to cigarette addiction and helps explain why quitting for some is practically impossible.

"We call this brain response a 'born to smoke' pattern," said study leader Dr. Steven Potkin, professor of psychiatry and human behavior. "Based on these dramatic brain responses to nicotine, if you have hostile, aggressive personality traits, in all likelihood, you have a predisposition to cigarette addiction without ever having even touched a cigarette."

There are two lies in the first two paragraphs.  The first is that this press release claims that "underlying brain mechanisms that link personality traits to nicotine addiction" is revealed for the first time in this study conducted by the University of California.  There have been countless studies that link negative personality traits to smoking.  Juvenile delinquency, cognitive disorders, hyperactivity, lethargy and even lesbianism have been blamed on tobacco.  This study, although claming to break new ground, is just an other example of parasites cutting and pasting parts of previous studies into something "new" so that they can get more funding.  All this linkage between pathologies and tobacco occurred in the past dozen years as billions of dollars have flown from taxpayers and consumers into the pockets of organizations set up to demonize tobacco. 

The second lie is an example of grifters baldly stating a "fact" that has not been proven by any real research.  Hostile personality traits have never been legitimately related to cigarette dependency, itself a non-scientific term.  The researchers are merely claiming that anyone who refuses to quit smoking is disturbed, if not insane.  This technique was the norm in the Soviet Union where dissidents were institutionalized solely because they refused to buy into the lies that the communist state dispersed to the captive masses.  It's related to the inquisitions where people who did not toe the line that the Catholic Church had decreed were judged to be possessed by devils.

These bad old days have been resurrected by Big Health.  Either one is subservient to the demands imposed by the health cultists or one is crazy.  For now smokers do not face imprisonment or death by burning.  That isn't much comfort since the gulags in Siberia and the auto da fe's of the Inquisition didn't spring up over night.  Read this study and contemplate the inhuman malice behind it.  If this sort of perversion of science isn't stamped out soon, this county is asking for the same sort of horrors that have signified every oppressive and fanatical regime in history.

September 29 - Aging Is Hazardous To Your Health - Aging indeed is a potent carcinogen. Consider these statistics from the American Cancer Society: Nearly 80 percent of cancers are diagnosed after age 55. After reaching late-middle age, men face a 50 percent chance of developing cancer and women have a 35 percent chance. No one knows why cancer typically surfaces later in life, although a multitude of scientific theories abound. 

As the baby boomers begin their inevitable journey into late middle-age and old age, expect more of these studies examining the effect of years passed on overall health.  Although the humanity knows that as one grows older ailments increase ultimately becoming so serious that death results.  The acolytes of Big Health find this progression hard to take.  They see that even though they practice the gospel of self-denial they are still getting older and sicker.  It just isn't fair!  After decades of eating right and denying themselves the pleasures of the table and tobacco they still will meet their maker just like all their brothers and sisters who, instead of self-flagellating themselves into purity, enjoyed life to the fullest.  This is the karma faced by the life-haters who have worked so hard to impose their sterile morality upon the rest of us.

February 18 - Profiles in Elitist Cowardice -- "As I read The PI’s crude attempt to once again negatively label persons who smoke -- now as people prone to anger and aggression – it occurred to me that the entire article is a stunning example of twisted thinking that apparently dominates tobacco control and its mainstream media support. The study reported obviously describes discernable side effects of “Smoke Free” nicotine patches, yet the negative behaviors observed are attributed to people who smoke cigarettes. The study should have been reported as documented evidence of normal people’s adverse reactions to substituting fake products for the real thing." (continues inside), in Norman Kjono's Corner.

September 3 - Smokers More Apt To Survive Heart Attacks - Smoking might give you a heart attack but smokers have better chances of surviving a heart attack than non-smokers, according to a puzzling phenomenon dubbed "smokers paradox".  The apparently "protective" effect of smoking in heart attack patients was highlighted in a study confirming smoker's paradox among older patients, released at an international cardiology conference.  In a statistical analysis, smokers had a massive 75 per cent better chance of surviving heart attack than non-smokers, the study showed.

These findings may give heart attacks to anti-tobacco operatives.  Although the researchers certainly peppered their report with anti-smoking provisos they deserve credit for examining a phenomenon that goes against the politically correct vein.  

Several reasons for smokers having a better survival rate after heart attacks are advanced.  Each of them implicitly contradicts the false notion that there are no benefits derived from smoking tobacco.  Smokers, according to the director of a heart research institute, are less prone to pulmonary congestion, or fluid on the lungs, and often had lower blood pressure than non-smokers.  They also have higher levels of carbon monoxide in the blood which helps them retain oxygen.  

Despite the negative comments about smoking, a ritualistic defense all researchers must mumble whenever they find something positive to report about smokers, this study provides more evidence that tobacco is not the demon plant that the zealots would have the public believe.

August 14 - Parkinson's Drug Tied To Addictive Gambling - The same junk science used to create “tobacco-related deaths” and the passive smoke “death 'n disease” construct sometimes turns against those who pay for it.

‘A drug given to Parkinson's disease patients may have a peculiar side effect -- compulsive gambling, U.S. researchers said yesterday. A small but meaningful number of patients taking Mirapex gambled themselves into debt, while patients taking other drugs did not, a team at the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center in Phoenix reported. Mark Stacy and colleagues studied more than 1,800 Parkinson's patients for a year. Of the 529 who got Mirapex, eight developed serious gambling addictions, they reported. "Seven men and two women (but don't 7 + 2 make nine? Right, but here we are talking about junk science, where arithmetic is done by consensus of "scientific" opinion) were found to have gambling behavior severe enough to cause financial hardship, and two patients reported losses greater than $60,000," they wrote in the journal Neurology. "No subjects on levodopa therapy alone or on any other . . . regimen were found to have symptoms of obsessive or excessive gambling." ‘

… Can you imagine old farts with trembling hands rushing to the casino and dribbling around roulette wheels to gamble their pensions after taking Mirapex? The piece does not say who paid for this garbage. However, let us guess: a competitor of the Mirapex manufacturers, perhaps?... It wouldn't be surprising, considering academia’s prostitution to the highest bidder – especially when health and environment are involved. All it takes is money, and anything is promptly “proven”, nowadays – complete with peer review! The old folks with Parkinson should have smoked, for volumes of statistics clearly state that smokers are less likely to contract that disease (click here for the benefits of smoking in general, and on the numbers for the benefits concerning Parkinson specifically ^{[1] [2]}). What did you say?... You don’t believe it because it’s junk science? But then, why do you believe junk science that says that “smoking kills”? Same methodology, same clownish statements – just many more of them. Ten garbage bags instead of one do not elevate garbage to perfume, just as one hundred cons instead of two do not become honest in virtue of being the majority, but simply make the problem of criminality much more severe – especially when some of them connive to sit in the chairs of ministries or department of health.

August 14 - Conflicting Evidence Leading To A Preposterous Conclusion - In Forsyth County, North Carolina's tobacco capital, volunteers are asking local restaurants to snuff out their smoking sections as a way to improve the health of pregnant women.

The reason: Babies of black women who smoke during pregnancy die four times as often as those of pregnant white women who smoke, according to the Forsyth County Infant Mortality Reduction Coalition.

"We're trying to reduce infant mortality, in part by reducing areas where pregnant women are exposed to cigarette smoke," said J. Nelson-Weaver, director of the coalition.

Let's see if we can deconstruct this pathetic attempt to impose prohibition in tobacco country.  Researchers say they have determined that babies whose mothers are black and smoked during pregnancy die four times as often as the babies of white mothers who smoke during pregnancy.

This finding contradicts the assertion that smoking during pregnancy is harmful to the fetus for if that contention were true then the percentage of babies killed by their smoking mothers would be identical for all babies, no matter what the race.  Never mind the statistical sleight of hand that was used to manufacture the mortality rates in the first place since there is, as is usual, no evidence that smoking during pregnancy harms the fetus.  The racial angle is promoted, and manufactured, to give added urgency to a problem that doesn't exist.

The thrust of the report is equally inane given the subject matter.  To protect pregnant woman who smoke from secondhand smoke restaurant owners are being urged -- more like aggressively pressured -- to ban smoking from the entire establishment.  Woman who wantonly persist in smoking while pregnant are inhaling first hand smoke so protecting them from secondhand smoke makes as little sense as the contention that being a black smoking mother somehow is more harmful to the infant than being a white smoking mother.

Nice try Tobacco Control, but, as even this advocacy journalism discovers, restaurants in North Carolina's tobacco belt will not voluntarily ban smoking.  In that respect they are like most restaurants throughout the country where, given the choice, they would prefer that the government stop interfering in the running of private businesses.

August 1 - Unwrapping the Fast Food Debate   -- What debate?! – “A new study involving lab rats has found that foods high in fat, salt and sugar might be physically addictive -- activating the same areas of the brain that respond when certain drugs are used.”

The reason why Man has always been able to fish with a hook and a worm is because the fish never learn – nor can they communicate with other fish and say: “Hey, uncle Fish, watch out for a hook and a worm – don’t bite, it’s a trick!” Read: fools exist for a purpose – to provide a tasty snack for those who want to feed on them. Darwin was right. This piece from Fox News is great because it shows that not only are rats not little people, but that there is absolutely no scientific evidence of addiction to food. ‘But some nutrition experts are sceptical of the claims. "I've never seen anything that convinces me people get addicted to certain foods," said Ruth Kava, director of nutrition at the American Council on Science and Health." Certainly if your blood sugar is really low, you're going to have physiological symptoms, but I don't know that it counts as an addiction." ‘

But for the rest, the piece misses the target from the title down. What debate?! Haven’t we learned anything from the tobacco experience?! This is not a debate – and please -- let’s not debate on this point! Recent history speaks – and it says this: the same pharmaceutically-paid activists and “public health” gangsters that handled tobacco (with the addition of some newcomers, perhaps) decided a few years ago what the world must eat and drink, and how to squeeze more taxes out of people. That means that they are going to fabricate massive amounts of junk science, for they are certain of the fact that a bunch of fools will waste precious energies in debating the truthfulness of that “science” – and they’ll be more than happy to entertain them. They have unlimited power and funds -- that is, they tap into your wallet. While this is going on, an avalanche of junk science keeps being produced, and taxes increase, hysteria grows, lawsuits start, industries wheel and deal and kiss asses, prohibition advances – and you pay for it all!

The only way to stop this is to change the premise: this is not a debate – this is war – and they even tell us so; why are we so afraid to hear it? And war, by definition, means the destruction of the will of the opponent through the use of force, to make the opponent behave as desired. In war, there is no debate, no deals, no arguing: you shoot to kill. For our side, that means that income tax returns have to be withheld and business categories must strike. Public facilities must be occupied by smokers, drinkers and eaters who must insist on smoking, drinking, and eating inside those facilities – just a few examples amongst thousands possible. If we don’t have the balls to do that, at least let's have the dignity not to call it a debate – for we know damn well that no amount of scientific evidence (or lack of it) will change the population control plans of the health gangsters. It happened that way for smoking.

And one last thing: at least let's have  a little bit of honesty – please! The American Council on Science and Health, which has distinguished itself for exposing junk science before, is the first one that has helped the health Nazis to spread frauds and disinformation about smoking, using the very same junk science methodology and propaganda now used for food! Dear ACSH, one cannot be “a little bit pregnant”: you took Big Pharma’s  money ^{[1], [2], [3]} to spread the frauds on smoking and to help open the market of the smoking cessation junk “therapies” and population control of those who paid you off. Why point at the frauds now? If you willingly open the door to thieves, there's no use in whining that they took more than that old TV set on which you wanted to collect insurance in the first place.

August 1 - Study: Nicotine Levels May Be Manipulated – Nicotine sure is manipulated… – ‘A study found that some brands of cigarettes deliver a much more powerful nicotine "kick" than others, adding to suspicions that manufacturers deliberately blend tobacco to boost the addictive effect. […] The study adds weight to claims that cigarette makers blend tobacco varieties to manipulate the nicotine potency and boost sales, as some industry critics have charged. The tobacco industry has long claimed that it blends tobacco to adjust for taste, not to increase nicotine potency. […] Pankow's was the first to directly test for the chemical, according to Neal Benowitz, a nicotine addiction expert at the University of California at San Francisco. "This is important," he said. "It's been suspected that cigarettes are manufactured in a way that optimizes the free-base." Still, he said the study was not conclusive proof that manufacturers manipulate the level of free-base nicotine. ‘

Firstly, nicotine levels must be manipulated in order to keep the amount of nicotine constant; second, nicotine is what tells the smoker “enough smoking”. Thus, the higher the nicotine content in a cigarette, the less the smoker smokes. Third, the “addiction” to nicotine is part of the whole junk science bandwagon of addiction, on which unscrupulous “health experts” make a whole pile of money selling smoke to cure a disease that does not exist. Nobody knows all that better then Mr. Benowitz, the “expert” from UCSF who has made a career out of misleading the public on this subject, while for years pushing pharmaceutical nicotine. According to Benowitz, nicotine from a cigarette is addictive, while nicotine from a pharmaceutical patch is not – actually, it’s therapeutic, and even makes you quit -- so nicotine’s “addictive” properties disappear by magic in virtue of being manufactured by those who pay off  antitobacco’s cartel of professional cons. In fact Pharma-nicotine is so good, it can even be pushed on kids, as described by Norman Kjono in his 1998 article “Targeting Kids for Drugs”, in which he made the memorable comment, “Personally, I regard anti-tobacco activists as economic paedophiles”. Paedophiles belong in jail; however, this kind has managed to rule “public health” -- take Big Pharma's word for it.

August 1 - A chemical derived from nicotine may protect against dementia (then force every health fascist to smoke) – “You would have to twist a doctor's arm a lot before he would admit that there could possibly be any health benefits from smoking. But for the past decade there has been nagging evidence that smokers suffer less than other people from Alzheimer's disease, and that this is not merely because they tend to die before the symptoms would otherwise appear. Now, a piece of research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by Tobin Dickerson and Kim Janda, of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, provides a possible explanation.”

Do you still wonder why Big Pharma wants the nicotine monopoly market? Smoking and nicotine have several health benefits that, of course, are kept hidden. This news, therefore, is not new to us and to any honest scientist. It goes without say that while reading this piece in The Economist, we were waiting for the inevitable, politically correct final bang – without which, nowadays, no writer who writes about tobacco has a chance in hell to be published by a major publication:

“None of this, everybody is keen to explain, should in any way be regarded as endorsing smoking. And it would surely be foolish to take the habit up early in life merely on the off-chance that it might ward off dementia in old age. But smoking takes years to impose its toll, so it is at least worth speculating whether the odd puff in late middle age might actually do more good than harm.” Good old Economist, teasing the truth through even in the disclaimer.

But, based on the junk science on tobacco, the conclusion could be re-written like this – and have the same “scientific” value: “… And it would be foolish not to take up the habit early in life merely on the off-chance that you may get any of the diseases that science has never been able to prove with the scientific method to be caused by smoking, as you will inevitably die of something; thus, you may as well enjoy life while it lasts.”

July 29 - Official: Obesity Fight Needs Allies [and “public health” need less lies] – ‘Carmona was speaking at the start of an anti-obesity initiative sponsored by the University of North Carolina and Gatorade. "I cannot think of a more important message for athletes to send kids today than to talk about the importance of getting up, getting out and being active," said soccer star Mia Hamm, a UNC graduate. Nearly 9 million American children, about 15 percent of those age 6 to 19, are seriously overweight, program organizers said. ‘

Mr. Carmona, we have the solution for the problem you are talking about: stop lying to the public with junk science, and health (the real McCoy) will return; actually, it is already here. By undoing the statistical con work that altered the Body Mass Index to create an artificial statistical “epidemic,” the number of “obese” in the US would go back down to about 13% from the present, false 53% -- and that includes the children. Anorexia has never been a good health standard, sir. Yes, it is true that Big Pharma would be displeased, but we would save billions of tax dollars in false propaganda campaigns, endless alarms and useless “therapies” – money that is much better spent elsewhere (like teaching children good math and geography, for example, and far less health paranoia). And, by the way, wasn’t antismoking the “more important message for athletes to send to kids” – or have the marketing priorities of the pharmaceutical multinationals shifted, Mr. Carmona? The people ought to know which interest you serve in real life!

July 29 - Lawyers scream about ice cream - Ice cream certainly couldn't be missed on the list of the “causes” of death. “Trial lawyers and a consumer health group are teaming up to go after America's ice cream, sending out legal notices to six major chains this week as the group released a study criticizing ice cream's nutritional value. They sent letters to Baskin-Robbins Inc., Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings Inc., Cold Stone Creamery, the Haagen-Dazs Shoppes Inc., TCBY and Friendly Ice Cream Corp., telling the chains to add healthier alternatives and put nutritional facts on their store menu boards or face potential litigation.” That is based on a junk report “in the July–August issue of the Nutrition Action Healthletter, which is published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).” The hold-up gang features two names that are quite familiar to those who fight health Nazism: John Banzhaff and CSPI, a group that has been around for 30 years but was considered nutty when there was still some wisdom and common sense. But things are changing: now the “evidence” is manufactured by the same party that threatens to sue; it is all in the family when it comes to health gangsters.

In a society where sickness has become normality, something as bizarre as the ice cream paranoia no longer attracts much attention. However, this incident gives us a good opportunity to observe how the predator positions its prey right where it wants it – and how the prey responds to the predator’s needs. First, read the letter (putting aside nonsense such as “Many children are already very concerned about their weight and calories” -- just part of the ritual foreplay of the hunt). Consider this line: “Your failure to disclose such obviously material information as unusually large calorie and saturated-fat loads may violate state consumer protection laws and/or your common-law duty to disclose material facts and may invite law suits from concerned consumers, legal action organizations, or even state officials.” The fact that ice cream is rich in fat is known to everyone, and is at the basis of its delicious flavour. But by intimidating manufacturers into printing huge labels, the predators can later use these labels as an “admission of guilt” on the part of  the manufacturers in proceeding to the inevitable lawsuits for damages “caused” by previous “omission to inform” ("You knew you were manufacturing a dangerous product and yet you hid it from the public for years!"). Remember Big Tobacco?...

But the most interesting part is still to come. What is the reaction of the target industry? To fight back? At least, to give their tormentors the finger? Oh, no! In this CTV video we hear that: “Canada’s Baskin-Robbins company was applauding the study for advertising its nutritional information” while we are told in the same breath that “Even the cones can be killers”. So, here again is the classic, fatal mistake: figuring that the public believes everything the health gangsters say, the industry tries to deflect the hit and score PR points by applauding its persecutors! As long as that goes on -- and the public either does nothing or even believes the con artists – we all get exactly what we deserve, while the con artists keep on laughing all the way to the bank – which they own by now. Crime pays? You bet your belly it does.

July 28 - When Smokers Quit, Surgical Wounds Heal Better – “Quitting smoking for as little as 4 weeks can dramatically reduce the odds of wound infection after surgery”, according to a new piece of junk science circulated by Reuters health.

“...Half the smokers were allowed to continue smoking while the others abstained from smoking using a nicotine or placebo patch. After 1 week and again at 4, 8, and 12 weeks later, small suture-closed incisions were made on the smokers. For comparison, among most of the never-smokers an incision was made at only one of those time points.  […] After 4 weeks and again at 8 and 12 weeks, abstinent smokers were significantly less likely to develop a wound infection than continuous smokers. Moreover, this benefit did not depend on whether they quit using a nicotine or placebo patch. “

Of course, the tens of interacting variables (thus thousands of possible combinations) involved in wound healing are thoroughly ignored, because here the political intent is to show that there is "scientific evidence" that quitting smoking "is good for you" (and maybe to provide surgeons with one more excuse when an operation does not work out so well?). Also, since this badmouths smoking, Reuters does not care to tell us if Big Pharma paid for this “study”  -- as is usually the case when antismoking junk science is circulated. It goes without say that if instead the “study” showed the opposite results and if it had been paid for by Big Tobacco even indirectly, that would be the first thing on the header.

In short, junk science that makes smoking look bad and that recommends Big Pharma’s junk “remedies” is circulated as sound information, and the source of funding is not mentioned by the media. Conversely, junk science that states that tobacco is not so bad is thoroughly investigated for the funding source and when – as was the case for the WHO study on passive smoke in 1998 – it shows absolutely no evidence that smoking is harmful, it is simply buried, as people must believe that "smoking is bad." One can tell who pays the biggest advertising budgets to the media, nowadays.

Is that too cynical? Is there anything to this recent study? Who knows? These days health-and-lifestyle type research is so badly compromised and corrupted that sorting out the forest for the trees is all but impossible. In fact, that's the most outrageous part of the problem.

Here is the final bang: ‘Two Stanford University physicians point out in a commentary that these results "suggest that surgeons need to be even more active in recommending smoking cessation programs to their patients because the impact of smoking on even minor incisions can be significant." ‘ – just as the impact of smoking cessation products can be significant to the coffers of Big Pharma. Please note that Stanford University, vipers’ nest of Stanton Glantz, is receiving many millions of dollars a year from the pharmaceutical industry for the production of junk science for antismoking purposes and for pushing useless pharmaceutical quit-smoking “therapies”. It follows that anything that comes from universities that take Pharma money is at least as tainted as what comes from those who take tobacco money (as the smell and the colour of dollars is the same, the last time we checked), and so they should not be believed. Let’s light one up to that – and don’t worry if you cut yourself: it will heal just fine.

July 25 - Italian-style junk science from British-style BBC - Eating pizza cuts cancer risk! – Come on folks, let’s stuff ourselves with pizza! Those who pass questionnaires as science tell us that “Eating pizza regularly reduced the risk of developing oesophageal cancer by 59%. The risk of developing colon cancer also fell by 26% and mouth cancer by 34%.” (Let us never forget the golden rule of epidemiology: if the increase/decrease of risk is not greater than 200-300% the existence of the risk is not even proven. Maximum cancer risk elevation for passive smoke: 30%). Has perhaps some new biological phenomenon been observed? Any breakthrough in the etio-pathology of cancer? Of course not. As usual, the junk scientists have taken 3,300 people with cancer and 5,000 without it and asked: “Do you eat pizza? Since when? How often?” Then they put everything in the computer, punch the “Enter” key and – voilà! – here is the “scientific evidence” – just as it’s happening for smoking. Of course, the indispensable speculations dance around the meaningless figures; that is essential to give credibility to the bozos. ‘Dr Silvano Gallus, of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmaceutical Research in Milan, who led the research: "We knew that tomato sauce could offer protection against certain tumours, but we did not expect pizza as a complete meal also to offer such protective powers." ‘

We can’t help but observe, once again, how the junksters are always surprised at the results (could it be some residual ethics?... Naaah…! It is only the surprise on how easily they can get away with it). The reality is that all cancers, including the ones in question, have tens of co-factors that interact differently in each individual, thus making the quantification of each factor impossible – a basic fact always ignored by junk science (sorry…the multifactorial epidemiology that is used to “quantify” “mortality” from smoking, electro-magnetic fields, alcohol, obesity…). Oh, well, if you believe the “smoking kills” superstition, then eat a lot of pizza, whose tomatoes (rich with nicotine, by the way) fight cancer – but do not forget to remove the cold cuts and the mozzarella that “cause” cancer. In that way, you can even smoke a cigarette and get away with it – assuming, of course, that you do not guzzle alcohol with your pizza, as “everyone knows” that alcohol “causes” cancer. Clear? Conclusion: drink, smoke, and eat your pizza without allowing private and public health charlatans to ruin your enjoyment. A healthist-free life has a whole different flavour. Bon appetit -- and happy smoking!

The writer of this blurb took a tour through some of the “reaction” postings to this item on the Yahoo news sight, and among the volleys from the predictable slanging match between smokers and anti-smokers, found a few worth pulling out (worth, at least, as much as the study they comment on):

“Why would a man get an earring? I dunno. I never got one anyway.”

“I smoked for 34 years and I never had a problem with earrings - and I don't know anyone who did. My sister who has never smoked and is rarely around anyone who smokes, can only wear 14k gold earrings; everything else causes infection.”

“All I know is that from the time I got my ears pierced at 14 years old, I could wear any earrings I wanted. It didn't matter if they were cheap costume jewellery or 14k gold. But in my mid-twenties I began to not be able to tolerate wearing any earrings that were not 14k. I started smoking at age 19. I quit smoking when I started having children but still can't wear anything in my ears that isn't 14k. They become irritated and red. Does it have to do with smoking? I don't know.”

“I have had a nickel allergy since I was a kid. My son now has the same allergy. Neither of us smoked (obviously) or had smoking in the house growing up. I'm not going to get into the smoking/anti-smoking ranting thing here. My first reaction was -- Geez, now I can't tell anyone I have a nickel allergy or they'll think I smoke!!”

“I'm rather allergic to Danish cookies. Eating Danish cookies may increase my risk of developing allergies to German Chocolate".

Excuse me, my earrings are driving me crazy.  

Ain’t it grand, ain’t it grand…

March 17 - Smoking Wards Off Parkinson's Disease - Parkinson's disease belongs to that small group of conditions that occur less often among cigarette smokers than in non-smokers. The observation was first made in a case-control study over 30 years ago, but, ...the finding has been replicated many times.  The protective effect is large -- according to the pooled data, current smokers have a 60% reduction in risk compared with those who have never smoked -- and consistent between studies in different settings. The fact that two very large prospective studies found a similar reduction in risk to that seen in retrospective studies rules out the possibility that the association can be accounted for by differential survival between smokers and non-smokers.

This editorial from BMJ is refreshingly lacking the usual patronizing admonishments to quit smoking but does quantify with the adjective "small" the number of conditions that occur less in smokers than nonsmokers.  According to the gospel of anti-tobacco smoking is the most deadly past time a person can practice and that there is absolutely no benefit derived from tobacco.  BMJ, among many other credible sources, puts the lie to that assertion and opens the door to the startling premise that smoking does have benefits.  This is no longer heresy and should signal that the one-sided denigration of the tobacco plant and its properties must halt so that legitimate research can discover the other benefits that accrue to smokers.  After all those Native Americans weren't smoking up a storm thousands of years because Big Tobacco ran clever and seductive marketing campaigns. 

March 17 - Smoking DOES NOT Cause Impotence - A Norwegian study of impotence presented at the 16th World Sexology Congress in Cuba Friday found an increasing number of men are finding the courage to discuss their problem with a doctor, but surprisingly found no correlation between impotence and smoking or drinking.  The study of 1,600 Norwegian men in three counties was the largest ever carried out in Europe, newspaper Bergens Tidende reports.

Medical researchers were particularly baffled by the lack of a correlation between smoking and erectile dysfunction in men over 40, which had been noted in many previous studies.

"This deviates from the world's largest study in America. We know that smoking leads to arteriosclerosis which could contribute to lower blood transfer to the penis, but this result is a surprise," said Dr. Stein Vaaler who headed the research team.

It may be a surprise to an honest scientist like Dr. Stein Vaaler but those who study anti-tobacco's relentless corruption of science and research are hardly surprised that the preposterous claim that smoking causes impotence has now been definitively debunked.  

FORCES long ago noted the proclivity of anti-tobacco to be obsessed with sexual organs, especially those attached to men.  We are unsure whether this fetid fascination is due to the prurience of anti-tobacco researchers or whether men are targeted with sexual dysfunction scares because men are more susceptible to this sort of propaganda.  Probably both.  Certainly the relish with which the researchers examine male genitalia borders on the indecent.  For more on the sexual deviancy of anti-tobacco click on the following link.  Pay special attention to the correspondence between Steve Milloy and 60 Minutes when that television "news" magazine embarrassed itself by swallowing hook line and sinker the junk about smoking and impotence.

The Anti-smoking Castrati

March 14 - The Real Cavities Are In These Researchers' Heads - As the money for loopy "research" becomes scarcer, the grant junkies are scrambling to justify their stipends.  So frenetic have they become that their claims become more bizarre yet more irrelevant simultaneously.  This time secondhand smoke is the culprit for bad oral hygiene in young people.  The usual "risk" is touted, even though it doesn't qualify as risk in its real meaning.  Statistics are shuffled.  Cotinine is again used as a marker for secondhand smoke even though the consumption of potatoes and tomatoes explains why this substance is found in the body.

But the best reason to toss this study down the toilet comes from the researchers themselves.  After many paragraphs devoted to the "link" between secondhand smoke and cavities in the teeth of children "exposed" to secondhand smoke (or tomatoes) the whole theory is quashed:

You'd think (adult) smokers would have a lot of cavities, but they don't 

Whoops!  No more grants for that researcher!  Never, ever admit that smokers have good teeth and never encourage logic to enter into the equation.  If smokers don't get cavities from running firsthand smoke over their pearly whites hundreds of times per day it is a real far stretch to posit that bystanders, even if children, get cavities from infinitesimally smaller amounts of the stuff.

February 24 - Remember These Reports When They Come (Again) For The Smokers - As an early-warning preemption, we bring two items to the forefront.  Each have been used as an excuse to mess with smokers.

For the past few years cell phones usage while driving has been a hot topic in various states throughout the country.  New York state banned drivers from using them unless the handless models are used.  Close behind yakking drivers, smoking while driving has been fingered as a dangerous distraction that must be legislated out of existence.  Australia is poised to become the first location to seriously consider passing anti-driving-while-smoking laws.

A California Highway Patrol study throws cold water over the thrust to legislate.  It appears that there really isn't a reason to ban cell phones from the car but, more importantly, the study provides, as an incidental benefit, an unarguable reason to resist passing laws outlawing smoking while driving.

While cell-phone-wielding drivers may be the most visible -- and despised -- of motoring hazards, listening to the radio or compact disc player was a close second, contributing to 9 percent of inattention accidents. Next came distracting children (4 percent), eating (3 percent) and reading (2 percent). Combing hair, picking teeth and other forms of personal hygiene primping were tied at the bottom with being disoriented by pets or smoking (1 percent).

Connected with driving, a story about trash collected on the roadside mentions cigarettes, after a report of over a dozen paragraphs, not at all.  Anti-tobacco operatives are quick to charge that cigarettes littering the roadside, sidewalks, parks and beaches, are such an overwhelming problem that littering laws, specifically directed at smokers, must be enacted.   If anti-tobacco is to be believed, cigarette butts are piled two feet thick and that the debris is more harmful than plutonium.  Those who deal with the trash, as this story points out, are plenty peeved about trash on the highway but of the items listed, cigarette butts do not appear.

Like secondhand smoke hazards, the myths that smoking while driving is dangerous and that smokers are burying the landscape in cigarette butts are just anti-tobacco lies.  

February 18 - Replacing Voodoo With Actual Research - Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers plan to do a first-of-its-kind study on indoor air pollution, including but not limited to exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke.

"From a risk-assessment standpoint, this kind of information just doesn't exist,'' said Jenkins, who heads ORNL's environmental chemistry and mass spectrometry research group.

It may surprise many that despite all the angst concerning secondhand smoke, the non-stop propaganda campaign to demonize it and smokers and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on media campaigns, lobbying efforts and salaries for anti-tobacco operatives that  research on indoor pollution is so skimpy.  Actual research, as opposed to epidemiological legerdemain, that is.  The reason is obvious.  Anti-tobacco has been unsuccessful in demonstrating that secondhand smoke is hazardous to non smokers using even the imprecise and fluid method of epidemiology.  It certainly will not attempt to examine secondhand smoke and its affects using direct research where fudging the results are much more difficult.  This study doesn't deal with whether secondhand smoke is hazardous.  As noted above there is no evidence that it is.  The researchers are concerned with exposure and air quality which can be measured.

Anti-tobacco has, as always, done real health a disservice by trumpeting secondhand smoke while ignoring overall indoor air quality.  The air of a well-ventilated interior where smoking is permitted is better than the stagnant air in an office building where smoking has been banned for years.  Just ask the gamblers in the Belagio Casino in Las Vegas and the health department workers in San Francisco where dozens of people fainted and were sent home due to "sick building" syndrome.

Anti-tobacco has gone to absurd lengths trying to convince the public that any trace of tobacco smoke is hazardous and that a wind of hurricane force would be required to make the air in a room where smoking has occurred acceptable.  Common sense knows such a lie is absurd.  The researchers at Oak Ridge will put that lie to a scientific test.

January 23 - A Benefit To Smoking - While sucking on a cigarette definitely is bad for your health, numerous non-smokers may find themselves some day being prescribed nicotine patches to combat Alzheimer's disease.  In a soon-to-be-published study, scientists in North Carolina will describe how they tested the patches on 11 senior men and women to counter deteriorating memories.

After several weeks of treatment, the subjects experienced significant improvements in their abilities to make decisions quickly and recognize objects. The researchers are so impressed with the results that they propose a long-term, multisite study involving a large number of seniors whose memories are frayed.

The first sentence does an excellent job of contradicting itself.  The reporter flatly states that smoking is bad for health then continues for nearly two dozen paragraphs explaining why, in the case of Alzheimer's disease, smoking improves health.  Although the pharmacological benefits of smoking tobacco have been known for a very long time Big Drugs sees an opportunity to take over the nicotine market now that Big Tobacco is on the ropes.

Rather than slapping expensive nicotine patches on the poor old folks, they should be encouraged to take up smoking, a much more pleasurable and socially acceptable way of obtaining the benefits of nicotine.  After all, as the story does note, nicotine itself is in the public domain and cigarettes are even now cheaper than the expensive, patented, nicotine cessation devices Big Drugs hopes to oppose on all smokers.

January 23 - Panic Campaign In The Works - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will release on Jan. 29 its second National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals. The report will include data on 116 substances detected in humans -- such as metals, PCBs and pesticides.

Importantly, the CDC report won't link any of the detected substances to health effects. This makes sense since the trace levels detected aren't harmful. A fundamental principle of toxicology, after all, is "the dose makes the poison."

The greens, however, aren't planning on mentioning these key facts. Instead, they're scheming to use the CDC report as an opportunity to launch the mother of all scare campaigns.

The environmental con men have taken their lessons from the anti-tobacco crowd.  As anti-tobacco does with tobacco smoke, the radical environmentalists will scream about all "toxics" surrounding us all.  What they won't mention is that the same toxics being demonized occur naturally and except in massive dosages are irrelevant to health.  Of course the mainstream press will collude with the hysterics so that particular political agendas can be advanced.  We've seen it all before, get ready to be terrified.

January 20 - No Decline In Smoking Rates - The proportion of adults who smoke cigarettes has fallen from 30%, twenty years ago; but the sad truth is that the decline has been glacial and appears to have plateaued at 23% (last year) or 24% (in this year's survey).

To Anti-tobacco: Thanks.  Yer pal, Joe

This failure of the public health efforts to reduce smoking may surprise some readers. To many people, smoking appears to have declined because it is not allowed in most offices, many restaurants and other public spaces and is, therefore, much less visible. But the smoking habit is very addictive (other Harris Interactive surveys have shown that most smokers have tried several times, but failed, to quit.) And tobacco companies have been remarkably successful in recruiting new, young smokers to fill the gaps of those who have quit.

Where to begin with this bit of doubletalk?  The authors of this poll blame public health for failing to reduce smoking in recent years yet tout  the decline from 30% over a 20-year period as significant.  Coincidentally anti-tobacco education hit the American scene two decades ago.  Inexplicably the poll-takers don't mention that the real decline in smoking rates occurred much longer ago (starting after the publication of the Surgeon General's 1965 report on lung cancer) and dwarfs the quit rates that have occurred during intense and pervasive anti-tobacco propaganda.  As is usual when reporting public health's failure, the media shills finger cigarette advertising, severely curtailed during the past 20 years, as the reason for stagnant quit rates, conveniently forgetting that the largest decline in smoking went hand-in-hand with cigarette advertising on television, low tobacco tax rates and no restrictions on smoking in public.

The decline rates between 1965 and the era of anti-smoking education indicate that had there been absolutely no government action beyond publishing the Surgeon General's report fewer people would smoke today.  The numbers alone show once again that anti-tobacco is the best friend Joe Camel could ever have.

January 20 - Why Would Anyone Trust A Poll From Harris Anyway (Free Registration) - Biased reporting is the norm for the American mainstream press but is less prevalent in stories appearing in business publications or in the business sections of the local daily rags.  That may be changing.  

This story from CBS Market-Watch goes a long way to explain why CBS and the other alphabet "news" outlets are losing viewers right and left.  Lacking balance and fairness, CBS wears its biases as badges of honor as the poll from Harris showing that smoking rates haven't declined for years is spun into a hysterical anti-tobacco screed.  No cliché is left un-uttered as the reporter summons up anti-tobacco's talking points of more money needed to combat the most pressing problem of the millennium.  Throw in a bit of smoker-bashing hate talk and Market-Watch reveals that the soul of the CBS News enterprise rises no higher than the ill-informed anti-tobacco sneer of walking-corpse, 60 Minutes veteran Mike Wallace.

Despite the premise, supplied by the Harris Poll, that smoking rates have held steady during the past decade of intense anti-tobacco propaganda, CBS Market-Watch concludes that more of the same will solve the smoking "problem."  After revealing that the news organization is merely a shill for pharmaceutical front groups (cessation, cessation, cessation) CBS Market-Watch quotes one of the Harris poll takers making a flat lie.

Either Leitman, of Harris, is either a woefully uninformed nitwit, a vacant receptacle of anti-tobacco bilge, or he is a liar.  Even the well-funded anti-tobacco operatives bullying the Hollywood film and television industry to ban smoking from their entertainment never claim that the tobacco industry is paying to have its products placed in movies or television shows.  

Whether Bob Leitman is a gullible fool or whether he is paid-off shill is immaterial.  That he is part of the Harris poll-taking enterprise speaks volumes about how much these polls should be believed.

December 2 - Baldness Linked To Mood Disorders - A study conducted by an Indian doctor has linked baldness with mood disorders.

A predisposition to baldness in a patient or his family is now thought to be a major symptom which could help differentiate mood disorder ailments from other psychiatric problems like schizophrenia and those related to stress, thereby helping doctors to prescribe the correct treatment.

The main point of passing on this nonsense is not to make fun of the "researchers" but to note how popular an import junk science is becoming.  What used to be cranked out only in over-funded American universities is now being produced throughout the world.  It may, in fact, be a matter of pride for some countries, such as India, that they have reached the level of affluence where money can be thrown away on crackpot theories, just like in North America and Europe.  Welcome to the big time, Dr. Sarvesh Singh and your merry band of con artists.

October 21 - Autism Up And Smoking Is Not The Cause - California's alarming increase in childhood autism is an authentic phenomenon that cannot be explained by flawed diagnosis, according to a new study that researchers say adds greater urgency to finding causes for the explosion in cases.

The study, released to state legislators Thursday, found that a 273 percent jump in cases could not be explained by loosening of criteria describing the developmental disorder, misdiagnosis or an influx of people from other states.

And the numbers continue to spiral upward, with no clear cause, Byrd said. Autism is now the fastest-growing segment of the state's developmental disability system.

The report on the startling increase in autism in California follows by a mere three months a typically hysterical BBC report on how smoking mothers are to blame for autism.  The piece of junk responsible for the BBC's knee-jerk anti-tobacco stance comes from Sweden, the country that brought to the world the notion that fried potatoes cause cancer.

According to anti-tobacco, smoking rates in California have been declining for well over a decade.  With fewer expectant mothers smoking and if smoking causes autism, then rising rates of autistic rates are an impossibility in the Health Reich.  Either smoking rates are not going down or autism is not caused by smoking mothers.  Can't have it both ways.

So far there are only theories as to why rates are rising in California, but what is clear from the Swedish study is that tobacco is being blamed for everything.  Anti-tobacco tried to blame the growing number of asthmatic children on secondhand smoke.  Anti-tobacco tried to blame Sudden Infant Death Syndrome secondhand smoke.  Impotency, hangnails, wrinkles, juvenile delinquency, all have been laid at tobacco's door.  With tobacco exonerated in asthma, SIDS and now autism, we can surely expect the press to cast a jaundiced eye upon the next anti-smoking study cranked out by the anti-tobacco grant junkies. Right.

September 18 - Tobacco Wards Off Parkinson's Disease - An analysis of 48 studies on cigarette smoking and Parkinson's disease found a 60% lower risk of the disorder among current smokers. Previous smokers were also protected, although less so than current smokers.  Drinking coffee leads to a 30% lower risk.  This painful admission by researchers appears in the September issue of the Annals of Neurology.

In case anyone gets the wrong idea, the researchers fall over themselves to warn that these results don't mean smoking will prevent Parkinson's.  Further they proclaim that any benefit derived from smoking, as it relates to lowering the risk for Parkinson's, is "overwhelmed" by negative effects of smoking, although they don't quantify "overwhelmed".  The also posit a theory that the apparent protection smoking gives against Parkinson's is merely a question of genes.  Those with the genes that bestow a proclivity to smoke may be the genes that provide the protection.  Since such genes have never been discovered, it's likely the researchers are covering all bases so that the research grants will continue to flow.

That they teeter on the verge of saying something positive about smoking indicates a form of honesty not often present in researchers who study smoking and health.  The truth, of course, is that the pharmacological benefits of smoking have been known for thousands of years in the Western Hemisphere.  Like food, alcohol and exercise, tobacco use carries benefits and risk.  Free choice determines whether one smokes or not and it is an individual decision whether the benefits of smoking outweigh the risks.

September 18 - More Nonsense From Judge Chinnock - Last week an Ohio judge ordered a couple to refrain from smoking in the presence of their eight year old daughter.  Smoking was not the issue that brought the couple and their daughter before the judge but as a committed anti-smoker, Judge Chinnock saw an opportunity to impose his will.

His decision was written by tobacco control, which is disturbing enough, but some of the "evidence" he cites at least provides comic relief for a very un-amusing situation:

"A nonsmoker in a smoky room inhales the equivalent of 35 cigarettes an hour"

The footnote refers to a book written by a lawyer working at the Canadian Cancer Society, whose only qualification appears to be that he doesn't like smoking or the tobacco industry.  The 35-cigarettes-per-hour has been used to ban smoking in the workplace, especially bars.

Using anti-tobacco's own calculations, 35 cigarettes an hour works out to 14 packs of cigarettes smoked per day by a bartender during an eight hour shift at the corner watering hole.  Assuming that the bartender's exposure to secondhand smoke is only at work, he still averages 9.6 packs of cigarettes per day over the course of a year.  Not even the most robust chain smoker can match that amount.

Those whose mission in life it is to protect bartenders say that this consumption of smoke increases their risk of coming down with lung cancer and heart disease by 50%.  The average smoker who goes through a pack a day is said to have a much higher risk of succumbing to lung cancer and heart disease than does the nonsmoking bartender, even though his job in a smoky (or even well-ventilated) bar makes him smoke the equivalent of over a pack an hour.

The conclusion from this exercise in absurdity is that smoking a carton (9.6 packs) of cigarettes a day lowers the risk of getting a tobacco-related disease significantly.

July 11 - Smoke could ruin child's fertility - The all-faithful BBC never ceases to divulge junk science information on smoking – among other issues.

The latest piece of disinformation concerns smoking and fertility, a new strand in the antismoking junk science. "Smoking while pregnant appears to put the future fertility of any female children at risk." Careful, smoking mothers: not you, but your child girl is at risk! Of course, this will be verifiable in two or three decades, but that is irrelevant; we want to condition your choice NOW. When, in thirty years, you find out that this is garbage, we will have retired – and with a solid bank account. Of course again, the actual, verifiable facts which show today that the overwhelming majority of women who are daughters of smoking mothers do have normal pregnancies (just as do women of non smoking mothers) are to be thoroughly ignored, because they do not corroborate the propaganda.

What about the co-factors, such as socioeconomic status, and about a million others? No problem there, either, for when you have a virtual monopoly of the information, and have managed to block all those who expose your frauds and distortion, you can do and say anything you want. Here is how BBC fixes it.

Impressive – EXCEPT HOW the above factors were "kept into account," and what percentage attributions were given to those "other factors" to make smoking look bad is not given. Don’t forget that we have to blindly believe the antismoking junk scientists, not question them. That is what BBC and the rest of the pharmaceutical/healthists servants do best: spin the information so that it sounds "right enough" to get you to rush to the drug store and buy that latest smoking cessation drug. BBC and its ilk believe that it is socially responsible to institutionalise junk science disinformation to save us from ourselves, thus they become an accessory to the Big Fraud. For serious scientific information on smoking and pregnancy, click here while you light one up.

June 21 - Smoking While Driving.  Not An Issue - The next time some brain-dead politician proposes a law banning drivers from smoking to eliminate accidents, refer him to the California Highway Patrol.  According to the CHP, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, 06/18/02, "For the first time, the CHP documented the types of distractions that resulted in collisions in 2001."

• Animals 76
• Cell phones 913
• Children 328
• Eating 259
• Electronics 81
• Personal grooming 28
• Radio or CD 769
• Reading 168
• Smoking 115  
• Other 5227

June 12 - Smoking As Asthma Inhibitor - "...children of mothers who smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day tended to have lower odds for suffering from allergic rhino-conjunctivitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema and food allergy, compared to children of mothers who had never smoked.  Children of fathers who had smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day had a similar tendency.

"This study demonstrates an association between current exposure to tobacco smoke and a low risk for atopic disorders in smokers themselves and a similar tendency in their children."

Another shovel of dirt on the grave of the erroneous notion that tobacco smoke causes asthma.  This study, released last year, joins the list of studies which exonerate tobacco smoke but indirectly indict the anti-tobacco industry for ignoring the facts in the pursuit of its prohibitionist agenda.  For more evidence that asthma is not caused by primary or secondhand smoke, see our Asthma Evidence section.

June 3 - An Honest Study - Ronald Bayer, PhD and James Cogrove, MPH, with the Program in History and Ethics of Public Health and Medicine, Columbia University, had better watch their backs when next applying for any grants.  Although they report on an anti-tobacco phenomenon that has been witnessed for many years, their credentials and positions in the field of public health give their observations weight.  The title of their work, "Science, Politics, and Ideology in the Campaign Against Environmental Tobacco Smoke" says it all.  A quote from the abstract makes it even more clear that the ridiculous assertion that secondhand smoke poses health hazards for nonsmokers is nothing more than a lie designed to further the goal of social conformity:

May 29 - On The Mend After Staring Smoking - Nguyen says, "Cigarettes run counter to everything I was trained to do as a lung doctor. But I'm surprised this man is living - and at the flexibility of his hands. There are many things we don't know. I know his case deserves a study. I fully support that."

Dr. Richard Cavell, chief of internal medicine at LSU Medical Center at Monroe, says that Hendrix "has had some things happen to him that bear further investigation."

One of things that happened to Wayne Hendrix when he took up smoking is that he believes his life was saved.  Somewhat sheepishly his doctor agrees.  As of yet there is no explanation why the scleroderma, a disease that squeezes its victims to death by hardening their skin and internal organs, has been kept at bay.  To their credit, his doctor, as well as many other doctors puzzled by Hendrix' improvement, are calling for an investigation into this apparent benefit to smoking tobacco.

Not surprisingly the usual funders of anti-tobacco research, who have spent billions and have not advanced the knowledge of smoking as it relates to health one iota, have not expressed interest in investigating tobacco smoking and scleroderma.  Although scleroderma is rare, any good news about smoking must be ruthlessly censored and eradicated because if smoking is shown to be beneficial for the treatment of one rare disease, then its therapeutic effects undoubtedly apply to other cases.  The cold shoulder the so-called health charities and the government are showing to this case is another example of how public health is constantly trumped by anti-tobacco's financial agenda.

May 29 - Let The Spinning Begin - From the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition (Monday, May 27, 2002) Author: Steve de Bonvoisin:  Women in France smoke a lot and live long lives, while Greece's young people go to university twice as often as their counterparts in economic powerhouse Germany, at least according to new statistics.

The European Union statistical office's seventh annual report, Eurostat Yearbook 2002, is filled with such surprising nuggets of wisdom. . .

Nonsmokers would be best off sending their children to grow up in Sweden. A French teenager is five times more likely to smoke than a Swedish youngster. The proportion of women smokers in the E.U. is markedly lower than men, 28% compared with 40%.

These four sentences will be multiplied throughout the Eurostate Yearbook and the articles reporting on its findings.  In one sentence women in France are described as smoking a lot and living long lives.  A few lines down the reporter jerks his knees and says that the French smoke too much.  If the smokers there live long lives, why worry about it?  The final sentence speaks volumes about the fraudulent premise of anti-tobacco.  The smoking rate in Europe, for both men and women, is significantly higher than the rate admitted to in the United States yet any glance at mortality tables reveals that as far as longevity goes, smoking Europe beats Puritanical America hands down.

May 27 - Alcohol's Turn? - "Arguing that alcohol abuse is the root cause of more than a third of trauma injuries, the California Medical Association and two Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday proposed raising taxes on alcohol by a nickel per serving to rescue the state's financially failing emergency rooms."

The bill to tax alcohol to reimburse society for the harm caused by drinking may signal a renewed effort to pick the pockets of those who consume wine, beer and spirits.  With smokers, the current cash cows, almost milked out, and the war on fat well underway, the attention of the shakedown artists is turning towards the drinkers.  Alcohol has been exempt from the current health hysteria because that industry's lobby is well wired and aggressively protective of its interests.  The "noble experiment" of alcohol prohibition was also so destructive that any move to repeat that colossal will proceed very cautiously.  It's likely that the alcohol industry will crush this attempt to tax drinkers but the nannies who want to control their constituents and the special interests that salivate over taking down the industry will certainly keep up the effort until it succeeds.

May 24 -  Bad Science Never Dies - The discovery that previous research has been dis-proven-proven or shown to be worth less than the paper it was printed on just does not register as news to most journalists, no matter how said research was originally hyped to the public.  A study by Dr. John M. Budd et al. in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jul. 15, 1998) examined 235 scientific journal articles that had been formally retracted due to error, misconduct, failure to replicate results, or other reasons. The researchers reported that, "Retracted articles continue to be cited as valid work in the biomedical literature after publication of the retraction."

The media practice of regurgitating press releases written by researchers announcing the results of a new study is hardly conducive to informing the public about medical or scientific matters.  Most frequently the error made is that the studies are gospel since the reporter, even if labeled "Health" or "Science" reporter, provides no analysis of the study or even is able to ask the right questions of the researchers.  If a study is later determined to be ambiguous or even fatally flawed, the media most often doesn't report that news.

The classic example is the Environmental Protection Agency's report on secondhand smoke.  Not only was that not even a study, since it actually only analyzed two dozen studies performed by researchers who don't work for the EPA, but it was also so flawed that a federal judge vacated it.  The media trumpeted the original release of this study but the ruling by the federal judge, although reported by most of the mainstream, was hardly given the prominence accorded to the release of the report.  The even wilder charge that 53,000 Americans are killed each year by secondhand smoke has never been adequately covered by the mainstream media which continues to use the figure as if it has some basis in fact.  

The major problem is that there are so many studies, many of them sheer junk, that hit the news circuit that there is no way to separate the good from the bad and the valid from the politically motivated.  Important information, especially revealing the sources of funding for a study, are inevitably omitted even though that information is perhaps vital to understanding any study.  The solution to the mountain of misinformation is for the media to cover the release of scientific reports and studies as they would cover a public meeting at City Hall.  Examine the facts, follow the money trail and verify every claim with independent sources.  Since this won't happen, the public must take all the studies with many grains of salt.