May 27, 2003 - When faced with unarguable truth, crank up the junk science: passive smoking makes pupils ill, junk science study says – It is going to take a lot of time and a massive production of junk science for the antismoking gangsters to compensate for the devastating effects of the latest study published by the British Medical Journal that demonstrated unequivocally that not only does passive smoke not cause lung cancer and heart disease, but also and especially that the presumed damage CANNOT BE MEASURED -- not even by a colossal study that examined 118,000 people over 40 years. The desperate accusation of the antismoking gangsters on tobacco financing turns out to be useless, since all the data was collected with money from the American Cancer Society. “This study is a God send,” states Gian Turci, C.E.O. of FORCES International, “as it has cancelled years of propaganda, misinformation and frauds, and it gives breathing space to the forces of liberty and truth to regroup and fight back against white-coated fascism, corruption of the health institutions -- and the fraud of the century”.

In the meantime, more junk science is desperately being produced to offset the damage of the study published by the BMJ. Here is the latest piece of trash science, fresh out of the mould: “A study of almost 2,000 pupils at schools in southern California showed some were up to four times more likely to miss classes due to respiratory illness than those from smoke-free homes.  … Researchers from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California studied 1,932 fourth grade pupils and questioned each one on whether their parents or other family members smoked.”  Not having anything better to produce when it comes to real science, the antitobacco cons keep turning to the old questionnaires – as if more and more people would not realise that the results of a questionnaire are conditioned by what questions are asked, what questions are not asked, and how the questions are asked, as well as by the type and range of responses that the design of the questionnaire permits. Questionnaire-based studies have always been the perfect tool for conmen – especially when hidden under white coats. "It does not surprise us at all that it affects not only children's health but their development as well," said researcher Naj Dehlavi. "We already know that around 17,000 children a year under the age of five end up being hospitalised with problems like glue ear or respiratory complications as a direct result of passive smoking." How do you KNOW, Mr. Delhavi, that those hospitalisations are due to passive smoking? Let us tell you how: with other junk science, speculations, innuendoes, and questionnaires -- that's how -- and whoever makes statements like that is an insult to science, medicine, ethics, and intelligence -- not to mention the perpetration of  deception by defrauding the public.

Stop wasting public money in junk science production, antismoking cons -- and stop being a lackey of corruption, BBC. It is crystal-clear that the battle to prove scientifically that passive smoke is dangerous was lost long ago, and that the BMJ-published study has put the last nail in the coffin of this fraud, that can only continue through media propaganda accomplices such as BBC. But we have bad news for you, antismoking gangsters: people are beginning to wake up. Yes, it is true that prohibition can be imposed with the violence of the state -- and with the pharmaceutical lobbies that control the cons in the ministries of health. But now it is a fight against prohibition and corruption – and not anymore against an “evidence” that never existed. Let’s go to work, folks, to restore liberty -- and to put the health cons where they belong: in jail. For more, overwhelming scientific evidence on the passive smoke fraud, click here.

May 20, 2003 - Even The Anti-smokers (The Honest Ones, Anyway) Back New ETS Study -  In a surprising twist, the study was backed by anti-smoking crusader Dr. Elizabeth Whelan.

"There is simply no convincing evidence linking secondhand smoke to lung cancer and heart disease," said Whelan, an epidemiologist and president of the American Council on Science and Health.

Whelan, author of "A Smoking Gun: How the Cigarette Industry Gets Away with Murder," said her group's research has reached the same conclusion as the new study.  While Whelan said she's delighted by New York City's smoking ban, she labels "patently absurd" Mayor Bloomberg's claim that it would prevent 1,000 deaths of bar and restaurant workers.

We have ridiculed Elizabeth Whelan plenty of times and still find it odd that a supposedly normal person embraces the ludicrous label of "anti-smoking crusader" but we welcome her candor in describing the overblown hysteria about secondhand smoke in contemptuous tones.  It didn't take the blockbuster Enstrom/Kabat study to break the ice for Whelan to speak frankly.  Whelan has for a very long time advised skepticism over the claims that secondhand smoke is hazardous to nonsmokers.  For speaking out and going against the politically correct flow, Whelan deserves praise.

May 20, 2003 -  Some Excellent Advice - I hope everyone has printed out a complete copy of this study from the BJM site (or at least has printed out the abstract). This is by far the biggest and longest-term study on ETS and non-smokers ever done, and it reached the same conclusion as the WHO study and more than 80% of all the studies ever done: NO statistically significant risk from ETS for either lung cancer or heart disease in non-smokers exposed to it. Further, the data was from an American Cancer Society long-term data collection project (CPS1) and it used CALIFORNIANS.

As for tobacco industry funding, here's what the authors of the study itself in the BMJ write: "Competing interests: In recent years, JEE [Enstrom] has received funds originating from the tobacco industry for his tobacco related epidemiological research because it has been impossible for him to obtain equivalent funds from other sources. GCK [Kabat] never received funds originating from the tobacco industry until last year, when he conducted an epidemiological review for a law firm which has several tobacco companies as clients. He has served as a consultant to the University of California at Los Angeles for this paper. JEE and GCK have no other competing interests. They are both lifelong non-smokers whose primary interest is an accurate determination of the health effects of tobacco."

The antis are claiming this was tobacco industry funded, but the DATA collection was funded and MAINTAINED by the American Cancer Society. An "Extended follow up until 1997 was conducted at the University of California at Los Angeles with initial support from the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, a University of California research organization funded by the Proposition 99 cigarette surtax....After continuing support from the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program was denied, follow-up through 1999 and data analysis were conducted at the University of California at Los Angeles with support from the Center for Indoor Air Research, a 1988-99 research organization that received funding primarily from US tobacco companies."

In other words, this was partly funded by the American Cancer Society, partly funded by the antis (Prop 99 surtax funds from the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program) until 1997.  -- Wanda Hamilton

May 20, 2003 - When Debate Is Forbidden -  Pity the poor BBC.  Rabidly anti-tobacco but forced to cover the news because that is its job.  Enstrom/Kabat and their study exonerating passive smoke is a tough pill to swallow when careers have been made pushing junk science that "proves" secondhand smoke is harmful to nonsmokers.

More flummoxed than the anti-tobacco media are the operatives who make a very good living demonizing smokers.  One such is Action on Smoking and Health.  The day this study made headlines across the globe was a dark day for Amanda Sandford, a flack for ASH.  

"Questions will inevitably be asked about the decision to publish research conducted by scientists in the pay of the tobacco industry.

"This could be very damaging as it will be used by industry lobbyists to argue against laws to ban smoking in public places and workplaces.

First of all Amanda, if these scientists are in the pay of the tobacco industry for taking funds to complete their 40 year study then they are also in the pay of the anti-smokers.  Most of the financing for the study came from the American Cancer Society and a large portion came from the state of California via a cigarette tax that is collected with the express purpose of eliminating smoking.  More importantly, Amanda Sandford and the tobacco control industry wants every dissenting voice on tobacco silenced.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, both the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Epidemiology refused to publish Enstrom/Kabat.  Both journals have not been reticent in publishing anti-smoking studies that are far less stringent than the 40-year passive smoke study conducted by Enstrom/Kabat.  Anti-tobacco hopes to bury this study as they buried the World Health Organization's study that reached the same conclusions as Enstrom/Kabat.  WHO was a willing accomplice in pretending that study never happened.  This time the genie is out of the bottle and anti-tobacco cannot put it back in.

May 19, 2003 - Study Exonerates Passive Smoke -  Second-hand smoke, fingered as the culprit behind lethal ailments ranging from heart disease to lung cancer, is innocent, according to a study that was immediately slammed by the medical profession.  But the new study, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), says it found almost negligible evidence to support such allegations among a large group of Californians who were monitored for health for nearly 40 years.

"The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect.

"The association between (passive smoking) and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed," they wrote.

Anti-tobacco is scrambling to spin this study into oblivion.  Not surprising since this study is massive and lengthy, covering 40 years and comprising 35,561 people.  The researchers' credentials are impeccable and, so far, anti-tobacco operatives have not pointed to any flaws in the study.  They have, of course, attempted to smear the researchers as tools of big tobacco but that accusation has little traction since part of this study was financed with funds from California's anti-smoking Proposition 99.  A portion of the study was financed by an air quality research outfit that was funded by the tobacco industry.  The researchers needed that financing because the California Tobacco Control Directors, panic-stricken about the conclusions being reached, cut off the Proposition 99 funding before the study could be completed.

The most vitriolic complaints are directed at the British Medical Journal for publishing the study, as if hiding a huge study like this is possible.  Perhaps they believe that medical journals should follow the example of the World Health Organization, which, when its large secondhand smoke study was issued, attempted to bury it rather than release the results to the world.  Results that, as did this study, exonerated secondhand smoke from its assigned role of major hazard to non-smokers.  Anti-tobacco not only wants to shoot the bearer of bad news but it wants a world where the message cannot exist.  

"Bully for the BMJ Editors, probably the only fearless editorial crew left in the world. Were they suborned by Big Tobacco? Spin scoundrels likely will ventilate as such, but who is Big Tobacco anyway? In 2001 the US tobacco industry made close to $ 9 billion in pretax profit, but provided an assortment of federal and state governments with nearly $ 40 billion in revenue and settlement fees, in effect becoming a nationalized tax collector."

"Why should this paper not have been published, as most critics advocate? How does the paper compare to the some 100 papers on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) that BMJ and other prestigious journals have published in the last quarter century? Enstrom & Kabat present a rare prospective cohort analysis from a database that the American Cancer Society has found useful and valid for many other studies. Their method of analysis is mainstream and transparent, and relies on disease incidence and individual recall of lifetime exposure to ETS." -- Gio Batta Gori, DSc, MPH The Health Policy Center Bethesda, MD, 20816, USA

This study is another reason for anti-tobacco to be afraid.  Despite millions of dollars spent on convincing the public that secondhand smoke is deadly to nonsmokers, the public is very skeptical of such claims.  The scientific community has always been even more skeptical and the so-called mountain of evidence has never been persuasive.  Anti-tobacco has had a pretty good run conning the nation into ripping apart property rights to effect a smoke-free agenda.  The mountain of evidence actually shows that concerns about secondhand smoke has been much ado about nothing.  It is now time to address the actual, measurable harm caused by anti-tobacco's divisive, deceptive and needless campaign of fear.