Asinus asinum fricat. Latin for "the jackass reprehending the jackass". I am referring to the latest piece of propaganda divulged yesterday by the international media. The WHO is accusing the cigarette manufacturers of having "infiltrated" the organisation itself to "undermine the World Health Organisation's anti-smoking efforts world-wide." Apparently, documentation will be available to substantiate the allegations. The tobacco companies, while not denying all the accusations, have nevertheless denied most of them. At any rate, now that it has "changed its practices," this will not happen again – assures Philip Morris, while taking its dirty thumb out of its mouth in embarrassment.

How disgusting this whole saga is. While, at the moment, it is not possible to deny that PM may indeed have placed people in the WHO, as usual we hear only part of the story – the part, that is, which those who are selling out want us to buy: having been exposed, no matter when and why, to the tobacco industry is worse than having been exposed to the Mafia.

The veterans involved in fighting anti-smoking corruption can see the background reason for this new fanfare: since the WHO’s own studies fail to support claims of danger from second-hand smoke and undermine even some accepted orthodoxies about primary smoking and disease, the WHO has gone on a witch-hunt, hoping to wash its hands of any of its own work which does not support the anti-smoking crusade. Who knows, one can always say that the research teams were "infiltrated" too! While the media gets distracted trying to follow a sexy conspiracy story, the WHO will "authoritatively" reassert its junk science anti-smoking posture.

Let us consider that:

• The WHO gets immense financing from the pharmaceutical industry
• The scientific documentation of the WHO scarcely supports its exaggerations – that sometimes are based on glittering epidemiological absurdities – about the damage on human health by tobacco
• The "tobacco epidemic" with, of course, the millions of "tobacco-related deaths" attached, is a statistical fraud generated by computers using the above-mentioned epidemiological associations
• The WHO diverts immense funding to fight virtual epidemics such as tobacco, while humanity is plagued with real epidemics that are SHAMEFULLY neglected because the WHO is too busy conning the world with the tobacco issue
• The WHO has become the strong arm of US politics because the US contributes to its financing more than any other nation in the world
• Gro Harlem Brundtland has been placed in the big chair of this organisation by the US itself, which has bullied the selection of her candidacy in at the expense of other, and apparently more deserving, candidates

Those indisputable facts do not seem to trouble anybody. From which we can infer that, while being influenced by the tobacco industry is a mortal sin, selling out to the pharmaceutical multinationals and the US government is OK. Moreover, that deserves credibility, respect and consideration – no matter that the WHO, creature of the United Nations, is supposed to be non-political, neutral, and to take care of real epidemics and other human suffering like, for example, hunger.

Let’s be straight: getting people to quit smoking is BIG BUSINESS. The pharmaceutical multinationals do not hesitate to finance the production of very questionable "science", and to use the WHO and the ministries of health of various countries as clowns who thunder from their chairs, paid by taxpayers’ money, while selling smoking cessation products. Of course, those clowns never mention those who really pull their strings, although often indirectly.

Curiously, some TV commentator yesterday was talking about "tobacco wars fought even with spies." Why not?

• When the pharmaceutical industry and its marionettes declare an all-out war on smoking, smokers and manufacturers while using frauds and propaganda only veneered with truth;
• When anti-tobacco operatives infiltrate governments and media, and accuse every dissenting voice of being sold out to Big Tobacco;

is it so surprising that Big Tobacco would try to infiltrate the enemy camp?

We are at war, right? We are only sorry that Big Tobacco, unfortunately, does not seem to have "infiltrated" the enemy camp enough!

Media, do you want to report some negative criticism against the tobacco industry to make the good deed of the day? Report this: Philip Morris and its ilk are a castrated bunch with the vision of moles. They should have fought the anti-tobacco scam from its inception, frontally, and with much more energy. The fraud of antismoking "studies" based on multifactorial epidemiology (basically all of them) to give a mantle of scientific credibility to a political program of extortion should have been exposed long ago. What do we have instead? Antismoking clay foundations that NOBODY ever questions anymore because:

• medicine wants a scapegoat for its failures
• an apathetic and powerless public is excited only by cheap sensationalism
• dishonest governments need an excuse to extort more taxes.

In the meantime, the castrated American PM broadcasts commercials telling the youth not to start smoking! As if nobody knew that when you tell the youth not to do something…

Multifactorial epidemiology, as used by the health cartel, is junk science, and it should be forbidden from use as a basis for public policy anywhere, for it is possible to link A to B in basically any way that those who finance those scientific farces called "studies" wish. If those who are sold out to the pharmaceutical multinationals had been exposed at the proper time, today we would not have this artificial problem, and somebody would have even hit the "slammer." To withhold information on the limitations of the methodology used, and to make very questionable results appear as if they were unquestionably conclusive goes beyond simple paternalism, and it becomes a criminal act when it affects the liberty of citizens, their wallets, families, and their social life.

If this junk science were made illegal for political use, or even if its limitations were exposed with half of the zeal used to misinform the public on smoking, all health scares (even the ones not concerning tobacco) would crumble like a card castle, and we all would finally live in peace. It is true - that would cause hundreds of corrupt scientists, bureaucrats, and politicians to be unemployed. On the other hand, however, it would save hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the western powers, where citizens finance with their taxes this orgy of corruption that knows no limit, and which indeed is becoming the system itself.

In a slightly more decent world, in fact, the WHO should be seriously investigated by a thoroughly selected international committee. No doubt, that committee would find enough corruption and hidden political agendas (in an organisation that, theoretically, should have none) to make Nixon look like a saint and Clinton look like a friar in comparison.

Instead, all we hear are parrots sitting on microphone-equipped trestles, which brainlessly repeat what Johnson & Johnson, just to mention one, has established from high and far away places. These corporations, by using non profit organisations as buffers, buy with grants strategic positions in media, universities and other institutions in the US and all over the world.

And so, while we keep talking about the obscure machinations of Philip Morris, we are sailing on a stormy sea of health-inspired corruption.

Gian Turci
FORCES International
FORCES Italy