November 22, 1999
- "Dr Ken Denson, of the Thame Thrombosis and Haemostosis Research Foundation in Oxford, has spent the last decade studying smoking-related illnesses and concluded that the real problem isn't the cigarettes, but the poor diet of smokers."
"Denson claims most of these studies are flawed because they haven't taken diet into account. Smokers have been shown to eat less fruit and vegetables and more saturated fats than non-smokers, a combination linked to cancer and heart disease. They tend to come from lower social classes already prone to bad diet."
"The heretical claims were immediately condemned as 'dangerous' by mainstream cancer experts. 'To say smoking under 10 a day is not dangerous is patently ridiculous,' said Professor Richard Peto of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. 'Any competent scientist is aware of the evidence that there is proof beyond reasonable doubt that smoking causes lung cancer."
"Amanda Sandford of the pressure group Action on Smoking and Health agreed: 'The evidence is absolutely overwhelming, there have been millions of studies showing how dangerous smoking is. It is dangerous to play down those effects.' "
Millions of studies? We don't think so. But it is quite true that the pressure in the cooker of truth is building up to quite dangerous levels for the anti-tobacco zealots.
The unarguable fact is that the overwhelming majority of those mass-produced "studies" depart from the dogma that smoking is dangerous, and continue from that original and unsubstantiated hypothesis with further assumptions to quantify how much more dangerous smoking is -- according to the political needs of the moment.
So far - and as far as orthodox science is concerned - there has been NO PROOF that ANY of the so-called "dangers" of smoking is substantial. The anti-tobacco crowd proceeds with false information to validate a basic assumption ("smoking is no good for you") that is rooted mainly in POPULAR FOLKLORE.
Though this does not mean that smoking is totally harmless (nothing is), it however means that all the claims against smoking are not just unproven, but even their original basic negative assumptions have been immensely over-stretched. More and more pressing evidence is emerging that a wrong diet is way more hazardous than smoking - and not just for smokers.
Though this latest bit of information should motivate smokers and personal rights lovers in general to repeal the anti-tobacco's claims and to fight back to regain their rights, it should not at all make them complacent.
What must be understood and accepted once and for all is that anti-tobacco is chiefly an immense international enterprise based mainly on fraud and outright falsification. Those who participate get handsome financial and political rewards; those who speak against it become instant targets of personal, political and professional slander and moral lynching.
Many "big names" (or names that have become big because of anti-tobacco) have jumped on this rich bandwagon. In the anti-tobacco gamble there are more than "just" billions of dollars at stake. There are now professional and political careers that will either make it or break it according to the outcome. Admirably in a twisted way, these people are risking it all, thinking they are betting on a winning horse. Defeat would mean loss of jobs and income, professional and political careers being ruined, and even jail for some.
An entire sub-economy of near-global proportions is now based on the pillage of smokers and tobacco industry - an economy that has been exponentially growing and thriving for the last 15-20 years. No other commercial enterprise has ever been so easy and profitable: the monetary capital comes from the public (especially smokers), the political thrust comes from governments and/or pharmaceuticals in exchange for promotion of their nicotine-based smoking cessation products, while the returns (financial and otherwise) go directly into the pockets of the profiteers, most often tax-free. No personal risk -- except one's own credibility.
And all one has to do to earn all that, is to produce and spread false or "creatively interpreted" information against the tobacco industry, its products and its customers, and to instigate hate and intolerance by appealing to just one basic human emotion: fear. Tobacco is indeed an immensely profitable business for those who make it and for those who fight it, and all at the expenses of the public purse -- and smokers.
Distortion and falsification of information on tobacco and tobacco-related matters has soared to the levels of institutionalised art and profession. Entire skyscrapers of lies have been built on fraudulent foundations.
The builders of those skyscrapers will not - and cannot - let anti-tobacco go, and not just for the reasons that have been explained so far. In fact, many of them combine financial gain with a conscious or subconscious fascist/puritanical drive. To very many anti-smokers, the fanatical persecution of smokers, the elimination of tobacco and the torment of a legal industry mean more than just financial and political gains.
To them, the anti-tobacco crusade is a mission and an endeavor that gratifies a diseased self - the exercise of a kind of power and control over others that could not otherwise be exerted. It is the opportunity to unleash their drive to persecute an entire class of citizens and get away with rewards instead of suppressing that drive, for it otherwise would only deserve contempt. That drive is part of all of us and it has always been with us, awaiting to emerge under the right circumstances. Examples are abundant, even in recent history. To have (and compete for, with greater and greater exaggerations) the media spotlights is for many of them a gratification greater than the money itself, and that selfish feeling alone is sufficient to transcend any further consideration of fairness, truth, compassion, or concern for future social consequences.
The overwhelming amount of scientific and financial evidence is decisively against the anti-smoking establishment. ETS is proven to be harmless by the VERY STUDIES of the anti-tobacco institutions. Statistics on disease "caused" by primary smoking have failed to prove causality, and are virtually worthless to begin with. Personal self-reporting, or even second, third-hand reporting on symptoms, attributions, or quantities of tobacco smoked concerning ailments that often have hundreds of concomitant causes mean in fact absolutely nothing. Even laboratory experiments where guinea pigs were tortured year after year by forcing in any way into their bodies quantities of tobacco by-products hundreds of times higher than the heaviest possible chain smoker could withstand have failed to produce one single cancer.
So, having been defeated in its endeavor to prove what cannot possibly be proven, anti-tobacco now wants to deafen us by hysterically screaming its lies and slogans into a big government-powered microphone, and by daily increasing the number its falsifications. Those falsification are then put under the nose of gullible, sensationalistic media and presented - while projecting the perception of public pressure - to politicians who cannot - even the best of them - be totally competent in every aspect of what they handle, but they are forced to rely on a system that they cannot admit is corrupt in its very fabric by medical/political/pharmaceutical lobby groups.
More and more bits of truth will surface in the future, as more scientists will follow the example of courageous Dr. Kenson, who is certainly aware that from now on every single moment of his past, present, and future life will be under the intense scrutiny of the antismoking operatives. Soon however, not even the mighty anti-tobacco lobby will be able to get enough fingers to plug all the holes poked in the dike it has built to contain reality. And through those holes, the truth will eventually downpour.
Nevertheless, the battle against such an entrenched establishment won't be an easy one. But those who still appreciate the value of scientific integrity, freedom, and the honesty of public policy will not be intimidated by the overwhelming size of their opponents and their war cries -- even if they are government-endorsed.
After all, all it takes to stampede a herd of elephants is a mouse.
Gian Turci
FORCES INTERNATIONAL
