March
15, 2006 - I was
pleased to see that my
previous article about the antismoking dogma was partially shared by
Dr. Siegel, who quoted
points C and D of my list of “commandments” of antitobacco in his
blog. Of that I am honoured – but an important part of the issue are
points A and B. Point A (and especially B) challenge the real dogma
about smoking: where is a reliable, scientific demonstration that
smoking (including especially passive smoke) “kills”? Without that
foundation the whole antitobacco premise crumbles, as the emperor has no
clothes. Antitobacco is turning out to be a dangerous, fanatical
phenomenon that is getting worse than the First Prohibition, justified
on questionable science to gobble up immense sums of public money and
secure global political power without any accountability. That lack of
accountability is the most dangerous part of all, as it puts “public
health” above any democratic process and guarantees total immunity from
prosecution and political consequences. That in turn gives licence to
top international organs such as the WHO to perpetrate any statistical
fraud and abuse, and to promote or encourage veritable hate campaigns in
the member countries.
Those
campaigns are looking more and more like the racial and religious
persecutions of the past; recent events in the United States prove my
point conclusively. History shows that, eventually, even dictators are
politically accountable for their actions to the people, and the fate of
many of them demonstrates that. But this is certainly not the case for
the bureaucrats of “public health” anywhere in the world.
In this
reality antitobacco is promoted at the very top by dishonest bureaucrats
and “scientists” who have made lucrative careers of epidemiological
uncertainties. It is sustained and expanded by mostly incompetent
authorities and opportunistic politicians who have found an easy
scapegoat. As bottom feeders of this hysteria we see only bigots,
fanatics, hypochondriacs and an ever-growing number of people who feel
so uncomfortable and powerless today, they are only too happy to pour
their hatred down the emotional drains the system has kindly provided:
smokers today, fat people tomorrow, drinkers next. This, in my opinion,
is the reason why the “scientific” basis - that is, epidemiological junk
science - of this movement is never, ever discussed. The antismoking
“culture” is based on a rigidly observed taboo: thou shall not
question the science – especially when it’s junk.
Yet, I
would like to see anybody at all out there bring to the table one of the
following:
-
one disease or death where it is possible to say that it
has been caused solely by active or passive smoking;
-
one
disease or death where it is at least possible to quantify the
contribution of active or passive smoking.
Those are
not outrageous challenges. Proof of causality is at the base of science
– and opinions, no matter how numerous, are not considered proof,
since science is not a democracy, but the domain of reason and ethics –
or at least it should be. I am forgetting, of course, that science no
longer matters (and in this I agree with Dr. Siegel); hatred
seems to matter much more, nowadays.
Still, failing (a) and (b), at least it would be nice to see one of
these:
-
An
epidemiology textbook stating that risk increments of 20-30% allow
us to establish with some degree of certainty that what is under
examination (in this case, passive smoke) is responsible for those
puny increments in the case of multifactorial diseases such as
cancer - especially when
over 50% of the studies available on the
subject are statistically insignificant.
Let me put that in another way: a text stating that a bare minimum
of 100-200% risk elevation is not what is needed to
just begin to suspect that what is examined may
indeed be a real risk factor for the multiple-causality disease;
-
A
scientific textbook stating that epidemiology can establish
causality;
-
A
scientific textbook stating that generation-skipping retrospective
analyses based on questionnaires about unverifiable memories of
non-measurable exposures are sound science.
In spite
of all that is happening, I still believe that people are smarter than
they look – thus capable of understanding more than three-word slogans -
and quite capable of following a public debate based on the points
above. I am forgetting, of course, that “public health” is not up for
debate and has become an absolute – thus all we get is elusions,
false accusations, rhetoric and insults – the result of what happens
when a system goes amok with mass-emotion instigations rather than
staying on track with real education and rational debates. Nowhere in
the world has any “health authority” or professional antismoker,
regimented oncologist or medical association ever accepted to
debate this. Instead, they TELL you that it is “scientifically
established” that smoking in any form and quantity causes cancer – but
no one will accept a debate with studies in hand. This alone
should speak volumes about the solidity of the science behind
antitobacco. Yet before spending billions of public dollars in hate
campaigns all over the world, involving the United Nations in
ghettoizing millions of people and demanding that smokers be jettisoned
from jobs, parenthood and society altogether, we should at least have
some conclusive proof of one death in the
world, shouldn’t we?...
We read
about tobacco death counters at the WHO headquarters, and hear upsetting
stories of “smoking-related” cancer patients told by their survivors
while the patients themselves become proof of causality for their
own disease. Children are shown black lungs of pigs or miners always
with cancer to nail into their heads the ridiculous belief that
there cannot be smokers with healthy lungs. We hear “experts” and
“authorities” quacking that smoking bans save “thousands
of people’s lives”. All smoking causes cancer – it’s evil and “deadly
in any form or disguise” - it’s a scientific consensus. Yet
any and every voice that dissents on the causality of a disease whose
early development, dispersal and etiopathology are still a dark mystery
has been slandered first, then ridiculed, then ignored, and finally
silenced for good. Why? I am forgetting, of course, that this is a
rhetorical question.
Having
said that, for primary smoking it is unquestionable that it kills
statistically – that is, when we compare masses of populations that
actively smoke with masses that do not smoke we see consistently higher
numbers of people with lung cancer in the former. But it should be
explained to people that this is not enough to establish causality, but
only to guess it. One could precisely measure that Detroit has
more homicides than Anytown, USA - down to the last police report. We
would have two unquestionable realities: Detroit (the smokers) and the
homicides (the cancers). But these two unarguable realities still don’t
build up to the crucial element: the reason why (causality)
Detroit had more homicides than Anytown. Could it be the size of the
cities, the preponderance of this or that race, unemployment, political
beliefs? Maybe the spreading of illegal drugs, or the distribution of
wealth - maybe the average age, or the preponderance of aggressive
males? Most likely, we would be looking at the end result of a complex
combination of a large number of interacting factors. But we’ll never be
able to establish which factor (causality), or to quantify
the contribution of each factor to Detroit’s (smokers’) reality that
there are more homicides (cancers). This is because even if we could
totally remove one factor from the investigation, before measuring the
difference we should also freeze all other factors – but society is not
a laboratory, and this is impossible. This is the reason why
epidemiology cannot establish causality – and so far epidemiology is all
we’ve got. In other words, we would have reached the limit of what
we can establish objectively – and we should say so. [*]
But if we
want to keep those grants coming we can’t say “That’s all we know,
folks”: we have to show usable results (causality) even when
there isn’t any; so we arbitrarily attribute Detroit’s homicides
to what seems plausible at the moment or - more frequently - to the
political target of the financers of our investigation. So, if the
target is blacks, “blacks kill”; if we are extremist feminists, then
“men kill”; if the target is drugs, “drugs kill”. Down to our issue,
smoking - just one of over 40 suspected factors of lung cancer -
“kills”, and we look no further. Perhaps there is some truth in all
those statements – but that’s a far cry from being a reasonable base for
the launching of multi-billion dollar social engineering projects and
crusades that disintegrate liberties, economies and social fabrics. That
is because all we have are opinions which may indeed be based on
some real observations, but they are still incapable of establishing
causation. The “mountain of evidence” against active and passive smoking
is a sequence of attributions that at no time ever had
correspondence with experimental science. And this is the pivotal point
of the whole, world-wide antismoking misrepresentation. I am forgetting,
of course, that the tobacco issue has never been about science or health
– but about politics and social control.
Today the
opinions of those who have no proof - thus make attributions -
have become science, faith and dogma in one single step in a society
claiming to have grown beyond superstitious credulities and into
science. Good luck! Simple questions such as: “Can you demonstrate
that Mr. Doe’s cancer (or asthma, emphysema, anything you want) was
caused by active/passive smoking?” are absolutely ignored by the media
and by all “public health authorities”. Just asking such
questions leads to “lack of credibility”, and becomes a contemptible
action against those noble “authorities” who heroically lead the
sacrosanct crusade against evil tobacco in the holy name of eternal
health. Ask those questions and you become tobacco industry stuff.
When it comes to lifestyles and especially smoking, health “authorities”
have become the Untouchables of the 21st century, as they say
that the issue of “smoking & cancer” is settled for good. No, it is
not. What is settled is that we have an ominous institutional
integrity problem of planetary proportions that is getting worse by the
day.
This
is the real dogma that does not get challenged at all - and this
is the rest of the story, Dr. Siegel. You wonder why the situation got
this far: candidly, I don’t think that it takes a genius to figure it
out.
Gian Turci
[*]
Frankly, I would cheer if public health authorities had engaged in a
honest campaign of public education about the
epidemiologic/statistical risks of smoking, and more so if they had
moved to promote and even regulate cigarettes and ways of smoking that
might be statistically less hazardous. But instead they have mounted
a scorched-earth political crusade to their advantage and, to this day,
they continue a self-serving intransigence in opposing the development
of less hazardous smokes that could have been possible as far back as
the late '70s – and the authorities know that. If it’s true that smoking
kills as much as they say, then following a hate-based abolitionist
policy instead of one pursuing risk reduction has made “public health”
as responsible for the statistical slaughter as Big Tobacco may be. But
– once again – “public health” is not accountable for its actions, as it
seems to be above any juridical and moral law.
