Cigars, Cigar Information and where to find Premium Cigars, Discounted Cigars and even Cheap Cigars - “STRIKING PARALLELS BETWEEN THE NAZI ‘WAR ON CANCER” AND THE NEW LABOR CRUSADE AGAINST SMOKING”

“STRIKING PARALLELS BETWEEN THE NAZI ‘WAR ON CANCER” AND THE NEW LABOR CRUSADE AGAINST SMOKING”

“STRIKING PARALLELS BETWEEN THE NAZI ‘WAR ON CANCER” AND THE NEW LABOR CRUSADE AGAINST SMOKING”

British web site Spiked hammers the “science” behind second-hand smoke

Los Angeles, November 17 – A British medical doctor took the entire anti-smoking movement behind the woodshed for a beating in an important article that appeared Monday on the popular British website Spiked.

Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick, already the author of The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle (Routledge: London, 2000), reviewed the many similarities in approach between the current British anti-smoking campaign and the anti-tobacco efforts of Nazi Germany.

In doing so, he reviewed the case against second-hand smoke as an agent of disease and death: “In recent years, however, the focus of the anti-smoking campaign has shifted from the (firmly established) dangers of smoking to the smoker to emphasising the (more contentious) dangers of smoking to others, particularly to non-smokers. In the process, the science of epidemiology appears to have surrendered to the demands of public health propaganda (emphasis added).

Fitzpatrick goes further, in this stunning passage:

“The Swedish toxicologist Robert Nilsson, while accepting the plausibility of the lung cancer link and the fact that numerous studied appear to show a statistically significant increase in risk, has questioned its epidemiological significance. He offered estimates of the annual incidence of cancer in a population of 100,000 resulting from various environmental factors: unknown (177), diet (135), smoking (68), other lifestyle factors (45), sunshine (23) . . . environmental tobacco smoke [ETS] (2). By contrast, in a population which consumed Japanese seafood (which contains Arsenic), this will cause 12 cases of cancer, where there are traces of natural Arsenic in drinking water, this will cause five cases; eating mushrooms will cause three cases. In other words, the risk of ETS is comparable with that of environmental agents that are generally regarded as an insignificant threat to health (emphasis added).

“Perhaps the most fundamental defect of the presentation of the risk of passive smoking is the failure to distinguish between relative and absolute risk. In a critical commentary, the Australian medical research scientist Raymond Johnstone noted that the annual death rate from lung cancer among the non-smoking wives of non-smoking men is around six per 100,000, whereas among the non-smoking wives of smoking men the corresponding figure is eight per 100,000. Now this may be reported as an increased (relative) risk of 33 per cent. Yet in absolute it amounts to an absolute (or exposure) risk of one in 50,000, which is, for practical purposes, negligible.

“Johnstone’s conclusion was that ‘the most one can say about the alleged link between passive smoking and lung cancer is that if there is one, then it is so small that it is that it is difficult to measure it accurately and the risk, if any, is well below the level of those to which we normally pay attention.’ The alarming estimates of deaths attributable to passive smoking result from multiplying minuscule risks of dubious validity by cast population numbers – an effective propaganda device but statistical sharp practice” (emphasis added).

Fitzpatrick’s commentary is not much different from that reached by U.S. District Judge William L. Osteen in 1998 in Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corporation, et al vs. United States Environmental Protection Agency, et al 4 F. Supp.2d 435. In a lengthy review of the EPA’s study of second-hand smoke – the seminal document in American anti-second-hand smoke legislation – Osteen rips the EPA for its conclusions based on the Agency’s own characterization of second-hand smoke as a human lung carcinogen as only a “biological plausibility” and even at that level, the Agency’s method for coming to even that tentative classification may be deeply flawed.

Osteen commented, “There is limited evidence in the record supporting EPA’s final basis for its plausibility hypothesis” (4 F.Supp.2d at 455) and later noted “The court is faced with the ugly possibility that EPA adopted a methodology for each chapter, without explanation, based on the outcome sought in that chapter” (4 F.Supp.2d at 456).

Later, he concludes, “Using its normal methodology and its selected studies, EPA did not demonstrate a statistically significant association between ETS and lung cancer” (4 F.Supp.2d at 463).

That ought to be clear enough. As more and more criticism of the air-thin link between second-hand smoke and disease is brought to light, we who legally enjoy tobacco may yet again be able to breathe the fresh air of freedom.

You can read Dr. Fitzpatrick’s article in its entirety by clicking here.

Hammer time:
As we reported last Friday, the Orson Welles humidor from the New York Friars Club drew no takers at a $3,000 opening bid on eBay, but the item came back up over the weekend with a more modest $1,500 starter. The item was withdrawn yesterday, having drawn no bids over three days.

In response to requests, the magnificent Tiffany & Co. silver cigar “server” from the 1860s we described yesterday, is pictured above. The opening bid for this item is $9,500.00.
~ Rich Perelman

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